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8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 134
Essays Part II
The Traffic in Money Boys
Lisa Rofel
Why do so many gay men in China speak anxiously about what they call
using the English term ldquomoney boysrdquo ldquoMoney boysrdquo is a colloquialism in
China for men who sell sex to other men What is it about money boysrsquo
activities that lead (other) Chinese gay men to go out of their way to con-
demn them and even deny that those who wish to identify as gay deserve to
be called ldquogayrdquo I have had the pleasure of spending time in various gay ven-
ues in Beijing and in all of them mdash whether a salon discussion film view-
ing gay bar or private gathering in someonersquos home mdash the issue of money
boys invariably emerges The vehemence of the condemnations is striking
Gay men I have spoken with about money boys claim they inappropriately
blur the boundaries between sex and love they exploit gay men they are
dangerous and they are rural migrants just looking for work in the big
city mdash implying both that they are not really gay and that they should either
positions 983089983096983090 983140983151983145 983089983088983089983090983089983093983089983088983094983095983097983096983092983095-983090983088983089983088-983088983088983097
Copyright 983090983088983089983088 by Duke University Press
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 234
positions 182 Fall 2010 426
return to their rural homes or find a ldquorealrdquo job Most importantly those who
denigrate money boys argue that they sully the reputation of Chinese gay
men Money boys it is claimed hinder the aspirations of other gay men to
make a gay sexual orientation acceptable in China In other words money
boys turn the terrain of sex and desire in China into one that is fraught with
ambiguity Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the perfectly
acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing it into
the impure world of commodification and money Is their desire mdash for sex
for money or for sex that involves money mdash really possible to cordon offfrom other kinds of desires that appear to be more normalized Finally
how do they affect the endeavors of other gay men in China to create an
identity that will be acceptable within what they view as the norms of Chi-
nese culture
In this essay I argue that money boys are a pressing issue for gay men in
China because homophobia and dilemmas about the proper ways to chal-
lenge it are framed by the tremendous transformations that have occurredin China over the last twenty-five years that prominent scholars in China
have begun to call neoliberalism1 These transformations include the pro-
motion of a market economy the steady move toward privatization the
search for profits that includes rent-seeking and corruption the increasingly
stark social inequalities evident in China the rise of consumerism and a
consumer-oriented popular culture the turn away from post-Bandung
third-world alliances toward parity with the West the vast amount of for-eign direct investment in China and conversely Chinarsquos increasing invest-
ments in non-Western countries as they search for energy resources and
finally Chinarsquos entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) with its
attendant neoliberal rules and regulations about so-called free trade
These transformations suture China more tightly into a post ndash Cold War
world in which neoliberal ideologies backed by an imperial United States
and implemented by US-dominated transnational institutions such as
the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank seem ascendant
However my approach to neoliberalism in China differs from the most
prominent theories about neoliberalism2 First in contrast to the common
assumption that neoliberalism is a fully formed phenomenon delivered
from the West to the third world I argue that neoliberalism is a histori-
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 427
cally contingent heterogeneous project whose coherence must be continu-
ally asserted through transnational articulations between unequally situated
nation-states In China as elsewhere one of the central features of struggles
to articulate transnational economic policies only some of which we might
label ldquoneoliberalrdquo profit-seeking activities which are far from uniform and
new kinds of subjects is the simultaneous mobilization of cosmopolitanism
on the one hand and Chinese civilization culture and national identity on
the other My argument in brief is that the place of lesbians and gay men
in China is intimately connected to cosmopolitanism because it is throughthe expression of desire that they as well as other Chinese citizens are able
to feel part of a universal humanity The fact that they must do so is itself a
result of the embrace of neoliberalism which changes the relation of China
to the world economy and the terms by which its people can relate to each
other3 Neoliberalism thus produces a yearning for cosmopolitanism which
then gets encoded as a difference between licit and illicit desires
The mobilization of cosmopolitanism along with Chinese cultural andnational identity occurs in several realms Official discourse about ldquosocialism
with Chinese characteristicsrdquo is but one of them and should not be lightly
dismissed as there indeed exists cultural and historical specificity to the
manner in which privatization activities occur4 Both official and popular
discourses also mobilize national identity and ldquotraditionalrdquo Chinese moral-
ity which spans invocations of Confucian virtues family values Buddhism
and the history of Chinese culture prior to the socialist revolution Thesecategories far from taken for granted are themselves continually debated as
various practices mdash gender sexual and otherwise mdash are deemed to be repre-
sentative of Chinese culture or its antithesis that requires vigorous excision
The invocation of Chinese culture morality and national identity is meant
not only to forestall the worst effects of neoliberalism (the historical ti yong
dichotomy) but indeed more assertively to define its constitution within
China and beyond it That is Chinese civilization is often seen as that which
will save neoliberalism from pure barbarism Thus the challenge for lesbi-
ans and gay men in China as well as other citizens is to prove at once their
ability to transcend nation-state boundaries and embrace neoliberal cosmo-
politanism but also to display their normativity as Chinese citizens5
My second disagreement with other theories of neoliberalism is that while
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 428
prominent theorists have made the important argument that neoliberalism
creates new subjectivities they tend to emphasize a rationalized subject who
must discipline himself or herself into neoliberal modes of being and act-
ing6 These theories have the advantage that they do not treat neoliberalism
as a purely economistic endeavor but they nonetheless accept neoliberal ide-
ologiesrsquo own ideas about rationality as that which subtends neoliberalism
Moreover they tend to draw a direct and rather deterministic line from neo-
liberal economic policies to these rational techniques of the self to neoliberal
subjectivities In contrast I locate the specific appearance of neoliberalismin China in the production of desire7 Desire is the means through which
people in China as elsewhere prove their cosmopolitan worldliness But
desire is a complicated realm As psychoanalytical theory has long argued
desire can be unpredictable and difficult to control ldquoDesirerdquo is a historically
socially and culturally produced field that articulates the new contradictions
and inequalities in China to both resolve past dilemmas and create new ones
The desiring subject mdash whether sexual affective or possessive mdash thus func-tions variously as a trope a normative ideal and a horizon of possibility mdash
or impossibility It promises new freedoms even as it seems to be the only
game in town It also creates a terrain for powerful and dehumanizing exclu-
sions While the neoliberal enticement to have desires is prevalent every-
where in China debates about how to distinguish licit and illicit desires
continue to animate public culture Lesbians and gay men must grapple
with the ambivalences contradictions and exclusions that the specificity ofneoliberalism creates in China
This essay speaks as well to a hoary debate in queer studies or perhaps I
should say to the attacks on queer studies by those who used to accuse it of
being ldquomerely culturalrdquo or idealist as opposed to materialist queer8 Those
debates were never resolved they merely faded But they left certain dichot-
omies in place those who wanted so-called materialist studies of sexuality
and desire used the term ldquomaterialistrdquo in an obfuscatory manner Those
who had been criticized responded by pointing out that attention to family
kinship intimacy and the body are as ldquomaterialrdquo as one can get But what
those who invoked materialism really meant which they did also say was
that studies of desire should be grounded in a study of capitalist relations
of production Ironically however as soon as they set out that context they
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 429
also let desire drop out of the picture because they couldnrsquot really figure out
within a certain classical Marxism how to study the myriad forms desire
takes Thus Donald Morton for example establishes a dichotomy between
need and desire and asserts that need is what we excuse the pun need to
study but desire is merely an ideological by-product of capitalism9 It was
difficult to get past such homophobia and so the debate petered out after
both sides had had their say The debate was ironic because it was based on
a basic opposition between the instrumental and the affective that which is
instrumental belongs to a study of capitalism proper mdash the rational subjectwith needs mdash while that which is affective is relegated to a realm that is not
part of capitalist relations of production proper I say it is ironic to base a
critique of queer studies on the instrumental versus the affective because as
Marshall Sahlins pointed out a long time ago this opposition was produced
out of capitalism itself10 Queer studies on the other hand has not really
figured out how to get past the homophobia implicit in so many of these
critiques and analyze the relationship between capitalism and desire Myhope is that this essay contributes to bridging that division
The desiring subject has taken center stage in China because of the his-
torically specific allegory constructed to reject Maoism This allegory revises
historical memory through the emancipatory tale that Maoism suppressed
a natural human nature and that by rejecting the socialist state people can
unshackle their gendered and sexual selves11 Given the specificity of this
history mdash and its revisionist historiography mdash the goal in China appearsto be not merely to end the suppression of so-called innate gendered and
sexual selves but the positive development of subjects with elaborate sexual
material and affective self-interests After the June 983092th crisis of legitimacy
in 983089983097983096983097 the constitution of a postsocialist humanity in China entailed the
intensification of this goal in order to create cosmopolitan citizens of a
post ndash Cold War world12
For these historical reasons homoeroticism has created a great deal of
ambivalence in China This ambivalence is evident in public culture debates
about well-known legal cases concerning homoerotic desire and gay identity
as well as in informal conversation13 Indeed homoeroticism plays a cen-
tral role in public discussions about licit and illicit or proper and improper
desires There are no laws against homosexuality in China But some con-
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 430
demn homosexuality in the name of Chinese morality while others who do
not identify as gay proclaim that although they do not understand homo-
sexuality everyone should be free to express their desires This complex situ-
ation means that lesbians and gay men provide a particularly compelling
and ambivalent challenge to postsocialist constructions of human nature
Lesbians and gay men in China could view themselves as standing at the
forefront of a universal humanity in the expression of their desires Yet they
must struggle with public debates in China about the differentiation among
those deemed appropriate subjects of desire and those cast as inappropriateThe instabilities inherent in the experimental nature of Chinarsquos neoliberal
reforms means that these ldquodesiring-actionsrdquo to borrow a term from Neferti
Tadiar were not determined in advance14 Nonetheless these debates revolved
around attempts to draw a clear boundary between normative and nonnor-
mative desires both within and outside gay communities in China
Money boys thus became a lightening rod among gay men in their efforts
to grapple with homophobia and the proper class-inflected ways to be adesiring subject in this postsocialist world As queer theory has taught us
desires normalize and in so doing constitute those who are also excluded
and marked as nonnormative15 Queer theorists of color have challenged
and expanded this canon in order to make compelling arguments about the
critical role of postcolonial histories of racism and diaspora in construct-
ing normative desires among lesbians and gay men16 Queer theorists have
also argued that normalizations require a great deal of effort to make themeffective and in that work gaps and fissures lead to unexpected outcomes
Gay men who condemn money boys marginalize them as a way to make
their own desires appear simultaneously cosmopolitan (in its contemporary
neoliberal guise) and appropriately Chinese But they sometimes have dif-
ficulty in crafting absolute distinctions between themselves and these ldquooth-
ersrdquo even as they use these others to make themselves appear to have the
more appropriate desires befitting a postsocialist China17 Thus I locate an
anxiety expressed about the ldquomoney boyrdquo as a production of the market
economy that threatens the ontological certainty of the desiring individual
The fact that the unique term ldquomoney boyrdquo is used to refer to these
men mdash rather than say ldquogigolordquo or ldquomale prostituterdquo mdash is not to be dis-
missed as incidental but bears a critical relation to commodification and the
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 431
anxieties attendant upon the loss or the blurring of the boundaries between
epistemic zones After repeatedly hearing disparaging remarks about money
boys I decided I should talk to money boys themselves I was hesitant at
first because I was not sure how one would go about asking someone ques-
tions about their engagement in an activity that is so roundly condemned I
began to ask some of my gay male friends in Beijing to introduce me to any
money boys they knew While I am sure there are men who sell sex to other
men mdash one stroll through Beijingrsquos famous Dongdan Park makes that activ-
ity obvious mdash the men I was introduced to as money boys all refused thatlabel They argued that their actions did not represent a simple equation of
sex for money18 As I describe below their rejection of the money boy label is
more than simply a matter of denial These men had a much more complex
interpretation of their activities that as with other gay men broadened out
into a consideration of the place of desire in contemporary China They led
me to understand that their activities were as much an intimate part of the
transformations that had moved China away from socialism and toward aworld of what I would call neoliberal cosmopolitanism as any other activi-
ties centered around desire Indeed their analyses of their own lives and the
debates among gay men over money boys led me to realize that the question
of desire lies at the very heart of these transformations
I offer two ldquoscenesrdquo that develop my arguments about not simply the
views of those labeled money boys but also the cultural anxieties of other gay
men about money boys That is my intent is not just to describe so-calledmoney boysrsquo attempts to decouple money and sex but other gay menrsquos fears
about their own inabilities to do so the reasons why this distinction comes
to matter at all and the politically and culturally specific context that shapes
these anxieties The first scene occurred in my room in Beijing when one of
my gay male friends introduced me to someone he labeled a money boy The
disagreements that ensued in the conversation exemplify the anxious pursuit
of neoliberal respectability among certain gay men The second scene is a
film by the well-known queer filmmaker Cui Zirsquoen Through satire and
subversion Cui Zirsquoen challenges gay men about their desires for neoliberal
normalization
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 432
Scene One
It was a spring evening in 983089983097983097983096 Ah Zhuang had agreed to introduce meto someone he said was a money boy19 I had first met Ah Zhuang through
other foreign lesbians and gay men living in Beijing Then in his early for-
ties Ah Zhuang was a radiologist Ah Zhuang considered himself to be
someone who had always known he was gay He had never married as have
so many other gay men but lived at home taking care of his mother He
also considered himself to be part of a long-lost line of aristocratic Mongo-
lians through his fatherrsquos ancestors Ah Zhuang had embraced the newlyemergent gay scene with unabashed enthusiasm Though many older men
who have sex with other men shunned that scene and given their histori-
cal experiences of harassment feared exposure Ah Zhuang in contrast
worked on the gay hotline attended all the salon discussions met with psy-
chiatrists to argue with them about the normality of homosexuality and
established himself as an ldquoelderrdquo among what were mostly young gay men
in their twenties He loved dispensing advice Ah Zhuang felt it was critical
for all people who have a homoerotic orientation to identify themselves as
gay and embrace that identity His experience of having been arrested in the
983089983097983096983088s for approaching another man for sex in the public bathrooms made
him all the more adamant that normalizing a gay identity would put an
end to the police harassment to which he had been subjected20 On the other
hand he felt equally vehement about the need to not expose onersquos family to
social condemnation and thus he felt it important to be discreet
Ah Zhuang had decided ideas about what constitutes a proper gay iden-
tity These ideas were made most apparent to me on the evening in question
That night Ah Zhuang arrived at my room with a young man named Ah
Pei Ah Zhuang introduced him as his former boyfriend I was immediately
confused I thought he had said he would introduce me to a money boy
And if this person was his former boyfriend was he telling me he had beeninvolved with a money boy As the conversation developed things turned
out to be more complex For Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang argued during the
entire evening about whether Ah Pei was indeed a money boy at all Ah
Zhuang stayed for the whole conversation in part because Ah Pei has a very
thick Beijing working-class accent and I sometimes found it hard to follow
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 433
him Ah Zhuang helpfully repeated some of Ah Peirsquos statements to make
sure I understood But Ah Zhuang also kept inserting his own views inter-
rupting Ah Pei at every turn
We began the conversation in a desultory manner with my questions
about Ah Peirsquos background He explained that his parents both had had a
hard life when they were young before the 983089983097983092983097 revolution His father was
from the Northeast and had always had to move around looking for work
But fortunately he had ended up in Beijing working in a factory under
the Central Television Bureau constructing television reception towers Hismother worked in a radio factory When his father fell ill with cancer Ah
Pei had taken over his factory position At the time of course job inheri-
tance in state-run factories was seen as a privilege Then Ah Peirsquos second
brother and sister-in-law also came to work there By the time of our con-
versation Ah Pei had taken what was then the risky step of abandoning his
secure position in the factory Perhaps he had the foresight to realize that
factory workersrsquo living conditions were declining under economic reformIndeed by the time of our conversation half the factory had been let go and
were on unemployment Ah Pei had become a taxi driver He was then in
his mid-thirties
Perhaps I was moving too slowly toward the ostensible topic of the eve-
ning Or perhaps he had his own agenda In any case Ah Zhuang suddenly
interjected with a question that abruptly changed the direction of our con-
versation ldquoWhat are your feelings when you are with womenrdquo Ah Pei pro-ceeded to tell a story about his factory ldquoAll the women I have encountered
have been from our factoryrdquo He then described how at the age of 983089983097 he had
his first sexual relationship with an older married woman after another
woman he was apprenticed to introduced them to each other She too was
an apprentice According to Ah Pei she had seduced him Prior to that he
had no interest in sex with women at least not women his age They carried
on their affair for over a year The womanrsquos husband never knew he worked
in another factory The main point that Ah Pei stressed in telling this story
was that with an older person he finally felt secure Since then he added
he has always wanted to be with older people
When he first made this assertion I did not pick up on its larger implica-
tion in relation to the issue of money boys Only later when Ah Zhuang was
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 434
arguing with him did I realize that since that first affair with a woman
Ah Pei had been mainly with older men who took care of him mdash including
Ah Zhuang In talking about his first affair Ah Pei thus traced his inter-
est in older men to an emotional and sexual history of feeling comfortable
with older people Ah Zhuang as we will see reduced Ah Peirsquos story to
one of opportunism For at this point Ah Zhuang sarcastically interjected
a counterpoint to Ah Peirsquos insistence that this older woman had taken the
initiative ldquoMaybe the first time but then what about the second and third
ones Because yoursquove told me that there were quite a few including the topleader of the factory And even the managerrsquos wife Didnrsquot you take some
of the initiative in these later encounters I would really like to know what
exactly is your psychological attitude when you are with older peoplerdquo Ah
Pei ignored the first part of Ah Zhuangrsquos question answering that with
older people he feels particularly able to relax and let go
Here we find the first point of contention between Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang
over whether Ah Pei fits into the category of money boy Ah Pei tried to tellme a story of his psychological and emotional history He feels that older
people take the initiative with him which puts him at ease Ah Zhuang on
the other hand tried to turn Ah Peirsquos actions into self-seeking advantage Ah
Zhuang was not objecting so much to a seeming bisexuality that might make
a gay identity more ambiguous as to what in his view was naked opportun-
ism that did not distinguish between genders Ah Zhuang elaborated on his
view when I asked Ah Pei how he felt starting an affair with this womanAh Pei responded about the sex saying that looking back on it he could
see that he didnrsquot feel entirely comfortable because she did everything he
didnrsquot have to budge She helped him with everything Ah Zhuang then
interjected ldquoChina has a way of saying this this woman served ( cihou) him
Thatrsquos a clearer way to put it Chinarsquos traditional view is that the man should
take care of ( cihou) the woman and make her feel comfortable In his case
he made the woman do it so that he could feel comfortablerdquo This situation
in Ah Zhuangrsquos view was evidently one clear marker of a money boy Other-
wise why would a man not act like the man that he should be Why would
a man let himself be treated like a woman Ah Zhuangrsquos decided views on
appropriate gender attributes reproduce the dominant mode of delineating
the boundary between normative and nonnormative desire through gen-
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 435
der His interpretation is testimony to a contradictory antinomy between a
fluidity of desire which is supposed to change continuously in line with a
free trade cosmopolitan market economy and a renaturalization of a binary
gender in its ldquorecoveryrdquo from Maoist suppression
Ah Zhuangrsquos views also echo a longer history of gender and sexuality
in China in which as Keith MacMahon has argued one of the main signs
of male privilege is the polygamous ability to have and manage multiple
sexual partners21 Ah Zhuang as a medical doctor is undoubtedly famil-
iar with traditional medical prescriptions for male potency and the needto retain male energy Moreover as Judith Farquhar has argued these tra-
ditional medical texts have been recovered and popularized in post-Mao
China through a discourse on excess and deficiency that is simultaneously
an allegory about Chinarsquos past and future22 Ah Zhuangrsquos critique of Ah Pei
reflects an understanding that to ldquotake care ofrdquo a woman sexually means
that the male is in charge of managing pleasure because he needs to control
the depletion of his own energies Clearly in Ah Zhuangrsquos view Ah Pei hasnot followed the proper prescriptions and therefore is not contributing to the
proper development of social life in China
Ah Pei then proceeded to tell a story of the factory as a site of sexual excess
Rather than paint a conventional portrait of a large state-run factory as a
place of hard work alternating with boredom Ah Pei offered a tale in which
it seemed a matter of course for people to develop their sexual proclivities in
such an oppressive situation Ah Pei explained for example how he startedsleeping with one woman Her husband had been arrested and thrown into
prison for sleeping around with the younger women in the factory His wife
the woman Ah Pei had an affair with brought the women home for him The
husband was arrested however not owing to the moral probity of other fac-
tory leaders but according to Ah Pei because another factory leader wanted
to have sex with one of the young women and was jealous of this man and
so reported him to the public security bureau When this manrsquos wife invitedhim over to her home he figured he wouldnrsquot get into any trouble having an
affair with her By implication Ah Pei was explaining how he had come to
have such a free and easy approach to sex But Ah Zhuang used this story to
conclude that Ah Pei had a profound lack of ethical sense when establishing
relationships with people particularly men
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 436
Ah Zhuang then goaded Ah Pei into explaining his theory about lack of
father love Ah Pei told me about his violent father who drank too much and
hit his children Then one day when Ah Pei was a teenager he stood up to
his father But he always felt the keen loss of having a fatherrsquos love Thatrsquos
why he thinks he feels particularly comfortable with older men Ah Zhuang
promptly disagreed ldquoI donrsquot agree with this that a gay is someone who lacks
father love so they go in search of father love or someone older23 If his
view is correct then I am suspicious of whether he is really a gayrdquo Ah Pei
responded indirectly by saying that he knows for sure he will never get mar-
ried that even though no one living near him knows he is gay and thinks he
goes around with women he feels most comfortable with men Ah Zhuang
has a decided view of the correct way to be gay one that contains a normal-
izing pressure to present only positive or ldquonaturalrdquo reasons why one would
turn out to be gay This naturalization of gay identity parallels the natu-
ralization of the ability to be a desiring subject in post-Mao China Both
naturalizations create hierarchies of inclusion and exclusion that articulatewith the neoliberal naturalization of social inequality In contrast Ah Pei
implied that there are varied ways of having homoerotic encounters and
involvements His story highlights contingency history and experience The
inequalities in his story are class- and gender-based
Ah Pei then launched into a story of how he started to get involved with
men He had come into Tiananmen Square one evening and met some-
one there Ah Zhuang interrupted and said that Ah Pei had still been withwomen after that But Ah Pei responded that though he had been with
women after his first man he nonetheless preferred men He continued his
story ldquoI walked by Zhongshan Park and went to the [public] toilet I saw a
lot of men who went in but didnrsquot come out I just stood there didnrsquot dare
to go in and piss What were they doing in there Curiosity got the better of
me I went in and found two men playing around After that I went there
every day Thatrsquos how I met a guy Thatrsquos how I started I was just a littleover twenty years oldrdquo He began to meet a lot of men through that public
toilet finally meeting his first real lover Lao Chen (Old Chen) With Lao
Chen ldquoI finally started a new life I had a homerdquo
Ah Pei explained about the suffering that he had endured in order to be
with men One evening he was nabbed by the police He lied and said he
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 437
didnrsquot understand what the other man wanted from him The police officer
made him do hard labor for a couple of hours but let him go after he saw
Ah Pei crying The police thought he looked very young Here Ah Zhuang
interjected that he too had thought Ah Pei looked much younger than his
years when he first met him ldquoWhen he meets up with other peoplerdquo Ah
Zhuang concluded ldquohe uses his brains Hersquos good at performingrdquo In other
words Ah Zhuang implied that At Pei had perfected the art of deception
When Ah Pei described his relationship with his first long-term male
lover Lao Chen he and Ah Zhuang began to argue in earnest Ah Zhuangset out the terms by stating that Lao Chen basically ldquokeptrdquo ( yang) Ah Pei
that he took care of him in every way24 He asserted his privileged access to
the truth of the situation by telling me that Lao Chen was a dear friend of
his and it was actually through Lao Chen that he had met Ah Pei He also
set up Lao Chenrsquos class background from a wealthy family in Shanghai Lao
Chen was privileged to lead the life of a playboy However according to Ah
Zhuang Lao Chen was also a deep thinker he had graduated from FuDanUniversity (the most prestigious university in Shanghai) and Ah Zhuang
had spent many pleasurable evenings talking to him about politics Thus
before Ah Pei had a chance to get very far into his version Ah Zhuang had
already established a clear class division between himself and Lao Chen on
the one side and Ah Pei on the other This division Ah Zhuang implied
should also reflect whose version of this social and biographical history was
reliableAgainst this weighty class backdrop Ah Pei struggled to put forth his
perspective Lao Chen had raised him true but he had given Lao Chen
great sexual satisfaction taking the initiative to do so He had also paid his
price by doing a lot of things for him such as taking care of Lao Chenrsquos
wife and other friends when they visited from Shanghai ldquoThat was money
I spent out of my own pocket I feel I treated his family well Hersquos older
than me and has a lot of money I admit thatrdquo In Ah Peirsquos view Lao Chenand he had a fair exchange Lao Chen had the money to buy things for Ah
Pei who in turn gave Lao Chen a satisfying sexual and emotional life In
Ah Peirsquos view it was through Lao Chenrsquos lavish expenditures on him that he
began to have true feelings of love for Lao Chen This issue of true feelings
was critical in Ah Peirsquos view in distinguishing himself from a money boy
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 438
Ah Pei further asserted that unlike money boys he never stuck out his hand
and asked for money People have always offered to buy things for him he
said but he never asked for anything ldquoI have always relied on myselfrdquo
Ah Zhuang quickly jumped in at this point ldquoIf I consider him to be a
money boy itrsquos because hersquos extremely intelligent in this regard Thatrsquos why
I think todayrsquos conversation is especially interesting We could talk about it
for a long time Lao Chen shed a lot of tears over him So he is a little dif-
ferent than the money boys at Half and Half [the gay bar] Do they have
these kind of money boys in the United States Sometimes he really did payfor things himself and their relationship was real I see it this way Hersquos a
little different than those others He still has a little feeling involvedrdquo David
Eng (this volume) astutely evaluates the difficulties in neoliberal modernity
of distinguishing between what he calls tokens of affection and tokens of
exchange
After Ah Zhuangrsquos explication Ah Pei did not directly address the com-
parison of himself with money boys Instead he inarticulately reasserted hisview that he had never stuck out his hand asking for money and had always
relied on himself Given Ah Zhuangrsquos blunt assertion I wanted Ah Pei to
respond I asked whether he saw himself as like those men in any way He
was direct ldquoI am absolutely not like themrdquo Ah Zhuang laughed furiously
ldquoI never stuck out my hand with Ah Zhuang eitherrdquo he replied to the laugh
ldquoLet Ah Zhuang tell you himself Do you admit it Ah Zhuang liked me so
he bought me things My old man [his current lover] is like this too Irsquom notvery smart Irsquom actually stupid my level is low but Lao Chen told him I was
clever Where am I cleverrdquo
I then bluntly asked him if he only sought out lovers who had money ldquoAh
Zhuang is a clear examplerdquo he replied ldquoAh Zhuang has nowhere near the
money of these other men but I still tell him I learned a lot from him I
used to have a foul mouth I still thank him for these past four years Thatrsquos
why I still keep a relationship with him no matter with gay friends or notI always introduce himrdquo
Ah Zhuang directed Ah Pei to explain how his relationship with Lao
Chen ended Ah Pei told a story of how Lao Chen began to see someone
else and did not want Ah Pei to come home anymore Ah Pei was furious
and refused to let him go He did all sorts of things to stop the relationship
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 439
from ending including threatening to expose Lao Chen at work Lao Chen
would certainly have lost his job not only because of homophobia but as
Ah Pei explained because he was already in hot water with the Party due
to his outspoken criticisms Ah Zhuang jumped in to point out how Ah
Peirsquos behavior with Lao Chen provided yet one more set of money boy sig-
nifiers ldquoIrsquoll explainrdquo insisted Ah Zhuang after Ah Pei had presented his
perspective ldquoFrom his point of view he wanted to occupy a position This
position was incredibly important to him Only with this position could he
have money Now it was very possible that this position could be taken overby someone else So thatrsquos why he wanted to take revenge Lao Chen came
looking for me to ask me what he should do lsquoServes you rightrsquo I said He
asked lsquoMaybe if I give him some money then he would be willing to leave
me alonersquo He asked me how much I said lsquoI donrsquot knowrsquo How could I
know how much money he should give him At the time I told him lsquoYou
can end things but you have to think of a way to do itrsquo rdquo Ah Pei diffidently
responded that he hadnrsquot wanted to let go of Lao Chen because yes he leda comfortable life with him and also he had feelings for him For Ah Pei
the fact that his life was comfortable with Lao Chen was quite distinct from
a money boyrsquos desire to be paid for sex But Ah Zhuang saw them as one
and the same Finally Lao Chen left for Canada promising to bring Ah Pei
with him after he had arrived there ldquoI was naiverdquo Ah Pei said because he
had believed him
Surprisingly Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang never explained to me much oftheir own relationship Perhaps in the end they sought to preserve some of
the fragments of their friendship They ended their conversation with me by
briefly mentioning Ah Peirsquos latest relationship with an older man someone
from France whom he had met in a bar one evening Ah Pei doesnrsquot speak
any French and this man doesnrsquot speak any Chinese Ah Zhuang translated
for them when necessary This man who worked for the French airlines
was planning to bring Ah Pei to France with him They had already appliedfor his visa In subsequent conversations Ah Zhuang derided Ah Peirsquos plans
How would Ah Pei make a living in France What could he do He would
have a hard time learning the language et cetera It was as if to say Ah Pei
did not deserve the special privilege of living in a Western country
One could dismiss this whole conversation as the obvious denouement of
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a relationship that had ended bitterly Indeed Ah Zhuang had thrown Ah
Pei out of his house But Ah Zhuangrsquos insistence that Ah Pei was a money
boy reflected more than mere bitterness By rejecting Ah Peirsquos claims that
he too could place himself in the category of ldquogay manrdquo Ah Zhuang was
attempting to establish a hegemonic definition of respectable gayness For
Ah Zhuang this respectability adhered in appropriate gender sensibilities
class embodiment the proper balance between dependency and equality
a strict separation of money and love and a worldliness that only those of
a certain class stature should aspire to display Ah Zhuang was trying to
establish what Lisa Duggan has called the ldquonew homonormativityrdquo Dug-
gan argues that this new homonormativity is the equivalent of neoliberal
politics in the sexual realm25 These sexual politics uphold rather than con-
test dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions and promise
a depoliticized gay culture While Duggan concerns herself only with the
United States and does not consider transnational queer politics we can still
consider how her argument illuminates the sexual politics of someone likeAh Zhuang Ah Zhuang hopes to make gay identity respectable within
the terms of postsocialist neoliberalism The fact that neoliberalism has
made desire the central realm for producing proper citizen-subjects made
Ah Zhuangrsquos discourse all the more fraught with anxiety Ah Peirsquos own
intimacy with a well-to-do foreign gay man further goaded Ah Zhuang to
condemn Ah Peirsquos actions as inappropriate in terms of sexual gendered and
culturalnational identity For Ah Pei was going abroad to live in a Westerncountry long before Ah Zhuang would have the opportunity to do so
While Ah Peirsquos views do not simply reverse this moral equation nor do
they exemplify resistance to homonormativity in any straightforward sense
they provide an incipient means of gaining insight into the techniques of neo-
liberal normalizations as well as their instabilities Ah Zhuangrsquos condemna-
tion of Ah Peirsquos plans to move to France with his lover reveals the extent to
which the transnationalism that made Ah Peirsquos current relationship possiblechanges how ldquoinappropriaterdquo desires manifest themselves in the postsocialist
era It was after all only after the transformations in the last few decades
that a person from France would come to live and work again in China and
that an ldquoinappropriaterdquo desire could now also be a transnational desire The
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 441
fact that they do not speak each otherrsquos language exemplifies how neoliberal-
ism has allowed for new possibilities in the manner in which people desire
each other not just which kinds of desires are legitimate but which kinds of
desires are sustainable through which kinds of technological aids and socio-
economic conditions and across which kinds of borders Yet in Ah Zhuangrsquos
view someone of Ah Peirsquos class background could only succeed in such an
achievement by entangling the desires for money sex and love rather than
keeping them separate However the separations between entrepreneurialism
and intimacy that Ah Zhuang wants to establish for respectable gayness are
difficult to maintain26 Neoliberal cosmopolitanism appears to be all about
entrepreneurial savvy Yet there is more than one way to be an entrepreneur
And there is more than one way to be a nonnormalized or even antinormal-
ized gay subject27
Scene 2
Two young men are squatting at the edge of a bridge passing the time by
blowing up condoms ldquoThis way it looks like a dick It changes into breasts
when it gets bigger The breast changes into a dick and the dick into a
breastrdquo one of them says and laughs As they continue to play with their
condom-balloons the other one asks ldquoDo you like the feeling of being pen-
etrated or the feeling when you stick it inrdquo ldquoBothrdquo comes the answer
This scene opens Feeding Boys Ayaya ( Aiyaya Qu Buru) a queer filmabout male hustlers or money boys by the well-known experimental film-
maker Cui Zirsquoen28 This first scene immediately cuts to a contrasting scene
Two men are in a small closed room filled with computer and filmmaking
equipment The older one is in the background sitting in front of his com-
puter The other much younger is in the forefront of the screen The per-
son manipulating the computer equipment says ldquoZaizai [characterrsquos name]
this theme is for you It might not completely match your character in thefilm The distance makes it more precise Do you have any objectionsrdquo The
young man standing in the forefront of the screen has a somber look on his
face He refuses to speak The camera angle is an extreme close-up enlarg-
ing his face to fill the screen and nearly blocking out a view of the film-
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positions 182 Fall 2010 442
maker The effect is of a split screen We hear the filmmaker from behind
urging him several times ldquoSay somethingrdquo But the other refuses to speak
The quick juxtaposition of these two scenes and their contrasting mise-
en-scene prefigure the major motifs in Feeding Boys Ayaya The opposition
is established visually in the lighting camera angles locations and position-
ing of the characters The first scene presents characters who we will later
come to realize are money boys though at this point their identities are
unclear The scene mixes irony and pathos freedom and marginalization
The ironic and lighthearted humor of the dialogue contrasts with the curi-
ous positioning of the two young men They are at the edge of a deserted
bridge in the very early morning sunlight The camera places both of them
in the center of the screen in a medium close-up thus highlighting rela-
tionality but also distance or alienation The bantering friendship of the
two young men is visually contrasted with their distance from the rest of
the population and from the normative workday Yet this alienation is also
a liberation from the very same mdash the freedom to play at any hour the lackof confinement in space This scene represents what Judith Halberstam has
called ldquoqueer time and spacerdquo Halberstam argues that queer time and space
are ldquowillfully eccentric modes of beingrdquo that challenge heteronormativity by
providing alternative relations to time and space29
The very next scene reminds us that what we have just seen and what we
will view in the rest of the film is a set of representations The question of
how to represent money boys and who can and should speak in their nameis highlighted in this film The filmmaker character in the second scene
is choosing the theme music not the young man The dark closed room
and the split screen raise the question of whether and how the young man
can escape the framing of his life by the other The silence of the young
man mdash another money boy mdash recalls Gayatri Spivakrsquos famous dictum that
the subaltern cannot speak by which she meant that only traces of their
own interpretations of their lives remains in the texts written about them bycolonial elites30
Feeding Boys is a continual juxtaposition of these two types of images mdash
one of money boys displaying a queer sociality and the other of someone mdash
whether the filmmaker character a Christian missionary out to save money
boys his girlfriend who takes over his work or the parents of an aspir-
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 443
ing money boy mdash speaking for or about them Although the film does not
romanticize their lives the money boy characters not only exceed but also
challenge these representations of them both their content and their mode
of representation They continually frustrate attempts to represent capture
or change them Zaizai for example later demands to choose his own theme
music an insistence that frustrates the filmmaker who claims it will ruin
his film Their queerness emerges in these challenges
With Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen enters the larger debates that have central-
ized the question of desire in postsocialist China Cui Zirsquoen uses experimen-
tal visual logics that blur documentary and fiction and that refuse narrative
linearity or closure to challenge not only the specific judgments about money
boys among gay men but the entire apparatus of normalization in China
that tries to delimit desire Cui Zirsquoen addresses the specificity of neoliberal-
ism in China by challenging the hegemonic articulations between Chinese
culture and proper desire on the one hand and labor money and desire on
the other The film has a carnivalesque quality reinforced by the hand-heldcamera techniques which is at once somber and playful It subverts bour-
geois heterosexuality as that which subtends Chinese culture by robbing it of
its glory The film represents money boys as people with an integral human-
ity who take the full measure of their lives while the people who judge
them in the name of neoliberal desires Chinese morality or Christianity
appear damaged filled with contradictory desires themselves or just plain
boring The film thus further subverts postsocialist normalizing desires bydirecting our gaze away from what many think is perverse or rather by
making the normal perverse and the perverse normal The people to be
pitied in this film are the heterosexuals who condemn the hustlersrsquo profes-
sion They are the ones who wither and die Hustlers in contrast have time
to play and enjoy life Yet Cui Zirsquoen does not indulge in a simple decon-
structive reversal Hustlers suffer too but mainly from the condemnation
and exploitation they experience as a result of the hypocritical desires of theheteronormative world
Although Feeding Boys seems to establish a debate between heterosexu-
als and gay male hustlers the themes raised in the film rehearse anxieties
similar to those I presented in my first scene that occur among gay men
Are hustlers respectable or do they sully the good name of other gay men
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positions 182 Fall 2010 444
Do they deserve sympathy or condemnation Are they gay or just exploit-
ing vulnerable gay men Are their desires to be celebrated or condemned
Are they appropriate for Chinarsquos postsocialist neoliberal future or do they
represent the degradation of that future Feeding Boys refuses these dichoto-
mous terms Rather than simply reverse their valence the film addresses
other queer questions that displace these normalizing ones How should
we engage our desires How can this engagement lead to nonnormative
lives How does class inflect desire How can nonnormative desires chal-
lenge class-based temporalities What is the relationship between money
and sex Finally what is the role of religion
Feeding Boys loosely revolves around the elusive search of a Christian het-
erosexual brother Dabin for his younger brother Xiao Bao who has dis-
appeared into the money boy life During his search he discovers that one
of his younger ldquoChristian brothersrdquo Xiao Jian has also decided to become
a money boy to practice Christian love Juxtaposing money boysrsquo serious
banter with the normalizing judgments of others Feeding Boys weaves inand out of several recurrent image-themes the everyday life of hustlers
Xiao Jianrsquos exploration of how to become a hustler the missionizing zeal of
Dabin to dissuade hustlers from continuing in their profession and finally
the desire to represent and normalize the lives of hustlers Throughout
Feeding Boys jumps between these image-themes thus putting them in
dialogue with one another The experimental filmrsquos refusal to present a
linear narrative mirrors the refusal by the money boy characters to accedeto the normalizing judgments of others Thus the form to echo Hayden
White is also the content31 Cui Zirsquoenrsquos filmmaking techniques warn us
that endeavors to normalize create severe dislocations and damage And
not merely to money boys
Image-Theme 1 The Mundanity of Money Boy Life
Feeding Boys strikingly refuses to display any images of money boys actually
engaged in sex or hustling for customers This lack of sex scenes contrasts
with Cui Zirsquoenrsquos other films which generally go out of their way to show sex
between men The only way we even know that these young men are money
boys is through the dialogue More specifically we hear the arguments that
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 445
straight people who disapprove of them engender Indeed the film is quite
chaste The one scene in which we see two people showing erotic affection
is between the older heterosexual brother of one of the money boys (XiaoBao) whose missionary goal is to convert hustlers and his girlfriend Feed-
ing Boys thus refuses to indulge viewersrsquo scopophilic desires Cui Zirsquoen teases
the viewer from the first scene Watching two men blowing up condoms
and briefly chatting about sex hints at more erotic scenes to come But they
never materialize A condom-balloon is all we ever get By thus tapping into
a gaze desirous for the perverse and then frustrating that desire Cui Zirsquoen
confronts the viewer with the need to think about representation and the
role of representation in normalizing desire mdash both in public discourse and
in his film
In place of the erotic the viewer is offered the stuff of everyday life One
recurrent image as in the first scene is of money boys on a bridge early in
the morning In one scene they playfully engage in ballet-like dance ges-
tures In another one of them displays his acrobatic skills doing severalback flips Later we see these same young men practicing taiji quan (a mar-
tial arts exercise) again early in the morning on the bridge These images
immediately bring to mind the ldquonormalrdquo populace in Chinarsquos cities who go
out each morning to do precisely these group exercises This idea is rein-
forced by the camera angle in these scenes which is a medium wide-angle
shot taking in both the bridge and the surrounding metropolis But the
bridge is also symptomatic of a moment of suspension between directionsin life or between worlds A bridge represents a gap as well as an attempt to
overcome a fissure in the landscape In one telling scene near the end of the
film a money boy begs for money on the bridge pleading with passersby
that he has given up his dissolute life and reformed himself Yet immediately
after we see him with another friend arguing with the Christian mission-
aryrsquos girlfriend stating unequivocally that even though they treated begging
as a ldquorealrdquo job no one wanted to give them money and that in todayrsquos worldpeople respect a prostitute more than a poor person The bridge thus repre-
sents two intertwined passages mdash from a socialist world of time and space
in which citizens had the leisure to do morning exercises and their lives
were not measured by money to a neoliberal world in which wealth is the
only measure of human dignity and no one mdash except those on the outside
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positions 182 Fall 2010 446
of bourgeois respectability mdash has time to spend exercising on a bridge This
passage is intertwined then with a passage from heteronormative relations
of time and space to queer time and space mdash the refusal of the relationshipbetween time work money and desire that neoliberalism has established
Another recurrent scene is of several young men playing in the park
They walk through the park in a desultory manner enjoying the day One
of them has his dog on a leash The dog is obviously well groomed and
well fed Only recently have Beijing residents been allowed to keep pets in
the city Dogs quickly became a key signifier of bourgeois cosmopolitan
accomplishment Why shouldnrsquot money boys be allowed to have them too
In the film the pet belies the idea that money boys lead an unstable dirty
and unreliable life as many believe Moreover it forces open the cluster of
oppositions between respectable and degraded desires in which bourgeois
heterosexual family life goes together with accoutrements like pets while
prostitution is supposed to represent nothing but lack
Other scenes reinforce the sense that money boys are like everyone else inthe way they go about the stuff of everyday life We see them singing in a
karaoke bar playing with a young boy on a playground and having a meal
with their families These young men are portrayed as neither angels nor
demons They are neither ecstatic nor suicidal But the film makes clear that
they live on the margins and have only one another for support
In only a few scenes do these money boys talk about their work But even
here their conversations resemble those of anyone who has ever grumbledabout his or her workplace At one point in the bar for example one of
the money boys tells the other Xiao Bao that his brother (the missionary)
has been looking for him Xiao Bao shakes his head and complains that a
customer has just ripped him off by refusing to pay In another scene in the
park during the daytime one of the money boys complains to the other that
he canrsquot seem to save any money because he always has to buy expensive
clothes to look nice for his customers The other responds that he should besmarter and get the customers to buy the clothes for him He proudly reveals
that he has saved quite a bit of money with which he plans to buy a house
for his mother
The film also playfully satirizes normalized work lives In one scene one
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 447
of the money boys says ldquoWe need structure We have to become profes-
sionalsrdquo Pointing to a gay bar behind him he says ldquoThis is our interna-
tional head officerdquo Another money boy repeats virtually the same wordsbut this time points to a twenty-story high rise building The film shifts to
an eerie scene of colorful masks then quickly to what looks to be a confer-
ence meeting in a bar Someone presumably their boss is taking roll call
They all stand to attention some of them wearing name tags as if at an aca-
demic meeting In this manner Cui Zirsquoen calls into question the relationship
between sex work and desire in China He highlights the instabilities in
how neoliberalism in China has produced social inequalities through trans-
national structures of differentially valued labors But he further demon-
strates the inextricability of sexuality bodies desire and labor To labor for
wealth is supposed to be the foremost desire in a neoliberal world Thus
normalization techniques reduce and embed desire in a structured world
of intensive labor extraction one that produces a capitalist-inflected heter-
onormativity (even as it has a nondeterministic relationship to that heter-onormativity) In other words Cui Zirsquoen deconstructs how the whole person
becomes a commodity in a neoliberal world and how that world while it
fosters desires also robs people of their desires for a full humanity Through
this humorous filmic meditation on desire Cui Zirsquoen thus provides biting
queer commentary on the reduction and devaluation of necessary labor in
postsocialist China
This commentary is most explicit in a scene near the end of the filmwhen the missionaryrsquos girlfriend pleadingly asks several money boys why
they do this work One of them responds with ten reasons ldquoOne you donrsquot
have to be president Two you donrsquot have to be a soldier Three you donrsquot
have to be a farmer and work the land Four you donrsquot have to wash dishes
Five you donrsquot have to marry and have kids Six you donrsquot have to become a
movie star Seven you donrsquot have to be a movie director Eight you donrsquot get
fat Nine you are exploited by others but donrsquot exploit others And ten youdonrsquot die because we use our bodies to satisfy both good and bad peoplersquos
desiresrdquo Through arguments with and about money boys the film thus
creates commentary on how neoliberalism in China appropriates not just
labor-power but the laborer as a desiring subject32 The queer commentary
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positions 182 Fall 2010 448
of Feeding Boys demonstrates how nonnormative alternatives lie outside of
those temporal and spatial markers of respectable Chinese experience mdash
namely marriage reproduction kinship and death The film thus chal-lenges the oppositions of respectability and shame
Image-Theme 2 How to Become a Money Boy
The thread of this image-theme most explicitly mocks normalizing judg-
ments about desire work class and sex Through this image-theme the
film represents gay male hustling as a profession as honorable as becom-
ing a lawyer or computer scientist In perhaps the most iconic scene in this
regard Feeding Boys stages an argument between Xiao Jian and his parents
that crafts a mimicry of family gatherings to decide the childrenrsquos future33
His parents appear to be respectable middle-class intellectuals The mise-
en-scene is a plushly decorated apartment in which the family lives together
The family is all seated there The father states unequivocally that this kindof work leads nowhere They bemoan the fact that they raised their son for
so many years and gave him the opportunity to do many things with his life
They insist they just want the best for him The parents are oddly calm and
though disgusted do not throw him out of the house Indeed in the next
scene he arrives early in the morning to the apartment stating boldly to his
parents that they arrived home from work earlier than him His mother
asks if he isnrsquot supposed to work the night shift and he responds that he willwork any shift The mother turns to the father and makes the pithy com-
ment ldquoSo we failed to discourage him from this line of workrdquo
In another scene in which Xiao Jian defends to Dabin his reasons for
wanting to become a money boy Cui Zirsquoen crafts a doubled-edged mock-
ery of socialist ideals as well by invoking the old socialist honor of learn-
ing from and serving the masses His satire in this regard cuts in multiple
directions It recalls not just the marginalization but the condemnationand punishment under socialism of those with inappropriate desires But
it also uses those socialist ideals to critique the neoliberal normalization of
the appropriate relationship between labor and desire Xiao Jian initiates an
argument with Dabin when he announces that he too wants to become
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 449
a money boy Xiao Jian is insistent ldquoI want to sell my body like Xiao Bao
[Dabinrsquos brother]rdquo He then explains that when Xiao Bao disappeared he
went to check out the male prostitution business ldquoMost of these youngstersare from villages and from very poor family backgrounds I was born into
a happy family I want to join the hustlers and change their social statusrdquo
Dabin retorts ldquoCan you make those people happy Itrsquos all about making
millionaires officials and rich guys happyrdquo ldquoYou told me that we have to
serve the humble Now I want to become one of themrdquo replies Xiao Jian
ldquoI want to become the lowest of the low together with robbers hooligans
petty thieves ex-convicts homosexuals and hustlers I want to stay at the
bottomrdquo Dabin then launches into classical Chinese metaphors ldquoWater
flows downward but man soars heavenwardrdquo Xiao Jian has an answer to
that as well insisting that man is also part of nature and is also capable of
running downhill ldquoItrsquos only natural and makes things more equalrdquo
The visual logics of this scene provide the ironic counter-commentary
During the entire scene Xiao Jian is fully dressed while we watch Dabin halfnaked as he dresses after a shower The viewer becomes engaged in the erot-
ics of watching Dabin slowly lather lotion over his entire body then pull on
tight-fitting underwear The camera lingers on his well built body By the end
of the scene Dabin is still half naked The erotics of the scene are heightened
by the effect of a mirror that stages Xiao Jian in reverse That is Xiao Jian is
seated to the left of Dabin but we only view him through the mirror where
he appears on Dabinrsquos right while Dabin occupies center stage as the half- naked figure of erotic righteousness The mirror clues us in to a split between
the dialogue and the visual logics This split reflects back to the spectator the
hypocritical contradictions in postsocialist enticements of desire
Image-Theme 3 The Trials and Tribulations of Missionary Work
Early in the film we see someone driving through Beijing in a nice carHe is a good looking serious young man It turns out to be Dabin search-
ing for Xiao Bao his younger brother Dabin walks into a bar looking for
him without success He proceeds to follow one of the money boys into the
bathroom and argues with him saying that he doesnrsquot understand why his
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positions 182 Fall 2010 450
job is so attractive ldquoHow could it attract you How can you enjoy it without
getting tiredrdquo The money boy calmly responds ldquoThe job has three advan-
tages First you earn money Second freedom Third you can fool aroundwith different peoplerdquo When Dabin aggressively asks if there are any dis-
advantages the money boy responds ldquoFirst you get sick easily Second itrsquos
a waste of condoms and KY jelly Third you donrsquot get enough sleeprdquo Dabin
cries ldquoIf you keep doing this you will get AIDSrdquo Thus opens the third
image-theme the heterosexual Christian evangelist who attempts to convert
money boys
Dabinrsquos idea of conversion conflates normative sexual desire and Chris-
tianity Thus in the next major scene in which he appears he argues with
two money boys telling them that birds in the sky donrsquot sell their bodies
but they have food to eat that lotus flowers donrsquot sell their bodies but they
are beautiful that dogs and earthworms donrsquot sell their bodies but they live
vigorous lives so why should they sell their bodies He then offers to give
them the Bible Cui Zirsquoen was raised as a Catholic in the northeast city of
Dalian In his previous films he took a Derek Jarman approach and made
symbolic Jesus figures suffer the slings and arrows of heterosexual rage He
tried to reconcile homoerotic desire with what he viewed as the true essence
of Catholicism In Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen has taken a distinctive approach
Here he asserts that those who use Christianity to suppress nonnormative
desires have a hopeless case on their hands Moreover the true essence of
Christianity is ambiguous Perhaps it really is a source of oppression ratherthan as in his previous films a potential guide for love
This ambiguity is underscored in the next major scene in which Dabin
attempts to win converts among money boys He is reading the Bible together
with his younger ldquoChristian brotherrdquo Xiao Jian who has also chosen to be a
money boy Xiao Jian appears earnest He asks ldquoDo you think Jesus would
like that I mean would he like the fact that men and women and men and
men and women and women have sexrdquo Dabin responds ldquoMen and menand women and men have sexual relationships That means that God gave
them their sexual desires and afterwards even gave them the ability to have
sex So who gave men and women the ability to have sex God did The
fact that God gave us this ability proves that he allows us to do itrdquo But the
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 451
young man persists ldquoYou said men and women do it for procreation If men
have sex with men they canrsquot procreate How do you explain thisrdquo Dabin
is stumped ldquoI have to turn to the Bible again for this questionrdquoThe moral inconclusiveness of the Bible and the ability to glean multiple
interpretations of desire from it leads the viewer to understand that there is
a distinction between heteronormativity and the normalization of desire
Strikingly Dabin does not condemn these young men for having sex with
other men He does not in other words condemn sexual desire tout court
or even homoerotic desire What he condemns is the exchange of sex for
money
Dabin is passionate in his missionary work In one scene we see him
standing on the bridge where money boys gather Christian Bible held up
high intoning his plea to them ldquoThe end of the world is near and you still
sell your bodiesrdquo No one speaks to him his travails seem fruitless Dabin on
the bridge recalls by contrast the money boys on the bridge But whereas
the money boys were shot in mid-range at wide angle Dabin is shot from
below with a zoom lens that makes him appear more distant as if he is high
up on a pulpit or a cross
Somewhat unexpectedly Dabin takes seriously ill and dies His death
recalls that of Jesus of course dying for othersrsquo sins but there is a distinct
ambiguity in Dabinrsquos death Does he die for othersrsquo sins or has he suffered
under his own illusions Is his the work of a savior or do normalized people
with judgments of others suffer because of their judgmental values Thefilm never resolves this ambiguity
On his deathbed Dabin pleads with his girlfriend to take over his work
to preach the gospel and save male prostitutes She promises to do so and
indeed in the next scene we see her standing on the same bridge holding
up the same Bible intoning monotonously ldquoDonrsquot sell anymorerdquo In the end
the girlfriend also ends up exhausted and sick in bed having similarly sacri-
ficed herself to a hopeless cause
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positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
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positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3234
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3334
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 234
positions 182 Fall 2010 426
return to their rural homes or find a ldquorealrdquo job Most importantly those who
denigrate money boys argue that they sully the reputation of Chinese gay
men Money boys it is claimed hinder the aspirations of other gay men to
make a gay sexual orientation acceptable in China In other words money
boys turn the terrain of sex and desire in China into one that is fraught with
ambiguity Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the perfectly
acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing it into
the impure world of commodification and money Is their desire mdash for sex
for money or for sex that involves money mdash really possible to cordon offfrom other kinds of desires that appear to be more normalized Finally
how do they affect the endeavors of other gay men in China to create an
identity that will be acceptable within what they view as the norms of Chi-
nese culture
In this essay I argue that money boys are a pressing issue for gay men in
China because homophobia and dilemmas about the proper ways to chal-
lenge it are framed by the tremendous transformations that have occurredin China over the last twenty-five years that prominent scholars in China
have begun to call neoliberalism1 These transformations include the pro-
motion of a market economy the steady move toward privatization the
search for profits that includes rent-seeking and corruption the increasingly
stark social inequalities evident in China the rise of consumerism and a
consumer-oriented popular culture the turn away from post-Bandung
third-world alliances toward parity with the West the vast amount of for-eign direct investment in China and conversely Chinarsquos increasing invest-
ments in non-Western countries as they search for energy resources and
finally Chinarsquos entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) with its
attendant neoliberal rules and regulations about so-called free trade
These transformations suture China more tightly into a post ndash Cold War
world in which neoliberal ideologies backed by an imperial United States
and implemented by US-dominated transnational institutions such as
the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank seem ascendant
However my approach to neoliberalism in China differs from the most
prominent theories about neoliberalism2 First in contrast to the common
assumption that neoliberalism is a fully formed phenomenon delivered
from the West to the third world I argue that neoliberalism is a histori-
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 427
cally contingent heterogeneous project whose coherence must be continu-
ally asserted through transnational articulations between unequally situated
nation-states In China as elsewhere one of the central features of struggles
to articulate transnational economic policies only some of which we might
label ldquoneoliberalrdquo profit-seeking activities which are far from uniform and
new kinds of subjects is the simultaneous mobilization of cosmopolitanism
on the one hand and Chinese civilization culture and national identity on
the other My argument in brief is that the place of lesbians and gay men
in China is intimately connected to cosmopolitanism because it is throughthe expression of desire that they as well as other Chinese citizens are able
to feel part of a universal humanity The fact that they must do so is itself a
result of the embrace of neoliberalism which changes the relation of China
to the world economy and the terms by which its people can relate to each
other3 Neoliberalism thus produces a yearning for cosmopolitanism which
then gets encoded as a difference between licit and illicit desires
The mobilization of cosmopolitanism along with Chinese cultural andnational identity occurs in several realms Official discourse about ldquosocialism
with Chinese characteristicsrdquo is but one of them and should not be lightly
dismissed as there indeed exists cultural and historical specificity to the
manner in which privatization activities occur4 Both official and popular
discourses also mobilize national identity and ldquotraditionalrdquo Chinese moral-
ity which spans invocations of Confucian virtues family values Buddhism
and the history of Chinese culture prior to the socialist revolution Thesecategories far from taken for granted are themselves continually debated as
various practices mdash gender sexual and otherwise mdash are deemed to be repre-
sentative of Chinese culture or its antithesis that requires vigorous excision
The invocation of Chinese culture morality and national identity is meant
not only to forestall the worst effects of neoliberalism (the historical ti yong
dichotomy) but indeed more assertively to define its constitution within
China and beyond it That is Chinese civilization is often seen as that which
will save neoliberalism from pure barbarism Thus the challenge for lesbi-
ans and gay men in China as well as other citizens is to prove at once their
ability to transcend nation-state boundaries and embrace neoliberal cosmo-
politanism but also to display their normativity as Chinese citizens5
My second disagreement with other theories of neoliberalism is that while
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 428
prominent theorists have made the important argument that neoliberalism
creates new subjectivities they tend to emphasize a rationalized subject who
must discipline himself or herself into neoliberal modes of being and act-
ing6 These theories have the advantage that they do not treat neoliberalism
as a purely economistic endeavor but they nonetheless accept neoliberal ide-
ologiesrsquo own ideas about rationality as that which subtends neoliberalism
Moreover they tend to draw a direct and rather deterministic line from neo-
liberal economic policies to these rational techniques of the self to neoliberal
subjectivities In contrast I locate the specific appearance of neoliberalismin China in the production of desire7 Desire is the means through which
people in China as elsewhere prove their cosmopolitan worldliness But
desire is a complicated realm As psychoanalytical theory has long argued
desire can be unpredictable and difficult to control ldquoDesirerdquo is a historically
socially and culturally produced field that articulates the new contradictions
and inequalities in China to both resolve past dilemmas and create new ones
The desiring subject mdash whether sexual affective or possessive mdash thus func-tions variously as a trope a normative ideal and a horizon of possibility mdash
or impossibility It promises new freedoms even as it seems to be the only
game in town It also creates a terrain for powerful and dehumanizing exclu-
sions While the neoliberal enticement to have desires is prevalent every-
where in China debates about how to distinguish licit and illicit desires
continue to animate public culture Lesbians and gay men must grapple
with the ambivalences contradictions and exclusions that the specificity ofneoliberalism creates in China
This essay speaks as well to a hoary debate in queer studies or perhaps I
should say to the attacks on queer studies by those who used to accuse it of
being ldquomerely culturalrdquo or idealist as opposed to materialist queer8 Those
debates were never resolved they merely faded But they left certain dichot-
omies in place those who wanted so-called materialist studies of sexuality
and desire used the term ldquomaterialistrdquo in an obfuscatory manner Those
who had been criticized responded by pointing out that attention to family
kinship intimacy and the body are as ldquomaterialrdquo as one can get But what
those who invoked materialism really meant which they did also say was
that studies of desire should be grounded in a study of capitalist relations
of production Ironically however as soon as they set out that context they
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 429
also let desire drop out of the picture because they couldnrsquot really figure out
within a certain classical Marxism how to study the myriad forms desire
takes Thus Donald Morton for example establishes a dichotomy between
need and desire and asserts that need is what we excuse the pun need to
study but desire is merely an ideological by-product of capitalism9 It was
difficult to get past such homophobia and so the debate petered out after
both sides had had their say The debate was ironic because it was based on
a basic opposition between the instrumental and the affective that which is
instrumental belongs to a study of capitalism proper mdash the rational subjectwith needs mdash while that which is affective is relegated to a realm that is not
part of capitalist relations of production proper I say it is ironic to base a
critique of queer studies on the instrumental versus the affective because as
Marshall Sahlins pointed out a long time ago this opposition was produced
out of capitalism itself10 Queer studies on the other hand has not really
figured out how to get past the homophobia implicit in so many of these
critiques and analyze the relationship between capitalism and desire Myhope is that this essay contributes to bridging that division
The desiring subject has taken center stage in China because of the his-
torically specific allegory constructed to reject Maoism This allegory revises
historical memory through the emancipatory tale that Maoism suppressed
a natural human nature and that by rejecting the socialist state people can
unshackle their gendered and sexual selves11 Given the specificity of this
history mdash and its revisionist historiography mdash the goal in China appearsto be not merely to end the suppression of so-called innate gendered and
sexual selves but the positive development of subjects with elaborate sexual
material and affective self-interests After the June 983092th crisis of legitimacy
in 983089983097983096983097 the constitution of a postsocialist humanity in China entailed the
intensification of this goal in order to create cosmopolitan citizens of a
post ndash Cold War world12
For these historical reasons homoeroticism has created a great deal of
ambivalence in China This ambivalence is evident in public culture debates
about well-known legal cases concerning homoerotic desire and gay identity
as well as in informal conversation13 Indeed homoeroticism plays a cen-
tral role in public discussions about licit and illicit or proper and improper
desires There are no laws against homosexuality in China But some con-
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 430
demn homosexuality in the name of Chinese morality while others who do
not identify as gay proclaim that although they do not understand homo-
sexuality everyone should be free to express their desires This complex situ-
ation means that lesbians and gay men provide a particularly compelling
and ambivalent challenge to postsocialist constructions of human nature
Lesbians and gay men in China could view themselves as standing at the
forefront of a universal humanity in the expression of their desires Yet they
must struggle with public debates in China about the differentiation among
those deemed appropriate subjects of desire and those cast as inappropriateThe instabilities inherent in the experimental nature of Chinarsquos neoliberal
reforms means that these ldquodesiring-actionsrdquo to borrow a term from Neferti
Tadiar were not determined in advance14 Nonetheless these debates revolved
around attempts to draw a clear boundary between normative and nonnor-
mative desires both within and outside gay communities in China
Money boys thus became a lightening rod among gay men in their efforts
to grapple with homophobia and the proper class-inflected ways to be adesiring subject in this postsocialist world As queer theory has taught us
desires normalize and in so doing constitute those who are also excluded
and marked as nonnormative15 Queer theorists of color have challenged
and expanded this canon in order to make compelling arguments about the
critical role of postcolonial histories of racism and diaspora in construct-
ing normative desires among lesbians and gay men16 Queer theorists have
also argued that normalizations require a great deal of effort to make themeffective and in that work gaps and fissures lead to unexpected outcomes
Gay men who condemn money boys marginalize them as a way to make
their own desires appear simultaneously cosmopolitan (in its contemporary
neoliberal guise) and appropriately Chinese But they sometimes have dif-
ficulty in crafting absolute distinctions between themselves and these ldquooth-
ersrdquo even as they use these others to make themselves appear to have the
more appropriate desires befitting a postsocialist China17 Thus I locate an
anxiety expressed about the ldquomoney boyrdquo as a production of the market
economy that threatens the ontological certainty of the desiring individual
The fact that the unique term ldquomoney boyrdquo is used to refer to these
men mdash rather than say ldquogigolordquo or ldquomale prostituterdquo mdash is not to be dis-
missed as incidental but bears a critical relation to commodification and the
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 431
anxieties attendant upon the loss or the blurring of the boundaries between
epistemic zones After repeatedly hearing disparaging remarks about money
boys I decided I should talk to money boys themselves I was hesitant at
first because I was not sure how one would go about asking someone ques-
tions about their engagement in an activity that is so roundly condemned I
began to ask some of my gay male friends in Beijing to introduce me to any
money boys they knew While I am sure there are men who sell sex to other
men mdash one stroll through Beijingrsquos famous Dongdan Park makes that activ-
ity obvious mdash the men I was introduced to as money boys all refused thatlabel They argued that their actions did not represent a simple equation of
sex for money18 As I describe below their rejection of the money boy label is
more than simply a matter of denial These men had a much more complex
interpretation of their activities that as with other gay men broadened out
into a consideration of the place of desire in contemporary China They led
me to understand that their activities were as much an intimate part of the
transformations that had moved China away from socialism and toward aworld of what I would call neoliberal cosmopolitanism as any other activi-
ties centered around desire Indeed their analyses of their own lives and the
debates among gay men over money boys led me to realize that the question
of desire lies at the very heart of these transformations
I offer two ldquoscenesrdquo that develop my arguments about not simply the
views of those labeled money boys but also the cultural anxieties of other gay
men about money boys That is my intent is not just to describe so-calledmoney boysrsquo attempts to decouple money and sex but other gay menrsquos fears
about their own inabilities to do so the reasons why this distinction comes
to matter at all and the politically and culturally specific context that shapes
these anxieties The first scene occurred in my room in Beijing when one of
my gay male friends introduced me to someone he labeled a money boy The
disagreements that ensued in the conversation exemplify the anxious pursuit
of neoliberal respectability among certain gay men The second scene is a
film by the well-known queer filmmaker Cui Zirsquoen Through satire and
subversion Cui Zirsquoen challenges gay men about their desires for neoliberal
normalization
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positions 182 Fall 2010 432
Scene One
It was a spring evening in 983089983097983097983096 Ah Zhuang had agreed to introduce meto someone he said was a money boy19 I had first met Ah Zhuang through
other foreign lesbians and gay men living in Beijing Then in his early for-
ties Ah Zhuang was a radiologist Ah Zhuang considered himself to be
someone who had always known he was gay He had never married as have
so many other gay men but lived at home taking care of his mother He
also considered himself to be part of a long-lost line of aristocratic Mongo-
lians through his fatherrsquos ancestors Ah Zhuang had embraced the newlyemergent gay scene with unabashed enthusiasm Though many older men
who have sex with other men shunned that scene and given their histori-
cal experiences of harassment feared exposure Ah Zhuang in contrast
worked on the gay hotline attended all the salon discussions met with psy-
chiatrists to argue with them about the normality of homosexuality and
established himself as an ldquoelderrdquo among what were mostly young gay men
in their twenties He loved dispensing advice Ah Zhuang felt it was critical
for all people who have a homoerotic orientation to identify themselves as
gay and embrace that identity His experience of having been arrested in the
983089983097983096983088s for approaching another man for sex in the public bathrooms made
him all the more adamant that normalizing a gay identity would put an
end to the police harassment to which he had been subjected20 On the other
hand he felt equally vehement about the need to not expose onersquos family to
social condemnation and thus he felt it important to be discreet
Ah Zhuang had decided ideas about what constitutes a proper gay iden-
tity These ideas were made most apparent to me on the evening in question
That night Ah Zhuang arrived at my room with a young man named Ah
Pei Ah Zhuang introduced him as his former boyfriend I was immediately
confused I thought he had said he would introduce me to a money boy
And if this person was his former boyfriend was he telling me he had beeninvolved with a money boy As the conversation developed things turned
out to be more complex For Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang argued during the
entire evening about whether Ah Pei was indeed a money boy at all Ah
Zhuang stayed for the whole conversation in part because Ah Pei has a very
thick Beijing working-class accent and I sometimes found it hard to follow
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 433
him Ah Zhuang helpfully repeated some of Ah Peirsquos statements to make
sure I understood But Ah Zhuang also kept inserting his own views inter-
rupting Ah Pei at every turn
We began the conversation in a desultory manner with my questions
about Ah Peirsquos background He explained that his parents both had had a
hard life when they were young before the 983089983097983092983097 revolution His father was
from the Northeast and had always had to move around looking for work
But fortunately he had ended up in Beijing working in a factory under
the Central Television Bureau constructing television reception towers Hismother worked in a radio factory When his father fell ill with cancer Ah
Pei had taken over his factory position At the time of course job inheri-
tance in state-run factories was seen as a privilege Then Ah Peirsquos second
brother and sister-in-law also came to work there By the time of our con-
versation Ah Pei had taken what was then the risky step of abandoning his
secure position in the factory Perhaps he had the foresight to realize that
factory workersrsquo living conditions were declining under economic reformIndeed by the time of our conversation half the factory had been let go and
were on unemployment Ah Pei had become a taxi driver He was then in
his mid-thirties
Perhaps I was moving too slowly toward the ostensible topic of the eve-
ning Or perhaps he had his own agenda In any case Ah Zhuang suddenly
interjected with a question that abruptly changed the direction of our con-
versation ldquoWhat are your feelings when you are with womenrdquo Ah Pei pro-ceeded to tell a story about his factory ldquoAll the women I have encountered
have been from our factoryrdquo He then described how at the age of 983089983097 he had
his first sexual relationship with an older married woman after another
woman he was apprenticed to introduced them to each other She too was
an apprentice According to Ah Pei she had seduced him Prior to that he
had no interest in sex with women at least not women his age They carried
on their affair for over a year The womanrsquos husband never knew he worked
in another factory The main point that Ah Pei stressed in telling this story
was that with an older person he finally felt secure Since then he added
he has always wanted to be with older people
When he first made this assertion I did not pick up on its larger implica-
tion in relation to the issue of money boys Only later when Ah Zhuang was
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positions 182 Fall 2010 434
arguing with him did I realize that since that first affair with a woman
Ah Pei had been mainly with older men who took care of him mdash including
Ah Zhuang In talking about his first affair Ah Pei thus traced his inter-
est in older men to an emotional and sexual history of feeling comfortable
with older people Ah Zhuang as we will see reduced Ah Peirsquos story to
one of opportunism For at this point Ah Zhuang sarcastically interjected
a counterpoint to Ah Peirsquos insistence that this older woman had taken the
initiative ldquoMaybe the first time but then what about the second and third
ones Because yoursquove told me that there were quite a few including the topleader of the factory And even the managerrsquos wife Didnrsquot you take some
of the initiative in these later encounters I would really like to know what
exactly is your psychological attitude when you are with older peoplerdquo Ah
Pei ignored the first part of Ah Zhuangrsquos question answering that with
older people he feels particularly able to relax and let go
Here we find the first point of contention between Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang
over whether Ah Pei fits into the category of money boy Ah Pei tried to tellme a story of his psychological and emotional history He feels that older
people take the initiative with him which puts him at ease Ah Zhuang on
the other hand tried to turn Ah Peirsquos actions into self-seeking advantage Ah
Zhuang was not objecting so much to a seeming bisexuality that might make
a gay identity more ambiguous as to what in his view was naked opportun-
ism that did not distinguish between genders Ah Zhuang elaborated on his
view when I asked Ah Pei how he felt starting an affair with this womanAh Pei responded about the sex saying that looking back on it he could
see that he didnrsquot feel entirely comfortable because she did everything he
didnrsquot have to budge She helped him with everything Ah Zhuang then
interjected ldquoChina has a way of saying this this woman served ( cihou) him
Thatrsquos a clearer way to put it Chinarsquos traditional view is that the man should
take care of ( cihou) the woman and make her feel comfortable In his case
he made the woman do it so that he could feel comfortablerdquo This situation
in Ah Zhuangrsquos view was evidently one clear marker of a money boy Other-
wise why would a man not act like the man that he should be Why would
a man let himself be treated like a woman Ah Zhuangrsquos decided views on
appropriate gender attributes reproduce the dominant mode of delineating
the boundary between normative and nonnormative desire through gen-
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 435
der His interpretation is testimony to a contradictory antinomy between a
fluidity of desire which is supposed to change continuously in line with a
free trade cosmopolitan market economy and a renaturalization of a binary
gender in its ldquorecoveryrdquo from Maoist suppression
Ah Zhuangrsquos views also echo a longer history of gender and sexuality
in China in which as Keith MacMahon has argued one of the main signs
of male privilege is the polygamous ability to have and manage multiple
sexual partners21 Ah Zhuang as a medical doctor is undoubtedly famil-
iar with traditional medical prescriptions for male potency and the needto retain male energy Moreover as Judith Farquhar has argued these tra-
ditional medical texts have been recovered and popularized in post-Mao
China through a discourse on excess and deficiency that is simultaneously
an allegory about Chinarsquos past and future22 Ah Zhuangrsquos critique of Ah Pei
reflects an understanding that to ldquotake care ofrdquo a woman sexually means
that the male is in charge of managing pleasure because he needs to control
the depletion of his own energies Clearly in Ah Zhuangrsquos view Ah Pei hasnot followed the proper prescriptions and therefore is not contributing to the
proper development of social life in China
Ah Pei then proceeded to tell a story of the factory as a site of sexual excess
Rather than paint a conventional portrait of a large state-run factory as a
place of hard work alternating with boredom Ah Pei offered a tale in which
it seemed a matter of course for people to develop their sexual proclivities in
such an oppressive situation Ah Pei explained for example how he startedsleeping with one woman Her husband had been arrested and thrown into
prison for sleeping around with the younger women in the factory His wife
the woman Ah Pei had an affair with brought the women home for him The
husband was arrested however not owing to the moral probity of other fac-
tory leaders but according to Ah Pei because another factory leader wanted
to have sex with one of the young women and was jealous of this man and
so reported him to the public security bureau When this manrsquos wife invitedhim over to her home he figured he wouldnrsquot get into any trouble having an
affair with her By implication Ah Pei was explaining how he had come to
have such a free and easy approach to sex But Ah Zhuang used this story to
conclude that Ah Pei had a profound lack of ethical sense when establishing
relationships with people particularly men
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positions 182 Fall 2010 436
Ah Zhuang then goaded Ah Pei into explaining his theory about lack of
father love Ah Pei told me about his violent father who drank too much and
hit his children Then one day when Ah Pei was a teenager he stood up to
his father But he always felt the keen loss of having a fatherrsquos love Thatrsquos
why he thinks he feels particularly comfortable with older men Ah Zhuang
promptly disagreed ldquoI donrsquot agree with this that a gay is someone who lacks
father love so they go in search of father love or someone older23 If his
view is correct then I am suspicious of whether he is really a gayrdquo Ah Pei
responded indirectly by saying that he knows for sure he will never get mar-
ried that even though no one living near him knows he is gay and thinks he
goes around with women he feels most comfortable with men Ah Zhuang
has a decided view of the correct way to be gay one that contains a normal-
izing pressure to present only positive or ldquonaturalrdquo reasons why one would
turn out to be gay This naturalization of gay identity parallels the natu-
ralization of the ability to be a desiring subject in post-Mao China Both
naturalizations create hierarchies of inclusion and exclusion that articulatewith the neoliberal naturalization of social inequality In contrast Ah Pei
implied that there are varied ways of having homoerotic encounters and
involvements His story highlights contingency history and experience The
inequalities in his story are class- and gender-based
Ah Pei then launched into a story of how he started to get involved with
men He had come into Tiananmen Square one evening and met some-
one there Ah Zhuang interrupted and said that Ah Pei had still been withwomen after that But Ah Pei responded that though he had been with
women after his first man he nonetheless preferred men He continued his
story ldquoI walked by Zhongshan Park and went to the [public] toilet I saw a
lot of men who went in but didnrsquot come out I just stood there didnrsquot dare
to go in and piss What were they doing in there Curiosity got the better of
me I went in and found two men playing around After that I went there
every day Thatrsquos how I met a guy Thatrsquos how I started I was just a littleover twenty years oldrdquo He began to meet a lot of men through that public
toilet finally meeting his first real lover Lao Chen (Old Chen) With Lao
Chen ldquoI finally started a new life I had a homerdquo
Ah Pei explained about the suffering that he had endured in order to be
with men One evening he was nabbed by the police He lied and said he
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 437
didnrsquot understand what the other man wanted from him The police officer
made him do hard labor for a couple of hours but let him go after he saw
Ah Pei crying The police thought he looked very young Here Ah Zhuang
interjected that he too had thought Ah Pei looked much younger than his
years when he first met him ldquoWhen he meets up with other peoplerdquo Ah
Zhuang concluded ldquohe uses his brains Hersquos good at performingrdquo In other
words Ah Zhuang implied that At Pei had perfected the art of deception
When Ah Pei described his relationship with his first long-term male
lover Lao Chen he and Ah Zhuang began to argue in earnest Ah Zhuangset out the terms by stating that Lao Chen basically ldquokeptrdquo ( yang) Ah Pei
that he took care of him in every way24 He asserted his privileged access to
the truth of the situation by telling me that Lao Chen was a dear friend of
his and it was actually through Lao Chen that he had met Ah Pei He also
set up Lao Chenrsquos class background from a wealthy family in Shanghai Lao
Chen was privileged to lead the life of a playboy However according to Ah
Zhuang Lao Chen was also a deep thinker he had graduated from FuDanUniversity (the most prestigious university in Shanghai) and Ah Zhuang
had spent many pleasurable evenings talking to him about politics Thus
before Ah Pei had a chance to get very far into his version Ah Zhuang had
already established a clear class division between himself and Lao Chen on
the one side and Ah Pei on the other This division Ah Zhuang implied
should also reflect whose version of this social and biographical history was
reliableAgainst this weighty class backdrop Ah Pei struggled to put forth his
perspective Lao Chen had raised him true but he had given Lao Chen
great sexual satisfaction taking the initiative to do so He had also paid his
price by doing a lot of things for him such as taking care of Lao Chenrsquos
wife and other friends when they visited from Shanghai ldquoThat was money
I spent out of my own pocket I feel I treated his family well Hersquos older
than me and has a lot of money I admit thatrdquo In Ah Peirsquos view Lao Chenand he had a fair exchange Lao Chen had the money to buy things for Ah
Pei who in turn gave Lao Chen a satisfying sexual and emotional life In
Ah Peirsquos view it was through Lao Chenrsquos lavish expenditures on him that he
began to have true feelings of love for Lao Chen This issue of true feelings
was critical in Ah Peirsquos view in distinguishing himself from a money boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 438
Ah Pei further asserted that unlike money boys he never stuck out his hand
and asked for money People have always offered to buy things for him he
said but he never asked for anything ldquoI have always relied on myselfrdquo
Ah Zhuang quickly jumped in at this point ldquoIf I consider him to be a
money boy itrsquos because hersquos extremely intelligent in this regard Thatrsquos why
I think todayrsquos conversation is especially interesting We could talk about it
for a long time Lao Chen shed a lot of tears over him So he is a little dif-
ferent than the money boys at Half and Half [the gay bar] Do they have
these kind of money boys in the United States Sometimes he really did payfor things himself and their relationship was real I see it this way Hersquos a
little different than those others He still has a little feeling involvedrdquo David
Eng (this volume) astutely evaluates the difficulties in neoliberal modernity
of distinguishing between what he calls tokens of affection and tokens of
exchange
After Ah Zhuangrsquos explication Ah Pei did not directly address the com-
parison of himself with money boys Instead he inarticulately reasserted hisview that he had never stuck out his hand asking for money and had always
relied on himself Given Ah Zhuangrsquos blunt assertion I wanted Ah Pei to
respond I asked whether he saw himself as like those men in any way He
was direct ldquoI am absolutely not like themrdquo Ah Zhuang laughed furiously
ldquoI never stuck out my hand with Ah Zhuang eitherrdquo he replied to the laugh
ldquoLet Ah Zhuang tell you himself Do you admit it Ah Zhuang liked me so
he bought me things My old man [his current lover] is like this too Irsquom notvery smart Irsquom actually stupid my level is low but Lao Chen told him I was
clever Where am I cleverrdquo
I then bluntly asked him if he only sought out lovers who had money ldquoAh
Zhuang is a clear examplerdquo he replied ldquoAh Zhuang has nowhere near the
money of these other men but I still tell him I learned a lot from him I
used to have a foul mouth I still thank him for these past four years Thatrsquos
why I still keep a relationship with him no matter with gay friends or notI always introduce himrdquo
Ah Zhuang directed Ah Pei to explain how his relationship with Lao
Chen ended Ah Pei told a story of how Lao Chen began to see someone
else and did not want Ah Pei to come home anymore Ah Pei was furious
and refused to let him go He did all sorts of things to stop the relationship
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 439
from ending including threatening to expose Lao Chen at work Lao Chen
would certainly have lost his job not only because of homophobia but as
Ah Pei explained because he was already in hot water with the Party due
to his outspoken criticisms Ah Zhuang jumped in to point out how Ah
Peirsquos behavior with Lao Chen provided yet one more set of money boy sig-
nifiers ldquoIrsquoll explainrdquo insisted Ah Zhuang after Ah Pei had presented his
perspective ldquoFrom his point of view he wanted to occupy a position This
position was incredibly important to him Only with this position could he
have money Now it was very possible that this position could be taken overby someone else So thatrsquos why he wanted to take revenge Lao Chen came
looking for me to ask me what he should do lsquoServes you rightrsquo I said He
asked lsquoMaybe if I give him some money then he would be willing to leave
me alonersquo He asked me how much I said lsquoI donrsquot knowrsquo How could I
know how much money he should give him At the time I told him lsquoYou
can end things but you have to think of a way to do itrsquo rdquo Ah Pei diffidently
responded that he hadnrsquot wanted to let go of Lao Chen because yes he leda comfortable life with him and also he had feelings for him For Ah Pei
the fact that his life was comfortable with Lao Chen was quite distinct from
a money boyrsquos desire to be paid for sex But Ah Zhuang saw them as one
and the same Finally Lao Chen left for Canada promising to bring Ah Pei
with him after he had arrived there ldquoI was naiverdquo Ah Pei said because he
had believed him
Surprisingly Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang never explained to me much oftheir own relationship Perhaps in the end they sought to preserve some of
the fragments of their friendship They ended their conversation with me by
briefly mentioning Ah Peirsquos latest relationship with an older man someone
from France whom he had met in a bar one evening Ah Pei doesnrsquot speak
any French and this man doesnrsquot speak any Chinese Ah Zhuang translated
for them when necessary This man who worked for the French airlines
was planning to bring Ah Pei to France with him They had already appliedfor his visa In subsequent conversations Ah Zhuang derided Ah Peirsquos plans
How would Ah Pei make a living in France What could he do He would
have a hard time learning the language et cetera It was as if to say Ah Pei
did not deserve the special privilege of living in a Western country
One could dismiss this whole conversation as the obvious denouement of
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positions 182 Fall 2010 440
a relationship that had ended bitterly Indeed Ah Zhuang had thrown Ah
Pei out of his house But Ah Zhuangrsquos insistence that Ah Pei was a money
boy reflected more than mere bitterness By rejecting Ah Peirsquos claims that
he too could place himself in the category of ldquogay manrdquo Ah Zhuang was
attempting to establish a hegemonic definition of respectable gayness For
Ah Zhuang this respectability adhered in appropriate gender sensibilities
class embodiment the proper balance between dependency and equality
a strict separation of money and love and a worldliness that only those of
a certain class stature should aspire to display Ah Zhuang was trying to
establish what Lisa Duggan has called the ldquonew homonormativityrdquo Dug-
gan argues that this new homonormativity is the equivalent of neoliberal
politics in the sexual realm25 These sexual politics uphold rather than con-
test dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions and promise
a depoliticized gay culture While Duggan concerns herself only with the
United States and does not consider transnational queer politics we can still
consider how her argument illuminates the sexual politics of someone likeAh Zhuang Ah Zhuang hopes to make gay identity respectable within
the terms of postsocialist neoliberalism The fact that neoliberalism has
made desire the central realm for producing proper citizen-subjects made
Ah Zhuangrsquos discourse all the more fraught with anxiety Ah Peirsquos own
intimacy with a well-to-do foreign gay man further goaded Ah Zhuang to
condemn Ah Peirsquos actions as inappropriate in terms of sexual gendered and
culturalnational identity For Ah Pei was going abroad to live in a Westerncountry long before Ah Zhuang would have the opportunity to do so
While Ah Peirsquos views do not simply reverse this moral equation nor do
they exemplify resistance to homonormativity in any straightforward sense
they provide an incipient means of gaining insight into the techniques of neo-
liberal normalizations as well as their instabilities Ah Zhuangrsquos condemna-
tion of Ah Peirsquos plans to move to France with his lover reveals the extent to
which the transnationalism that made Ah Peirsquos current relationship possiblechanges how ldquoinappropriaterdquo desires manifest themselves in the postsocialist
era It was after all only after the transformations in the last few decades
that a person from France would come to live and work again in China and
that an ldquoinappropriaterdquo desire could now also be a transnational desire The
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 441
fact that they do not speak each otherrsquos language exemplifies how neoliberal-
ism has allowed for new possibilities in the manner in which people desire
each other not just which kinds of desires are legitimate but which kinds of
desires are sustainable through which kinds of technological aids and socio-
economic conditions and across which kinds of borders Yet in Ah Zhuangrsquos
view someone of Ah Peirsquos class background could only succeed in such an
achievement by entangling the desires for money sex and love rather than
keeping them separate However the separations between entrepreneurialism
and intimacy that Ah Zhuang wants to establish for respectable gayness are
difficult to maintain26 Neoliberal cosmopolitanism appears to be all about
entrepreneurial savvy Yet there is more than one way to be an entrepreneur
And there is more than one way to be a nonnormalized or even antinormal-
ized gay subject27
Scene 2
Two young men are squatting at the edge of a bridge passing the time by
blowing up condoms ldquoThis way it looks like a dick It changes into breasts
when it gets bigger The breast changes into a dick and the dick into a
breastrdquo one of them says and laughs As they continue to play with their
condom-balloons the other one asks ldquoDo you like the feeling of being pen-
etrated or the feeling when you stick it inrdquo ldquoBothrdquo comes the answer
This scene opens Feeding Boys Ayaya ( Aiyaya Qu Buru) a queer filmabout male hustlers or money boys by the well-known experimental film-
maker Cui Zirsquoen28 This first scene immediately cuts to a contrasting scene
Two men are in a small closed room filled with computer and filmmaking
equipment The older one is in the background sitting in front of his com-
puter The other much younger is in the forefront of the screen The per-
son manipulating the computer equipment says ldquoZaizai [characterrsquos name]
this theme is for you It might not completely match your character in thefilm The distance makes it more precise Do you have any objectionsrdquo The
young man standing in the forefront of the screen has a somber look on his
face He refuses to speak The camera angle is an extreme close-up enlarg-
ing his face to fill the screen and nearly blocking out a view of the film-
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positions 182 Fall 2010 442
maker The effect is of a split screen We hear the filmmaker from behind
urging him several times ldquoSay somethingrdquo But the other refuses to speak
The quick juxtaposition of these two scenes and their contrasting mise-
en-scene prefigure the major motifs in Feeding Boys Ayaya The opposition
is established visually in the lighting camera angles locations and position-
ing of the characters The first scene presents characters who we will later
come to realize are money boys though at this point their identities are
unclear The scene mixes irony and pathos freedom and marginalization
The ironic and lighthearted humor of the dialogue contrasts with the curi-
ous positioning of the two young men They are at the edge of a deserted
bridge in the very early morning sunlight The camera places both of them
in the center of the screen in a medium close-up thus highlighting rela-
tionality but also distance or alienation The bantering friendship of the
two young men is visually contrasted with their distance from the rest of
the population and from the normative workday Yet this alienation is also
a liberation from the very same mdash the freedom to play at any hour the lackof confinement in space This scene represents what Judith Halberstam has
called ldquoqueer time and spacerdquo Halberstam argues that queer time and space
are ldquowillfully eccentric modes of beingrdquo that challenge heteronormativity by
providing alternative relations to time and space29
The very next scene reminds us that what we have just seen and what we
will view in the rest of the film is a set of representations The question of
how to represent money boys and who can and should speak in their nameis highlighted in this film The filmmaker character in the second scene
is choosing the theme music not the young man The dark closed room
and the split screen raise the question of whether and how the young man
can escape the framing of his life by the other The silence of the young
man mdash another money boy mdash recalls Gayatri Spivakrsquos famous dictum that
the subaltern cannot speak by which she meant that only traces of their
own interpretations of their lives remains in the texts written about them bycolonial elites30
Feeding Boys is a continual juxtaposition of these two types of images mdash
one of money boys displaying a queer sociality and the other of someone mdash
whether the filmmaker character a Christian missionary out to save money
boys his girlfriend who takes over his work or the parents of an aspir-
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 443
ing money boy mdash speaking for or about them Although the film does not
romanticize their lives the money boy characters not only exceed but also
challenge these representations of them both their content and their mode
of representation They continually frustrate attempts to represent capture
or change them Zaizai for example later demands to choose his own theme
music an insistence that frustrates the filmmaker who claims it will ruin
his film Their queerness emerges in these challenges
With Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen enters the larger debates that have central-
ized the question of desire in postsocialist China Cui Zirsquoen uses experimen-
tal visual logics that blur documentary and fiction and that refuse narrative
linearity or closure to challenge not only the specific judgments about money
boys among gay men but the entire apparatus of normalization in China
that tries to delimit desire Cui Zirsquoen addresses the specificity of neoliberal-
ism in China by challenging the hegemonic articulations between Chinese
culture and proper desire on the one hand and labor money and desire on
the other The film has a carnivalesque quality reinforced by the hand-heldcamera techniques which is at once somber and playful It subverts bour-
geois heterosexuality as that which subtends Chinese culture by robbing it of
its glory The film represents money boys as people with an integral human-
ity who take the full measure of their lives while the people who judge
them in the name of neoliberal desires Chinese morality or Christianity
appear damaged filled with contradictory desires themselves or just plain
boring The film thus further subverts postsocialist normalizing desires bydirecting our gaze away from what many think is perverse or rather by
making the normal perverse and the perverse normal The people to be
pitied in this film are the heterosexuals who condemn the hustlersrsquo profes-
sion They are the ones who wither and die Hustlers in contrast have time
to play and enjoy life Yet Cui Zirsquoen does not indulge in a simple decon-
structive reversal Hustlers suffer too but mainly from the condemnation
and exploitation they experience as a result of the hypocritical desires of theheteronormative world
Although Feeding Boys seems to establish a debate between heterosexu-
als and gay male hustlers the themes raised in the film rehearse anxieties
similar to those I presented in my first scene that occur among gay men
Are hustlers respectable or do they sully the good name of other gay men
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positions 182 Fall 2010 444
Do they deserve sympathy or condemnation Are they gay or just exploit-
ing vulnerable gay men Are their desires to be celebrated or condemned
Are they appropriate for Chinarsquos postsocialist neoliberal future or do they
represent the degradation of that future Feeding Boys refuses these dichoto-
mous terms Rather than simply reverse their valence the film addresses
other queer questions that displace these normalizing ones How should
we engage our desires How can this engagement lead to nonnormative
lives How does class inflect desire How can nonnormative desires chal-
lenge class-based temporalities What is the relationship between money
and sex Finally what is the role of religion
Feeding Boys loosely revolves around the elusive search of a Christian het-
erosexual brother Dabin for his younger brother Xiao Bao who has dis-
appeared into the money boy life During his search he discovers that one
of his younger ldquoChristian brothersrdquo Xiao Jian has also decided to become
a money boy to practice Christian love Juxtaposing money boysrsquo serious
banter with the normalizing judgments of others Feeding Boys weaves inand out of several recurrent image-themes the everyday life of hustlers
Xiao Jianrsquos exploration of how to become a hustler the missionizing zeal of
Dabin to dissuade hustlers from continuing in their profession and finally
the desire to represent and normalize the lives of hustlers Throughout
Feeding Boys jumps between these image-themes thus putting them in
dialogue with one another The experimental filmrsquos refusal to present a
linear narrative mirrors the refusal by the money boy characters to accedeto the normalizing judgments of others Thus the form to echo Hayden
White is also the content31 Cui Zirsquoenrsquos filmmaking techniques warn us
that endeavors to normalize create severe dislocations and damage And
not merely to money boys
Image-Theme 1 The Mundanity of Money Boy Life
Feeding Boys strikingly refuses to display any images of money boys actually
engaged in sex or hustling for customers This lack of sex scenes contrasts
with Cui Zirsquoenrsquos other films which generally go out of their way to show sex
between men The only way we even know that these young men are money
boys is through the dialogue More specifically we hear the arguments that
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 445
straight people who disapprove of them engender Indeed the film is quite
chaste The one scene in which we see two people showing erotic affection
is between the older heterosexual brother of one of the money boys (XiaoBao) whose missionary goal is to convert hustlers and his girlfriend Feed-
ing Boys thus refuses to indulge viewersrsquo scopophilic desires Cui Zirsquoen teases
the viewer from the first scene Watching two men blowing up condoms
and briefly chatting about sex hints at more erotic scenes to come But they
never materialize A condom-balloon is all we ever get By thus tapping into
a gaze desirous for the perverse and then frustrating that desire Cui Zirsquoen
confronts the viewer with the need to think about representation and the
role of representation in normalizing desire mdash both in public discourse and
in his film
In place of the erotic the viewer is offered the stuff of everyday life One
recurrent image as in the first scene is of money boys on a bridge early in
the morning In one scene they playfully engage in ballet-like dance ges-
tures In another one of them displays his acrobatic skills doing severalback flips Later we see these same young men practicing taiji quan (a mar-
tial arts exercise) again early in the morning on the bridge These images
immediately bring to mind the ldquonormalrdquo populace in Chinarsquos cities who go
out each morning to do precisely these group exercises This idea is rein-
forced by the camera angle in these scenes which is a medium wide-angle
shot taking in both the bridge and the surrounding metropolis But the
bridge is also symptomatic of a moment of suspension between directionsin life or between worlds A bridge represents a gap as well as an attempt to
overcome a fissure in the landscape In one telling scene near the end of the
film a money boy begs for money on the bridge pleading with passersby
that he has given up his dissolute life and reformed himself Yet immediately
after we see him with another friend arguing with the Christian mission-
aryrsquos girlfriend stating unequivocally that even though they treated begging
as a ldquorealrdquo job no one wanted to give them money and that in todayrsquos worldpeople respect a prostitute more than a poor person The bridge thus repre-
sents two intertwined passages mdash from a socialist world of time and space
in which citizens had the leisure to do morning exercises and their lives
were not measured by money to a neoliberal world in which wealth is the
only measure of human dignity and no one mdash except those on the outside
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positions 182 Fall 2010 446
of bourgeois respectability mdash has time to spend exercising on a bridge This
passage is intertwined then with a passage from heteronormative relations
of time and space to queer time and space mdash the refusal of the relationshipbetween time work money and desire that neoliberalism has established
Another recurrent scene is of several young men playing in the park
They walk through the park in a desultory manner enjoying the day One
of them has his dog on a leash The dog is obviously well groomed and
well fed Only recently have Beijing residents been allowed to keep pets in
the city Dogs quickly became a key signifier of bourgeois cosmopolitan
accomplishment Why shouldnrsquot money boys be allowed to have them too
In the film the pet belies the idea that money boys lead an unstable dirty
and unreliable life as many believe Moreover it forces open the cluster of
oppositions between respectable and degraded desires in which bourgeois
heterosexual family life goes together with accoutrements like pets while
prostitution is supposed to represent nothing but lack
Other scenes reinforce the sense that money boys are like everyone else inthe way they go about the stuff of everyday life We see them singing in a
karaoke bar playing with a young boy on a playground and having a meal
with their families These young men are portrayed as neither angels nor
demons They are neither ecstatic nor suicidal But the film makes clear that
they live on the margins and have only one another for support
In only a few scenes do these money boys talk about their work But even
here their conversations resemble those of anyone who has ever grumbledabout his or her workplace At one point in the bar for example one of
the money boys tells the other Xiao Bao that his brother (the missionary)
has been looking for him Xiao Bao shakes his head and complains that a
customer has just ripped him off by refusing to pay In another scene in the
park during the daytime one of the money boys complains to the other that
he canrsquot seem to save any money because he always has to buy expensive
clothes to look nice for his customers The other responds that he should besmarter and get the customers to buy the clothes for him He proudly reveals
that he has saved quite a bit of money with which he plans to buy a house
for his mother
The film also playfully satirizes normalized work lives In one scene one
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 447
of the money boys says ldquoWe need structure We have to become profes-
sionalsrdquo Pointing to a gay bar behind him he says ldquoThis is our interna-
tional head officerdquo Another money boy repeats virtually the same wordsbut this time points to a twenty-story high rise building The film shifts to
an eerie scene of colorful masks then quickly to what looks to be a confer-
ence meeting in a bar Someone presumably their boss is taking roll call
They all stand to attention some of them wearing name tags as if at an aca-
demic meeting In this manner Cui Zirsquoen calls into question the relationship
between sex work and desire in China He highlights the instabilities in
how neoliberalism in China has produced social inequalities through trans-
national structures of differentially valued labors But he further demon-
strates the inextricability of sexuality bodies desire and labor To labor for
wealth is supposed to be the foremost desire in a neoliberal world Thus
normalization techniques reduce and embed desire in a structured world
of intensive labor extraction one that produces a capitalist-inflected heter-
onormativity (even as it has a nondeterministic relationship to that heter-onormativity) In other words Cui Zirsquoen deconstructs how the whole person
becomes a commodity in a neoliberal world and how that world while it
fosters desires also robs people of their desires for a full humanity Through
this humorous filmic meditation on desire Cui Zirsquoen thus provides biting
queer commentary on the reduction and devaluation of necessary labor in
postsocialist China
This commentary is most explicit in a scene near the end of the filmwhen the missionaryrsquos girlfriend pleadingly asks several money boys why
they do this work One of them responds with ten reasons ldquoOne you donrsquot
have to be president Two you donrsquot have to be a soldier Three you donrsquot
have to be a farmer and work the land Four you donrsquot have to wash dishes
Five you donrsquot have to marry and have kids Six you donrsquot have to become a
movie star Seven you donrsquot have to be a movie director Eight you donrsquot get
fat Nine you are exploited by others but donrsquot exploit others And ten youdonrsquot die because we use our bodies to satisfy both good and bad peoplersquos
desiresrdquo Through arguments with and about money boys the film thus
creates commentary on how neoliberalism in China appropriates not just
labor-power but the laborer as a desiring subject32 The queer commentary
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positions 182 Fall 2010 448
of Feeding Boys demonstrates how nonnormative alternatives lie outside of
those temporal and spatial markers of respectable Chinese experience mdash
namely marriage reproduction kinship and death The film thus chal-lenges the oppositions of respectability and shame
Image-Theme 2 How to Become a Money Boy
The thread of this image-theme most explicitly mocks normalizing judg-
ments about desire work class and sex Through this image-theme the
film represents gay male hustling as a profession as honorable as becom-
ing a lawyer or computer scientist In perhaps the most iconic scene in this
regard Feeding Boys stages an argument between Xiao Jian and his parents
that crafts a mimicry of family gatherings to decide the childrenrsquos future33
His parents appear to be respectable middle-class intellectuals The mise-
en-scene is a plushly decorated apartment in which the family lives together
The family is all seated there The father states unequivocally that this kindof work leads nowhere They bemoan the fact that they raised their son for
so many years and gave him the opportunity to do many things with his life
They insist they just want the best for him The parents are oddly calm and
though disgusted do not throw him out of the house Indeed in the next
scene he arrives early in the morning to the apartment stating boldly to his
parents that they arrived home from work earlier than him His mother
asks if he isnrsquot supposed to work the night shift and he responds that he willwork any shift The mother turns to the father and makes the pithy com-
ment ldquoSo we failed to discourage him from this line of workrdquo
In another scene in which Xiao Jian defends to Dabin his reasons for
wanting to become a money boy Cui Zirsquoen crafts a doubled-edged mock-
ery of socialist ideals as well by invoking the old socialist honor of learn-
ing from and serving the masses His satire in this regard cuts in multiple
directions It recalls not just the marginalization but the condemnationand punishment under socialism of those with inappropriate desires But
it also uses those socialist ideals to critique the neoliberal normalization of
the appropriate relationship between labor and desire Xiao Jian initiates an
argument with Dabin when he announces that he too wants to become
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 449
a money boy Xiao Jian is insistent ldquoI want to sell my body like Xiao Bao
[Dabinrsquos brother]rdquo He then explains that when Xiao Bao disappeared he
went to check out the male prostitution business ldquoMost of these youngstersare from villages and from very poor family backgrounds I was born into
a happy family I want to join the hustlers and change their social statusrdquo
Dabin retorts ldquoCan you make those people happy Itrsquos all about making
millionaires officials and rich guys happyrdquo ldquoYou told me that we have to
serve the humble Now I want to become one of themrdquo replies Xiao Jian
ldquoI want to become the lowest of the low together with robbers hooligans
petty thieves ex-convicts homosexuals and hustlers I want to stay at the
bottomrdquo Dabin then launches into classical Chinese metaphors ldquoWater
flows downward but man soars heavenwardrdquo Xiao Jian has an answer to
that as well insisting that man is also part of nature and is also capable of
running downhill ldquoItrsquos only natural and makes things more equalrdquo
The visual logics of this scene provide the ironic counter-commentary
During the entire scene Xiao Jian is fully dressed while we watch Dabin halfnaked as he dresses after a shower The viewer becomes engaged in the erot-
ics of watching Dabin slowly lather lotion over his entire body then pull on
tight-fitting underwear The camera lingers on his well built body By the end
of the scene Dabin is still half naked The erotics of the scene are heightened
by the effect of a mirror that stages Xiao Jian in reverse That is Xiao Jian is
seated to the left of Dabin but we only view him through the mirror where
he appears on Dabinrsquos right while Dabin occupies center stage as the half- naked figure of erotic righteousness The mirror clues us in to a split between
the dialogue and the visual logics This split reflects back to the spectator the
hypocritical contradictions in postsocialist enticements of desire
Image-Theme 3 The Trials and Tribulations of Missionary Work
Early in the film we see someone driving through Beijing in a nice carHe is a good looking serious young man It turns out to be Dabin search-
ing for Xiao Bao his younger brother Dabin walks into a bar looking for
him without success He proceeds to follow one of the money boys into the
bathroom and argues with him saying that he doesnrsquot understand why his
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positions 182 Fall 2010 450
job is so attractive ldquoHow could it attract you How can you enjoy it without
getting tiredrdquo The money boy calmly responds ldquoThe job has three advan-
tages First you earn money Second freedom Third you can fool aroundwith different peoplerdquo When Dabin aggressively asks if there are any dis-
advantages the money boy responds ldquoFirst you get sick easily Second itrsquos
a waste of condoms and KY jelly Third you donrsquot get enough sleeprdquo Dabin
cries ldquoIf you keep doing this you will get AIDSrdquo Thus opens the third
image-theme the heterosexual Christian evangelist who attempts to convert
money boys
Dabinrsquos idea of conversion conflates normative sexual desire and Chris-
tianity Thus in the next major scene in which he appears he argues with
two money boys telling them that birds in the sky donrsquot sell their bodies
but they have food to eat that lotus flowers donrsquot sell their bodies but they
are beautiful that dogs and earthworms donrsquot sell their bodies but they live
vigorous lives so why should they sell their bodies He then offers to give
them the Bible Cui Zirsquoen was raised as a Catholic in the northeast city of
Dalian In his previous films he took a Derek Jarman approach and made
symbolic Jesus figures suffer the slings and arrows of heterosexual rage He
tried to reconcile homoerotic desire with what he viewed as the true essence
of Catholicism In Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen has taken a distinctive approach
Here he asserts that those who use Christianity to suppress nonnormative
desires have a hopeless case on their hands Moreover the true essence of
Christianity is ambiguous Perhaps it really is a source of oppression ratherthan as in his previous films a potential guide for love
This ambiguity is underscored in the next major scene in which Dabin
attempts to win converts among money boys He is reading the Bible together
with his younger ldquoChristian brotherrdquo Xiao Jian who has also chosen to be a
money boy Xiao Jian appears earnest He asks ldquoDo you think Jesus would
like that I mean would he like the fact that men and women and men and
men and women and women have sexrdquo Dabin responds ldquoMen and menand women and men have sexual relationships That means that God gave
them their sexual desires and afterwards even gave them the ability to have
sex So who gave men and women the ability to have sex God did The
fact that God gave us this ability proves that he allows us to do itrdquo But the
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 451
young man persists ldquoYou said men and women do it for procreation If men
have sex with men they canrsquot procreate How do you explain thisrdquo Dabin
is stumped ldquoI have to turn to the Bible again for this questionrdquoThe moral inconclusiveness of the Bible and the ability to glean multiple
interpretations of desire from it leads the viewer to understand that there is
a distinction between heteronormativity and the normalization of desire
Strikingly Dabin does not condemn these young men for having sex with
other men He does not in other words condemn sexual desire tout court
or even homoerotic desire What he condemns is the exchange of sex for
money
Dabin is passionate in his missionary work In one scene we see him
standing on the bridge where money boys gather Christian Bible held up
high intoning his plea to them ldquoThe end of the world is near and you still
sell your bodiesrdquo No one speaks to him his travails seem fruitless Dabin on
the bridge recalls by contrast the money boys on the bridge But whereas
the money boys were shot in mid-range at wide angle Dabin is shot from
below with a zoom lens that makes him appear more distant as if he is high
up on a pulpit or a cross
Somewhat unexpectedly Dabin takes seriously ill and dies His death
recalls that of Jesus of course dying for othersrsquo sins but there is a distinct
ambiguity in Dabinrsquos death Does he die for othersrsquo sins or has he suffered
under his own illusions Is his the work of a savior or do normalized people
with judgments of others suffer because of their judgmental values Thefilm never resolves this ambiguity
On his deathbed Dabin pleads with his girlfriend to take over his work
to preach the gospel and save male prostitutes She promises to do so and
indeed in the next scene we see her standing on the same bridge holding
up the same Bible intoning monotonously ldquoDonrsquot sell anymorerdquo In the end
the girlfriend also ends up exhausted and sick in bed having similarly sacri-
ficed herself to a hopeless cause
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positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
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positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3334
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 427
cally contingent heterogeneous project whose coherence must be continu-
ally asserted through transnational articulations between unequally situated
nation-states In China as elsewhere one of the central features of struggles
to articulate transnational economic policies only some of which we might
label ldquoneoliberalrdquo profit-seeking activities which are far from uniform and
new kinds of subjects is the simultaneous mobilization of cosmopolitanism
on the one hand and Chinese civilization culture and national identity on
the other My argument in brief is that the place of lesbians and gay men
in China is intimately connected to cosmopolitanism because it is throughthe expression of desire that they as well as other Chinese citizens are able
to feel part of a universal humanity The fact that they must do so is itself a
result of the embrace of neoliberalism which changes the relation of China
to the world economy and the terms by which its people can relate to each
other3 Neoliberalism thus produces a yearning for cosmopolitanism which
then gets encoded as a difference between licit and illicit desires
The mobilization of cosmopolitanism along with Chinese cultural andnational identity occurs in several realms Official discourse about ldquosocialism
with Chinese characteristicsrdquo is but one of them and should not be lightly
dismissed as there indeed exists cultural and historical specificity to the
manner in which privatization activities occur4 Both official and popular
discourses also mobilize national identity and ldquotraditionalrdquo Chinese moral-
ity which spans invocations of Confucian virtues family values Buddhism
and the history of Chinese culture prior to the socialist revolution Thesecategories far from taken for granted are themselves continually debated as
various practices mdash gender sexual and otherwise mdash are deemed to be repre-
sentative of Chinese culture or its antithesis that requires vigorous excision
The invocation of Chinese culture morality and national identity is meant
not only to forestall the worst effects of neoliberalism (the historical ti yong
dichotomy) but indeed more assertively to define its constitution within
China and beyond it That is Chinese civilization is often seen as that which
will save neoliberalism from pure barbarism Thus the challenge for lesbi-
ans and gay men in China as well as other citizens is to prove at once their
ability to transcend nation-state boundaries and embrace neoliberal cosmo-
politanism but also to display their normativity as Chinese citizens5
My second disagreement with other theories of neoliberalism is that while
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 428
prominent theorists have made the important argument that neoliberalism
creates new subjectivities they tend to emphasize a rationalized subject who
must discipline himself or herself into neoliberal modes of being and act-
ing6 These theories have the advantage that they do not treat neoliberalism
as a purely economistic endeavor but they nonetheless accept neoliberal ide-
ologiesrsquo own ideas about rationality as that which subtends neoliberalism
Moreover they tend to draw a direct and rather deterministic line from neo-
liberal economic policies to these rational techniques of the self to neoliberal
subjectivities In contrast I locate the specific appearance of neoliberalismin China in the production of desire7 Desire is the means through which
people in China as elsewhere prove their cosmopolitan worldliness But
desire is a complicated realm As psychoanalytical theory has long argued
desire can be unpredictable and difficult to control ldquoDesirerdquo is a historically
socially and culturally produced field that articulates the new contradictions
and inequalities in China to both resolve past dilemmas and create new ones
The desiring subject mdash whether sexual affective or possessive mdash thus func-tions variously as a trope a normative ideal and a horizon of possibility mdash
or impossibility It promises new freedoms even as it seems to be the only
game in town It also creates a terrain for powerful and dehumanizing exclu-
sions While the neoliberal enticement to have desires is prevalent every-
where in China debates about how to distinguish licit and illicit desires
continue to animate public culture Lesbians and gay men must grapple
with the ambivalences contradictions and exclusions that the specificity ofneoliberalism creates in China
This essay speaks as well to a hoary debate in queer studies or perhaps I
should say to the attacks on queer studies by those who used to accuse it of
being ldquomerely culturalrdquo or idealist as opposed to materialist queer8 Those
debates were never resolved they merely faded But they left certain dichot-
omies in place those who wanted so-called materialist studies of sexuality
and desire used the term ldquomaterialistrdquo in an obfuscatory manner Those
who had been criticized responded by pointing out that attention to family
kinship intimacy and the body are as ldquomaterialrdquo as one can get But what
those who invoked materialism really meant which they did also say was
that studies of desire should be grounded in a study of capitalist relations
of production Ironically however as soon as they set out that context they
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 429
also let desire drop out of the picture because they couldnrsquot really figure out
within a certain classical Marxism how to study the myriad forms desire
takes Thus Donald Morton for example establishes a dichotomy between
need and desire and asserts that need is what we excuse the pun need to
study but desire is merely an ideological by-product of capitalism9 It was
difficult to get past such homophobia and so the debate petered out after
both sides had had their say The debate was ironic because it was based on
a basic opposition between the instrumental and the affective that which is
instrumental belongs to a study of capitalism proper mdash the rational subjectwith needs mdash while that which is affective is relegated to a realm that is not
part of capitalist relations of production proper I say it is ironic to base a
critique of queer studies on the instrumental versus the affective because as
Marshall Sahlins pointed out a long time ago this opposition was produced
out of capitalism itself10 Queer studies on the other hand has not really
figured out how to get past the homophobia implicit in so many of these
critiques and analyze the relationship between capitalism and desire Myhope is that this essay contributes to bridging that division
The desiring subject has taken center stage in China because of the his-
torically specific allegory constructed to reject Maoism This allegory revises
historical memory through the emancipatory tale that Maoism suppressed
a natural human nature and that by rejecting the socialist state people can
unshackle their gendered and sexual selves11 Given the specificity of this
history mdash and its revisionist historiography mdash the goal in China appearsto be not merely to end the suppression of so-called innate gendered and
sexual selves but the positive development of subjects with elaborate sexual
material and affective self-interests After the June 983092th crisis of legitimacy
in 983089983097983096983097 the constitution of a postsocialist humanity in China entailed the
intensification of this goal in order to create cosmopolitan citizens of a
post ndash Cold War world12
For these historical reasons homoeroticism has created a great deal of
ambivalence in China This ambivalence is evident in public culture debates
about well-known legal cases concerning homoerotic desire and gay identity
as well as in informal conversation13 Indeed homoeroticism plays a cen-
tral role in public discussions about licit and illicit or proper and improper
desires There are no laws against homosexuality in China But some con-
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positions 182 Fall 2010 430
demn homosexuality in the name of Chinese morality while others who do
not identify as gay proclaim that although they do not understand homo-
sexuality everyone should be free to express their desires This complex situ-
ation means that lesbians and gay men provide a particularly compelling
and ambivalent challenge to postsocialist constructions of human nature
Lesbians and gay men in China could view themselves as standing at the
forefront of a universal humanity in the expression of their desires Yet they
must struggle with public debates in China about the differentiation among
those deemed appropriate subjects of desire and those cast as inappropriateThe instabilities inherent in the experimental nature of Chinarsquos neoliberal
reforms means that these ldquodesiring-actionsrdquo to borrow a term from Neferti
Tadiar were not determined in advance14 Nonetheless these debates revolved
around attempts to draw a clear boundary between normative and nonnor-
mative desires both within and outside gay communities in China
Money boys thus became a lightening rod among gay men in their efforts
to grapple with homophobia and the proper class-inflected ways to be adesiring subject in this postsocialist world As queer theory has taught us
desires normalize and in so doing constitute those who are also excluded
and marked as nonnormative15 Queer theorists of color have challenged
and expanded this canon in order to make compelling arguments about the
critical role of postcolonial histories of racism and diaspora in construct-
ing normative desires among lesbians and gay men16 Queer theorists have
also argued that normalizations require a great deal of effort to make themeffective and in that work gaps and fissures lead to unexpected outcomes
Gay men who condemn money boys marginalize them as a way to make
their own desires appear simultaneously cosmopolitan (in its contemporary
neoliberal guise) and appropriately Chinese But they sometimes have dif-
ficulty in crafting absolute distinctions between themselves and these ldquooth-
ersrdquo even as they use these others to make themselves appear to have the
more appropriate desires befitting a postsocialist China17 Thus I locate an
anxiety expressed about the ldquomoney boyrdquo as a production of the market
economy that threatens the ontological certainty of the desiring individual
The fact that the unique term ldquomoney boyrdquo is used to refer to these
men mdash rather than say ldquogigolordquo or ldquomale prostituterdquo mdash is not to be dis-
missed as incidental but bears a critical relation to commodification and the
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 431
anxieties attendant upon the loss or the blurring of the boundaries between
epistemic zones After repeatedly hearing disparaging remarks about money
boys I decided I should talk to money boys themselves I was hesitant at
first because I was not sure how one would go about asking someone ques-
tions about their engagement in an activity that is so roundly condemned I
began to ask some of my gay male friends in Beijing to introduce me to any
money boys they knew While I am sure there are men who sell sex to other
men mdash one stroll through Beijingrsquos famous Dongdan Park makes that activ-
ity obvious mdash the men I was introduced to as money boys all refused thatlabel They argued that their actions did not represent a simple equation of
sex for money18 As I describe below their rejection of the money boy label is
more than simply a matter of denial These men had a much more complex
interpretation of their activities that as with other gay men broadened out
into a consideration of the place of desire in contemporary China They led
me to understand that their activities were as much an intimate part of the
transformations that had moved China away from socialism and toward aworld of what I would call neoliberal cosmopolitanism as any other activi-
ties centered around desire Indeed their analyses of their own lives and the
debates among gay men over money boys led me to realize that the question
of desire lies at the very heart of these transformations
I offer two ldquoscenesrdquo that develop my arguments about not simply the
views of those labeled money boys but also the cultural anxieties of other gay
men about money boys That is my intent is not just to describe so-calledmoney boysrsquo attempts to decouple money and sex but other gay menrsquos fears
about their own inabilities to do so the reasons why this distinction comes
to matter at all and the politically and culturally specific context that shapes
these anxieties The first scene occurred in my room in Beijing when one of
my gay male friends introduced me to someone he labeled a money boy The
disagreements that ensued in the conversation exemplify the anxious pursuit
of neoliberal respectability among certain gay men The second scene is a
film by the well-known queer filmmaker Cui Zirsquoen Through satire and
subversion Cui Zirsquoen challenges gay men about their desires for neoliberal
normalization
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positions 182 Fall 2010 432
Scene One
It was a spring evening in 983089983097983097983096 Ah Zhuang had agreed to introduce meto someone he said was a money boy19 I had first met Ah Zhuang through
other foreign lesbians and gay men living in Beijing Then in his early for-
ties Ah Zhuang was a radiologist Ah Zhuang considered himself to be
someone who had always known he was gay He had never married as have
so many other gay men but lived at home taking care of his mother He
also considered himself to be part of a long-lost line of aristocratic Mongo-
lians through his fatherrsquos ancestors Ah Zhuang had embraced the newlyemergent gay scene with unabashed enthusiasm Though many older men
who have sex with other men shunned that scene and given their histori-
cal experiences of harassment feared exposure Ah Zhuang in contrast
worked on the gay hotline attended all the salon discussions met with psy-
chiatrists to argue with them about the normality of homosexuality and
established himself as an ldquoelderrdquo among what were mostly young gay men
in their twenties He loved dispensing advice Ah Zhuang felt it was critical
for all people who have a homoerotic orientation to identify themselves as
gay and embrace that identity His experience of having been arrested in the
983089983097983096983088s for approaching another man for sex in the public bathrooms made
him all the more adamant that normalizing a gay identity would put an
end to the police harassment to which he had been subjected20 On the other
hand he felt equally vehement about the need to not expose onersquos family to
social condemnation and thus he felt it important to be discreet
Ah Zhuang had decided ideas about what constitutes a proper gay iden-
tity These ideas were made most apparent to me on the evening in question
That night Ah Zhuang arrived at my room with a young man named Ah
Pei Ah Zhuang introduced him as his former boyfriend I was immediately
confused I thought he had said he would introduce me to a money boy
And if this person was his former boyfriend was he telling me he had beeninvolved with a money boy As the conversation developed things turned
out to be more complex For Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang argued during the
entire evening about whether Ah Pei was indeed a money boy at all Ah
Zhuang stayed for the whole conversation in part because Ah Pei has a very
thick Beijing working-class accent and I sometimes found it hard to follow
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 433
him Ah Zhuang helpfully repeated some of Ah Peirsquos statements to make
sure I understood But Ah Zhuang also kept inserting his own views inter-
rupting Ah Pei at every turn
We began the conversation in a desultory manner with my questions
about Ah Peirsquos background He explained that his parents both had had a
hard life when they were young before the 983089983097983092983097 revolution His father was
from the Northeast and had always had to move around looking for work
But fortunately he had ended up in Beijing working in a factory under
the Central Television Bureau constructing television reception towers Hismother worked in a radio factory When his father fell ill with cancer Ah
Pei had taken over his factory position At the time of course job inheri-
tance in state-run factories was seen as a privilege Then Ah Peirsquos second
brother and sister-in-law also came to work there By the time of our con-
versation Ah Pei had taken what was then the risky step of abandoning his
secure position in the factory Perhaps he had the foresight to realize that
factory workersrsquo living conditions were declining under economic reformIndeed by the time of our conversation half the factory had been let go and
were on unemployment Ah Pei had become a taxi driver He was then in
his mid-thirties
Perhaps I was moving too slowly toward the ostensible topic of the eve-
ning Or perhaps he had his own agenda In any case Ah Zhuang suddenly
interjected with a question that abruptly changed the direction of our con-
versation ldquoWhat are your feelings when you are with womenrdquo Ah Pei pro-ceeded to tell a story about his factory ldquoAll the women I have encountered
have been from our factoryrdquo He then described how at the age of 983089983097 he had
his first sexual relationship with an older married woman after another
woman he was apprenticed to introduced them to each other She too was
an apprentice According to Ah Pei she had seduced him Prior to that he
had no interest in sex with women at least not women his age They carried
on their affair for over a year The womanrsquos husband never knew he worked
in another factory The main point that Ah Pei stressed in telling this story
was that with an older person he finally felt secure Since then he added
he has always wanted to be with older people
When he first made this assertion I did not pick up on its larger implica-
tion in relation to the issue of money boys Only later when Ah Zhuang was
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positions 182 Fall 2010 434
arguing with him did I realize that since that first affair with a woman
Ah Pei had been mainly with older men who took care of him mdash including
Ah Zhuang In talking about his first affair Ah Pei thus traced his inter-
est in older men to an emotional and sexual history of feeling comfortable
with older people Ah Zhuang as we will see reduced Ah Peirsquos story to
one of opportunism For at this point Ah Zhuang sarcastically interjected
a counterpoint to Ah Peirsquos insistence that this older woman had taken the
initiative ldquoMaybe the first time but then what about the second and third
ones Because yoursquove told me that there were quite a few including the topleader of the factory And even the managerrsquos wife Didnrsquot you take some
of the initiative in these later encounters I would really like to know what
exactly is your psychological attitude when you are with older peoplerdquo Ah
Pei ignored the first part of Ah Zhuangrsquos question answering that with
older people he feels particularly able to relax and let go
Here we find the first point of contention between Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang
over whether Ah Pei fits into the category of money boy Ah Pei tried to tellme a story of his psychological and emotional history He feels that older
people take the initiative with him which puts him at ease Ah Zhuang on
the other hand tried to turn Ah Peirsquos actions into self-seeking advantage Ah
Zhuang was not objecting so much to a seeming bisexuality that might make
a gay identity more ambiguous as to what in his view was naked opportun-
ism that did not distinguish between genders Ah Zhuang elaborated on his
view when I asked Ah Pei how he felt starting an affair with this womanAh Pei responded about the sex saying that looking back on it he could
see that he didnrsquot feel entirely comfortable because she did everything he
didnrsquot have to budge She helped him with everything Ah Zhuang then
interjected ldquoChina has a way of saying this this woman served ( cihou) him
Thatrsquos a clearer way to put it Chinarsquos traditional view is that the man should
take care of ( cihou) the woman and make her feel comfortable In his case
he made the woman do it so that he could feel comfortablerdquo This situation
in Ah Zhuangrsquos view was evidently one clear marker of a money boy Other-
wise why would a man not act like the man that he should be Why would
a man let himself be treated like a woman Ah Zhuangrsquos decided views on
appropriate gender attributes reproduce the dominant mode of delineating
the boundary between normative and nonnormative desire through gen-
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 435
der His interpretation is testimony to a contradictory antinomy between a
fluidity of desire which is supposed to change continuously in line with a
free trade cosmopolitan market economy and a renaturalization of a binary
gender in its ldquorecoveryrdquo from Maoist suppression
Ah Zhuangrsquos views also echo a longer history of gender and sexuality
in China in which as Keith MacMahon has argued one of the main signs
of male privilege is the polygamous ability to have and manage multiple
sexual partners21 Ah Zhuang as a medical doctor is undoubtedly famil-
iar with traditional medical prescriptions for male potency and the needto retain male energy Moreover as Judith Farquhar has argued these tra-
ditional medical texts have been recovered and popularized in post-Mao
China through a discourse on excess and deficiency that is simultaneously
an allegory about Chinarsquos past and future22 Ah Zhuangrsquos critique of Ah Pei
reflects an understanding that to ldquotake care ofrdquo a woman sexually means
that the male is in charge of managing pleasure because he needs to control
the depletion of his own energies Clearly in Ah Zhuangrsquos view Ah Pei hasnot followed the proper prescriptions and therefore is not contributing to the
proper development of social life in China
Ah Pei then proceeded to tell a story of the factory as a site of sexual excess
Rather than paint a conventional portrait of a large state-run factory as a
place of hard work alternating with boredom Ah Pei offered a tale in which
it seemed a matter of course for people to develop their sexual proclivities in
such an oppressive situation Ah Pei explained for example how he startedsleeping with one woman Her husband had been arrested and thrown into
prison for sleeping around with the younger women in the factory His wife
the woman Ah Pei had an affair with brought the women home for him The
husband was arrested however not owing to the moral probity of other fac-
tory leaders but according to Ah Pei because another factory leader wanted
to have sex with one of the young women and was jealous of this man and
so reported him to the public security bureau When this manrsquos wife invitedhim over to her home he figured he wouldnrsquot get into any trouble having an
affair with her By implication Ah Pei was explaining how he had come to
have such a free and easy approach to sex But Ah Zhuang used this story to
conclude that Ah Pei had a profound lack of ethical sense when establishing
relationships with people particularly men
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 436
Ah Zhuang then goaded Ah Pei into explaining his theory about lack of
father love Ah Pei told me about his violent father who drank too much and
hit his children Then one day when Ah Pei was a teenager he stood up to
his father But he always felt the keen loss of having a fatherrsquos love Thatrsquos
why he thinks he feels particularly comfortable with older men Ah Zhuang
promptly disagreed ldquoI donrsquot agree with this that a gay is someone who lacks
father love so they go in search of father love or someone older23 If his
view is correct then I am suspicious of whether he is really a gayrdquo Ah Pei
responded indirectly by saying that he knows for sure he will never get mar-
ried that even though no one living near him knows he is gay and thinks he
goes around with women he feels most comfortable with men Ah Zhuang
has a decided view of the correct way to be gay one that contains a normal-
izing pressure to present only positive or ldquonaturalrdquo reasons why one would
turn out to be gay This naturalization of gay identity parallels the natu-
ralization of the ability to be a desiring subject in post-Mao China Both
naturalizations create hierarchies of inclusion and exclusion that articulatewith the neoliberal naturalization of social inequality In contrast Ah Pei
implied that there are varied ways of having homoerotic encounters and
involvements His story highlights contingency history and experience The
inequalities in his story are class- and gender-based
Ah Pei then launched into a story of how he started to get involved with
men He had come into Tiananmen Square one evening and met some-
one there Ah Zhuang interrupted and said that Ah Pei had still been withwomen after that But Ah Pei responded that though he had been with
women after his first man he nonetheless preferred men He continued his
story ldquoI walked by Zhongshan Park and went to the [public] toilet I saw a
lot of men who went in but didnrsquot come out I just stood there didnrsquot dare
to go in and piss What were they doing in there Curiosity got the better of
me I went in and found two men playing around After that I went there
every day Thatrsquos how I met a guy Thatrsquos how I started I was just a littleover twenty years oldrdquo He began to meet a lot of men through that public
toilet finally meeting his first real lover Lao Chen (Old Chen) With Lao
Chen ldquoI finally started a new life I had a homerdquo
Ah Pei explained about the suffering that he had endured in order to be
with men One evening he was nabbed by the police He lied and said he
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 437
didnrsquot understand what the other man wanted from him The police officer
made him do hard labor for a couple of hours but let him go after he saw
Ah Pei crying The police thought he looked very young Here Ah Zhuang
interjected that he too had thought Ah Pei looked much younger than his
years when he first met him ldquoWhen he meets up with other peoplerdquo Ah
Zhuang concluded ldquohe uses his brains Hersquos good at performingrdquo In other
words Ah Zhuang implied that At Pei had perfected the art of deception
When Ah Pei described his relationship with his first long-term male
lover Lao Chen he and Ah Zhuang began to argue in earnest Ah Zhuangset out the terms by stating that Lao Chen basically ldquokeptrdquo ( yang) Ah Pei
that he took care of him in every way24 He asserted his privileged access to
the truth of the situation by telling me that Lao Chen was a dear friend of
his and it was actually through Lao Chen that he had met Ah Pei He also
set up Lao Chenrsquos class background from a wealthy family in Shanghai Lao
Chen was privileged to lead the life of a playboy However according to Ah
Zhuang Lao Chen was also a deep thinker he had graduated from FuDanUniversity (the most prestigious university in Shanghai) and Ah Zhuang
had spent many pleasurable evenings talking to him about politics Thus
before Ah Pei had a chance to get very far into his version Ah Zhuang had
already established a clear class division between himself and Lao Chen on
the one side and Ah Pei on the other This division Ah Zhuang implied
should also reflect whose version of this social and biographical history was
reliableAgainst this weighty class backdrop Ah Pei struggled to put forth his
perspective Lao Chen had raised him true but he had given Lao Chen
great sexual satisfaction taking the initiative to do so He had also paid his
price by doing a lot of things for him such as taking care of Lao Chenrsquos
wife and other friends when they visited from Shanghai ldquoThat was money
I spent out of my own pocket I feel I treated his family well Hersquos older
than me and has a lot of money I admit thatrdquo In Ah Peirsquos view Lao Chenand he had a fair exchange Lao Chen had the money to buy things for Ah
Pei who in turn gave Lao Chen a satisfying sexual and emotional life In
Ah Peirsquos view it was through Lao Chenrsquos lavish expenditures on him that he
began to have true feelings of love for Lao Chen This issue of true feelings
was critical in Ah Peirsquos view in distinguishing himself from a money boy
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 438
Ah Pei further asserted that unlike money boys he never stuck out his hand
and asked for money People have always offered to buy things for him he
said but he never asked for anything ldquoI have always relied on myselfrdquo
Ah Zhuang quickly jumped in at this point ldquoIf I consider him to be a
money boy itrsquos because hersquos extremely intelligent in this regard Thatrsquos why
I think todayrsquos conversation is especially interesting We could talk about it
for a long time Lao Chen shed a lot of tears over him So he is a little dif-
ferent than the money boys at Half and Half [the gay bar] Do they have
these kind of money boys in the United States Sometimes he really did payfor things himself and their relationship was real I see it this way Hersquos a
little different than those others He still has a little feeling involvedrdquo David
Eng (this volume) astutely evaluates the difficulties in neoliberal modernity
of distinguishing between what he calls tokens of affection and tokens of
exchange
After Ah Zhuangrsquos explication Ah Pei did not directly address the com-
parison of himself with money boys Instead he inarticulately reasserted hisview that he had never stuck out his hand asking for money and had always
relied on himself Given Ah Zhuangrsquos blunt assertion I wanted Ah Pei to
respond I asked whether he saw himself as like those men in any way He
was direct ldquoI am absolutely not like themrdquo Ah Zhuang laughed furiously
ldquoI never stuck out my hand with Ah Zhuang eitherrdquo he replied to the laugh
ldquoLet Ah Zhuang tell you himself Do you admit it Ah Zhuang liked me so
he bought me things My old man [his current lover] is like this too Irsquom notvery smart Irsquom actually stupid my level is low but Lao Chen told him I was
clever Where am I cleverrdquo
I then bluntly asked him if he only sought out lovers who had money ldquoAh
Zhuang is a clear examplerdquo he replied ldquoAh Zhuang has nowhere near the
money of these other men but I still tell him I learned a lot from him I
used to have a foul mouth I still thank him for these past four years Thatrsquos
why I still keep a relationship with him no matter with gay friends or notI always introduce himrdquo
Ah Zhuang directed Ah Pei to explain how his relationship with Lao
Chen ended Ah Pei told a story of how Lao Chen began to see someone
else and did not want Ah Pei to come home anymore Ah Pei was furious
and refused to let him go He did all sorts of things to stop the relationship
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 439
from ending including threatening to expose Lao Chen at work Lao Chen
would certainly have lost his job not only because of homophobia but as
Ah Pei explained because he was already in hot water with the Party due
to his outspoken criticisms Ah Zhuang jumped in to point out how Ah
Peirsquos behavior with Lao Chen provided yet one more set of money boy sig-
nifiers ldquoIrsquoll explainrdquo insisted Ah Zhuang after Ah Pei had presented his
perspective ldquoFrom his point of view he wanted to occupy a position This
position was incredibly important to him Only with this position could he
have money Now it was very possible that this position could be taken overby someone else So thatrsquos why he wanted to take revenge Lao Chen came
looking for me to ask me what he should do lsquoServes you rightrsquo I said He
asked lsquoMaybe if I give him some money then he would be willing to leave
me alonersquo He asked me how much I said lsquoI donrsquot knowrsquo How could I
know how much money he should give him At the time I told him lsquoYou
can end things but you have to think of a way to do itrsquo rdquo Ah Pei diffidently
responded that he hadnrsquot wanted to let go of Lao Chen because yes he leda comfortable life with him and also he had feelings for him For Ah Pei
the fact that his life was comfortable with Lao Chen was quite distinct from
a money boyrsquos desire to be paid for sex But Ah Zhuang saw them as one
and the same Finally Lao Chen left for Canada promising to bring Ah Pei
with him after he had arrived there ldquoI was naiverdquo Ah Pei said because he
had believed him
Surprisingly Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang never explained to me much oftheir own relationship Perhaps in the end they sought to preserve some of
the fragments of their friendship They ended their conversation with me by
briefly mentioning Ah Peirsquos latest relationship with an older man someone
from France whom he had met in a bar one evening Ah Pei doesnrsquot speak
any French and this man doesnrsquot speak any Chinese Ah Zhuang translated
for them when necessary This man who worked for the French airlines
was planning to bring Ah Pei to France with him They had already appliedfor his visa In subsequent conversations Ah Zhuang derided Ah Peirsquos plans
How would Ah Pei make a living in France What could he do He would
have a hard time learning the language et cetera It was as if to say Ah Pei
did not deserve the special privilege of living in a Western country
One could dismiss this whole conversation as the obvious denouement of
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a relationship that had ended bitterly Indeed Ah Zhuang had thrown Ah
Pei out of his house But Ah Zhuangrsquos insistence that Ah Pei was a money
boy reflected more than mere bitterness By rejecting Ah Peirsquos claims that
he too could place himself in the category of ldquogay manrdquo Ah Zhuang was
attempting to establish a hegemonic definition of respectable gayness For
Ah Zhuang this respectability adhered in appropriate gender sensibilities
class embodiment the proper balance between dependency and equality
a strict separation of money and love and a worldliness that only those of
a certain class stature should aspire to display Ah Zhuang was trying to
establish what Lisa Duggan has called the ldquonew homonormativityrdquo Dug-
gan argues that this new homonormativity is the equivalent of neoliberal
politics in the sexual realm25 These sexual politics uphold rather than con-
test dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions and promise
a depoliticized gay culture While Duggan concerns herself only with the
United States and does not consider transnational queer politics we can still
consider how her argument illuminates the sexual politics of someone likeAh Zhuang Ah Zhuang hopes to make gay identity respectable within
the terms of postsocialist neoliberalism The fact that neoliberalism has
made desire the central realm for producing proper citizen-subjects made
Ah Zhuangrsquos discourse all the more fraught with anxiety Ah Peirsquos own
intimacy with a well-to-do foreign gay man further goaded Ah Zhuang to
condemn Ah Peirsquos actions as inappropriate in terms of sexual gendered and
culturalnational identity For Ah Pei was going abroad to live in a Westerncountry long before Ah Zhuang would have the opportunity to do so
While Ah Peirsquos views do not simply reverse this moral equation nor do
they exemplify resistance to homonormativity in any straightforward sense
they provide an incipient means of gaining insight into the techniques of neo-
liberal normalizations as well as their instabilities Ah Zhuangrsquos condemna-
tion of Ah Peirsquos plans to move to France with his lover reveals the extent to
which the transnationalism that made Ah Peirsquos current relationship possiblechanges how ldquoinappropriaterdquo desires manifest themselves in the postsocialist
era It was after all only after the transformations in the last few decades
that a person from France would come to live and work again in China and
that an ldquoinappropriaterdquo desire could now also be a transnational desire The
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 441
fact that they do not speak each otherrsquos language exemplifies how neoliberal-
ism has allowed for new possibilities in the manner in which people desire
each other not just which kinds of desires are legitimate but which kinds of
desires are sustainable through which kinds of technological aids and socio-
economic conditions and across which kinds of borders Yet in Ah Zhuangrsquos
view someone of Ah Peirsquos class background could only succeed in such an
achievement by entangling the desires for money sex and love rather than
keeping them separate However the separations between entrepreneurialism
and intimacy that Ah Zhuang wants to establish for respectable gayness are
difficult to maintain26 Neoliberal cosmopolitanism appears to be all about
entrepreneurial savvy Yet there is more than one way to be an entrepreneur
And there is more than one way to be a nonnormalized or even antinormal-
ized gay subject27
Scene 2
Two young men are squatting at the edge of a bridge passing the time by
blowing up condoms ldquoThis way it looks like a dick It changes into breasts
when it gets bigger The breast changes into a dick and the dick into a
breastrdquo one of them says and laughs As they continue to play with their
condom-balloons the other one asks ldquoDo you like the feeling of being pen-
etrated or the feeling when you stick it inrdquo ldquoBothrdquo comes the answer
This scene opens Feeding Boys Ayaya ( Aiyaya Qu Buru) a queer filmabout male hustlers or money boys by the well-known experimental film-
maker Cui Zirsquoen28 This first scene immediately cuts to a contrasting scene
Two men are in a small closed room filled with computer and filmmaking
equipment The older one is in the background sitting in front of his com-
puter The other much younger is in the forefront of the screen The per-
son manipulating the computer equipment says ldquoZaizai [characterrsquos name]
this theme is for you It might not completely match your character in thefilm The distance makes it more precise Do you have any objectionsrdquo The
young man standing in the forefront of the screen has a somber look on his
face He refuses to speak The camera angle is an extreme close-up enlarg-
ing his face to fill the screen and nearly blocking out a view of the film-
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positions 182 Fall 2010 442
maker The effect is of a split screen We hear the filmmaker from behind
urging him several times ldquoSay somethingrdquo But the other refuses to speak
The quick juxtaposition of these two scenes and their contrasting mise-
en-scene prefigure the major motifs in Feeding Boys Ayaya The opposition
is established visually in the lighting camera angles locations and position-
ing of the characters The first scene presents characters who we will later
come to realize are money boys though at this point their identities are
unclear The scene mixes irony and pathos freedom and marginalization
The ironic and lighthearted humor of the dialogue contrasts with the curi-
ous positioning of the two young men They are at the edge of a deserted
bridge in the very early morning sunlight The camera places both of them
in the center of the screen in a medium close-up thus highlighting rela-
tionality but also distance or alienation The bantering friendship of the
two young men is visually contrasted with their distance from the rest of
the population and from the normative workday Yet this alienation is also
a liberation from the very same mdash the freedom to play at any hour the lackof confinement in space This scene represents what Judith Halberstam has
called ldquoqueer time and spacerdquo Halberstam argues that queer time and space
are ldquowillfully eccentric modes of beingrdquo that challenge heteronormativity by
providing alternative relations to time and space29
The very next scene reminds us that what we have just seen and what we
will view in the rest of the film is a set of representations The question of
how to represent money boys and who can and should speak in their nameis highlighted in this film The filmmaker character in the second scene
is choosing the theme music not the young man The dark closed room
and the split screen raise the question of whether and how the young man
can escape the framing of his life by the other The silence of the young
man mdash another money boy mdash recalls Gayatri Spivakrsquos famous dictum that
the subaltern cannot speak by which she meant that only traces of their
own interpretations of their lives remains in the texts written about them bycolonial elites30
Feeding Boys is a continual juxtaposition of these two types of images mdash
one of money boys displaying a queer sociality and the other of someone mdash
whether the filmmaker character a Christian missionary out to save money
boys his girlfriend who takes over his work or the parents of an aspir-
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 443
ing money boy mdash speaking for or about them Although the film does not
romanticize their lives the money boy characters not only exceed but also
challenge these representations of them both their content and their mode
of representation They continually frustrate attempts to represent capture
or change them Zaizai for example later demands to choose his own theme
music an insistence that frustrates the filmmaker who claims it will ruin
his film Their queerness emerges in these challenges
With Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen enters the larger debates that have central-
ized the question of desire in postsocialist China Cui Zirsquoen uses experimen-
tal visual logics that blur documentary and fiction and that refuse narrative
linearity or closure to challenge not only the specific judgments about money
boys among gay men but the entire apparatus of normalization in China
that tries to delimit desire Cui Zirsquoen addresses the specificity of neoliberal-
ism in China by challenging the hegemonic articulations between Chinese
culture and proper desire on the one hand and labor money and desire on
the other The film has a carnivalesque quality reinforced by the hand-heldcamera techniques which is at once somber and playful It subverts bour-
geois heterosexuality as that which subtends Chinese culture by robbing it of
its glory The film represents money boys as people with an integral human-
ity who take the full measure of their lives while the people who judge
them in the name of neoliberal desires Chinese morality or Christianity
appear damaged filled with contradictory desires themselves or just plain
boring The film thus further subverts postsocialist normalizing desires bydirecting our gaze away from what many think is perverse or rather by
making the normal perverse and the perverse normal The people to be
pitied in this film are the heterosexuals who condemn the hustlersrsquo profes-
sion They are the ones who wither and die Hustlers in contrast have time
to play and enjoy life Yet Cui Zirsquoen does not indulge in a simple decon-
structive reversal Hustlers suffer too but mainly from the condemnation
and exploitation they experience as a result of the hypocritical desires of theheteronormative world
Although Feeding Boys seems to establish a debate between heterosexu-
als and gay male hustlers the themes raised in the film rehearse anxieties
similar to those I presented in my first scene that occur among gay men
Are hustlers respectable or do they sully the good name of other gay men
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positions 182 Fall 2010 444
Do they deserve sympathy or condemnation Are they gay or just exploit-
ing vulnerable gay men Are their desires to be celebrated or condemned
Are they appropriate for Chinarsquos postsocialist neoliberal future or do they
represent the degradation of that future Feeding Boys refuses these dichoto-
mous terms Rather than simply reverse their valence the film addresses
other queer questions that displace these normalizing ones How should
we engage our desires How can this engagement lead to nonnormative
lives How does class inflect desire How can nonnormative desires chal-
lenge class-based temporalities What is the relationship between money
and sex Finally what is the role of religion
Feeding Boys loosely revolves around the elusive search of a Christian het-
erosexual brother Dabin for his younger brother Xiao Bao who has dis-
appeared into the money boy life During his search he discovers that one
of his younger ldquoChristian brothersrdquo Xiao Jian has also decided to become
a money boy to practice Christian love Juxtaposing money boysrsquo serious
banter with the normalizing judgments of others Feeding Boys weaves inand out of several recurrent image-themes the everyday life of hustlers
Xiao Jianrsquos exploration of how to become a hustler the missionizing zeal of
Dabin to dissuade hustlers from continuing in their profession and finally
the desire to represent and normalize the lives of hustlers Throughout
Feeding Boys jumps between these image-themes thus putting them in
dialogue with one another The experimental filmrsquos refusal to present a
linear narrative mirrors the refusal by the money boy characters to accedeto the normalizing judgments of others Thus the form to echo Hayden
White is also the content31 Cui Zirsquoenrsquos filmmaking techniques warn us
that endeavors to normalize create severe dislocations and damage And
not merely to money boys
Image-Theme 1 The Mundanity of Money Boy Life
Feeding Boys strikingly refuses to display any images of money boys actually
engaged in sex or hustling for customers This lack of sex scenes contrasts
with Cui Zirsquoenrsquos other films which generally go out of their way to show sex
between men The only way we even know that these young men are money
boys is through the dialogue More specifically we hear the arguments that
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 445
straight people who disapprove of them engender Indeed the film is quite
chaste The one scene in which we see two people showing erotic affection
is between the older heterosexual brother of one of the money boys (XiaoBao) whose missionary goal is to convert hustlers and his girlfriend Feed-
ing Boys thus refuses to indulge viewersrsquo scopophilic desires Cui Zirsquoen teases
the viewer from the first scene Watching two men blowing up condoms
and briefly chatting about sex hints at more erotic scenes to come But they
never materialize A condom-balloon is all we ever get By thus tapping into
a gaze desirous for the perverse and then frustrating that desire Cui Zirsquoen
confronts the viewer with the need to think about representation and the
role of representation in normalizing desire mdash both in public discourse and
in his film
In place of the erotic the viewer is offered the stuff of everyday life One
recurrent image as in the first scene is of money boys on a bridge early in
the morning In one scene they playfully engage in ballet-like dance ges-
tures In another one of them displays his acrobatic skills doing severalback flips Later we see these same young men practicing taiji quan (a mar-
tial arts exercise) again early in the morning on the bridge These images
immediately bring to mind the ldquonormalrdquo populace in Chinarsquos cities who go
out each morning to do precisely these group exercises This idea is rein-
forced by the camera angle in these scenes which is a medium wide-angle
shot taking in both the bridge and the surrounding metropolis But the
bridge is also symptomatic of a moment of suspension between directionsin life or between worlds A bridge represents a gap as well as an attempt to
overcome a fissure in the landscape In one telling scene near the end of the
film a money boy begs for money on the bridge pleading with passersby
that he has given up his dissolute life and reformed himself Yet immediately
after we see him with another friend arguing with the Christian mission-
aryrsquos girlfriend stating unequivocally that even though they treated begging
as a ldquorealrdquo job no one wanted to give them money and that in todayrsquos worldpeople respect a prostitute more than a poor person The bridge thus repre-
sents two intertwined passages mdash from a socialist world of time and space
in which citizens had the leisure to do morning exercises and their lives
were not measured by money to a neoliberal world in which wealth is the
only measure of human dignity and no one mdash except those on the outside
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positions 182 Fall 2010 446
of bourgeois respectability mdash has time to spend exercising on a bridge This
passage is intertwined then with a passage from heteronormative relations
of time and space to queer time and space mdash the refusal of the relationshipbetween time work money and desire that neoliberalism has established
Another recurrent scene is of several young men playing in the park
They walk through the park in a desultory manner enjoying the day One
of them has his dog on a leash The dog is obviously well groomed and
well fed Only recently have Beijing residents been allowed to keep pets in
the city Dogs quickly became a key signifier of bourgeois cosmopolitan
accomplishment Why shouldnrsquot money boys be allowed to have them too
In the film the pet belies the idea that money boys lead an unstable dirty
and unreliable life as many believe Moreover it forces open the cluster of
oppositions between respectable and degraded desires in which bourgeois
heterosexual family life goes together with accoutrements like pets while
prostitution is supposed to represent nothing but lack
Other scenes reinforce the sense that money boys are like everyone else inthe way they go about the stuff of everyday life We see them singing in a
karaoke bar playing with a young boy on a playground and having a meal
with their families These young men are portrayed as neither angels nor
demons They are neither ecstatic nor suicidal But the film makes clear that
they live on the margins and have only one another for support
In only a few scenes do these money boys talk about their work But even
here their conversations resemble those of anyone who has ever grumbledabout his or her workplace At one point in the bar for example one of
the money boys tells the other Xiao Bao that his brother (the missionary)
has been looking for him Xiao Bao shakes his head and complains that a
customer has just ripped him off by refusing to pay In another scene in the
park during the daytime one of the money boys complains to the other that
he canrsquot seem to save any money because he always has to buy expensive
clothes to look nice for his customers The other responds that he should besmarter and get the customers to buy the clothes for him He proudly reveals
that he has saved quite a bit of money with which he plans to buy a house
for his mother
The film also playfully satirizes normalized work lives In one scene one
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 447
of the money boys says ldquoWe need structure We have to become profes-
sionalsrdquo Pointing to a gay bar behind him he says ldquoThis is our interna-
tional head officerdquo Another money boy repeats virtually the same wordsbut this time points to a twenty-story high rise building The film shifts to
an eerie scene of colorful masks then quickly to what looks to be a confer-
ence meeting in a bar Someone presumably their boss is taking roll call
They all stand to attention some of them wearing name tags as if at an aca-
demic meeting In this manner Cui Zirsquoen calls into question the relationship
between sex work and desire in China He highlights the instabilities in
how neoliberalism in China has produced social inequalities through trans-
national structures of differentially valued labors But he further demon-
strates the inextricability of sexuality bodies desire and labor To labor for
wealth is supposed to be the foremost desire in a neoliberal world Thus
normalization techniques reduce and embed desire in a structured world
of intensive labor extraction one that produces a capitalist-inflected heter-
onormativity (even as it has a nondeterministic relationship to that heter-onormativity) In other words Cui Zirsquoen deconstructs how the whole person
becomes a commodity in a neoliberal world and how that world while it
fosters desires also robs people of their desires for a full humanity Through
this humorous filmic meditation on desire Cui Zirsquoen thus provides biting
queer commentary on the reduction and devaluation of necessary labor in
postsocialist China
This commentary is most explicit in a scene near the end of the filmwhen the missionaryrsquos girlfriend pleadingly asks several money boys why
they do this work One of them responds with ten reasons ldquoOne you donrsquot
have to be president Two you donrsquot have to be a soldier Three you donrsquot
have to be a farmer and work the land Four you donrsquot have to wash dishes
Five you donrsquot have to marry and have kids Six you donrsquot have to become a
movie star Seven you donrsquot have to be a movie director Eight you donrsquot get
fat Nine you are exploited by others but donrsquot exploit others And ten youdonrsquot die because we use our bodies to satisfy both good and bad peoplersquos
desiresrdquo Through arguments with and about money boys the film thus
creates commentary on how neoliberalism in China appropriates not just
labor-power but the laborer as a desiring subject32 The queer commentary
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positions 182 Fall 2010 448
of Feeding Boys demonstrates how nonnormative alternatives lie outside of
those temporal and spatial markers of respectable Chinese experience mdash
namely marriage reproduction kinship and death The film thus chal-lenges the oppositions of respectability and shame
Image-Theme 2 How to Become a Money Boy
The thread of this image-theme most explicitly mocks normalizing judg-
ments about desire work class and sex Through this image-theme the
film represents gay male hustling as a profession as honorable as becom-
ing a lawyer or computer scientist In perhaps the most iconic scene in this
regard Feeding Boys stages an argument between Xiao Jian and his parents
that crafts a mimicry of family gatherings to decide the childrenrsquos future33
His parents appear to be respectable middle-class intellectuals The mise-
en-scene is a plushly decorated apartment in which the family lives together
The family is all seated there The father states unequivocally that this kindof work leads nowhere They bemoan the fact that they raised their son for
so many years and gave him the opportunity to do many things with his life
They insist they just want the best for him The parents are oddly calm and
though disgusted do not throw him out of the house Indeed in the next
scene he arrives early in the morning to the apartment stating boldly to his
parents that they arrived home from work earlier than him His mother
asks if he isnrsquot supposed to work the night shift and he responds that he willwork any shift The mother turns to the father and makes the pithy com-
ment ldquoSo we failed to discourage him from this line of workrdquo
In another scene in which Xiao Jian defends to Dabin his reasons for
wanting to become a money boy Cui Zirsquoen crafts a doubled-edged mock-
ery of socialist ideals as well by invoking the old socialist honor of learn-
ing from and serving the masses His satire in this regard cuts in multiple
directions It recalls not just the marginalization but the condemnationand punishment under socialism of those with inappropriate desires But
it also uses those socialist ideals to critique the neoliberal normalization of
the appropriate relationship between labor and desire Xiao Jian initiates an
argument with Dabin when he announces that he too wants to become
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 449
a money boy Xiao Jian is insistent ldquoI want to sell my body like Xiao Bao
[Dabinrsquos brother]rdquo He then explains that when Xiao Bao disappeared he
went to check out the male prostitution business ldquoMost of these youngstersare from villages and from very poor family backgrounds I was born into
a happy family I want to join the hustlers and change their social statusrdquo
Dabin retorts ldquoCan you make those people happy Itrsquos all about making
millionaires officials and rich guys happyrdquo ldquoYou told me that we have to
serve the humble Now I want to become one of themrdquo replies Xiao Jian
ldquoI want to become the lowest of the low together with robbers hooligans
petty thieves ex-convicts homosexuals and hustlers I want to stay at the
bottomrdquo Dabin then launches into classical Chinese metaphors ldquoWater
flows downward but man soars heavenwardrdquo Xiao Jian has an answer to
that as well insisting that man is also part of nature and is also capable of
running downhill ldquoItrsquos only natural and makes things more equalrdquo
The visual logics of this scene provide the ironic counter-commentary
During the entire scene Xiao Jian is fully dressed while we watch Dabin halfnaked as he dresses after a shower The viewer becomes engaged in the erot-
ics of watching Dabin slowly lather lotion over his entire body then pull on
tight-fitting underwear The camera lingers on his well built body By the end
of the scene Dabin is still half naked The erotics of the scene are heightened
by the effect of a mirror that stages Xiao Jian in reverse That is Xiao Jian is
seated to the left of Dabin but we only view him through the mirror where
he appears on Dabinrsquos right while Dabin occupies center stage as the half- naked figure of erotic righteousness The mirror clues us in to a split between
the dialogue and the visual logics This split reflects back to the spectator the
hypocritical contradictions in postsocialist enticements of desire
Image-Theme 3 The Trials and Tribulations of Missionary Work
Early in the film we see someone driving through Beijing in a nice carHe is a good looking serious young man It turns out to be Dabin search-
ing for Xiao Bao his younger brother Dabin walks into a bar looking for
him without success He proceeds to follow one of the money boys into the
bathroom and argues with him saying that he doesnrsquot understand why his
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positions 182 Fall 2010 450
job is so attractive ldquoHow could it attract you How can you enjoy it without
getting tiredrdquo The money boy calmly responds ldquoThe job has three advan-
tages First you earn money Second freedom Third you can fool aroundwith different peoplerdquo When Dabin aggressively asks if there are any dis-
advantages the money boy responds ldquoFirst you get sick easily Second itrsquos
a waste of condoms and KY jelly Third you donrsquot get enough sleeprdquo Dabin
cries ldquoIf you keep doing this you will get AIDSrdquo Thus opens the third
image-theme the heterosexual Christian evangelist who attempts to convert
money boys
Dabinrsquos idea of conversion conflates normative sexual desire and Chris-
tianity Thus in the next major scene in which he appears he argues with
two money boys telling them that birds in the sky donrsquot sell their bodies
but they have food to eat that lotus flowers donrsquot sell their bodies but they
are beautiful that dogs and earthworms donrsquot sell their bodies but they live
vigorous lives so why should they sell their bodies He then offers to give
them the Bible Cui Zirsquoen was raised as a Catholic in the northeast city of
Dalian In his previous films he took a Derek Jarman approach and made
symbolic Jesus figures suffer the slings and arrows of heterosexual rage He
tried to reconcile homoerotic desire with what he viewed as the true essence
of Catholicism In Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen has taken a distinctive approach
Here he asserts that those who use Christianity to suppress nonnormative
desires have a hopeless case on their hands Moreover the true essence of
Christianity is ambiguous Perhaps it really is a source of oppression ratherthan as in his previous films a potential guide for love
This ambiguity is underscored in the next major scene in which Dabin
attempts to win converts among money boys He is reading the Bible together
with his younger ldquoChristian brotherrdquo Xiao Jian who has also chosen to be a
money boy Xiao Jian appears earnest He asks ldquoDo you think Jesus would
like that I mean would he like the fact that men and women and men and
men and women and women have sexrdquo Dabin responds ldquoMen and menand women and men have sexual relationships That means that God gave
them their sexual desires and afterwards even gave them the ability to have
sex So who gave men and women the ability to have sex God did The
fact that God gave us this ability proves that he allows us to do itrdquo But the
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 451
young man persists ldquoYou said men and women do it for procreation If men
have sex with men they canrsquot procreate How do you explain thisrdquo Dabin
is stumped ldquoI have to turn to the Bible again for this questionrdquoThe moral inconclusiveness of the Bible and the ability to glean multiple
interpretations of desire from it leads the viewer to understand that there is
a distinction between heteronormativity and the normalization of desire
Strikingly Dabin does not condemn these young men for having sex with
other men He does not in other words condemn sexual desire tout court
or even homoerotic desire What he condemns is the exchange of sex for
money
Dabin is passionate in his missionary work In one scene we see him
standing on the bridge where money boys gather Christian Bible held up
high intoning his plea to them ldquoThe end of the world is near and you still
sell your bodiesrdquo No one speaks to him his travails seem fruitless Dabin on
the bridge recalls by contrast the money boys on the bridge But whereas
the money boys were shot in mid-range at wide angle Dabin is shot from
below with a zoom lens that makes him appear more distant as if he is high
up on a pulpit or a cross
Somewhat unexpectedly Dabin takes seriously ill and dies His death
recalls that of Jesus of course dying for othersrsquo sins but there is a distinct
ambiguity in Dabinrsquos death Does he die for othersrsquo sins or has he suffered
under his own illusions Is his the work of a savior or do normalized people
with judgments of others suffer because of their judgmental values Thefilm never resolves this ambiguity
On his deathbed Dabin pleads with his girlfriend to take over his work
to preach the gospel and save male prostitutes She promises to do so and
indeed in the next scene we see her standing on the same bridge holding
up the same Bible intoning monotonously ldquoDonrsquot sell anymorerdquo In the end
the girlfriend also ends up exhausted and sick in bed having similarly sacri-
ficed herself to a hopeless cause
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positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3334
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
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positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 428
prominent theorists have made the important argument that neoliberalism
creates new subjectivities they tend to emphasize a rationalized subject who
must discipline himself or herself into neoliberal modes of being and act-
ing6 These theories have the advantage that they do not treat neoliberalism
as a purely economistic endeavor but they nonetheless accept neoliberal ide-
ologiesrsquo own ideas about rationality as that which subtends neoliberalism
Moreover they tend to draw a direct and rather deterministic line from neo-
liberal economic policies to these rational techniques of the self to neoliberal
subjectivities In contrast I locate the specific appearance of neoliberalismin China in the production of desire7 Desire is the means through which
people in China as elsewhere prove their cosmopolitan worldliness But
desire is a complicated realm As psychoanalytical theory has long argued
desire can be unpredictable and difficult to control ldquoDesirerdquo is a historically
socially and culturally produced field that articulates the new contradictions
and inequalities in China to both resolve past dilemmas and create new ones
The desiring subject mdash whether sexual affective or possessive mdash thus func-tions variously as a trope a normative ideal and a horizon of possibility mdash
or impossibility It promises new freedoms even as it seems to be the only
game in town It also creates a terrain for powerful and dehumanizing exclu-
sions While the neoliberal enticement to have desires is prevalent every-
where in China debates about how to distinguish licit and illicit desires
continue to animate public culture Lesbians and gay men must grapple
with the ambivalences contradictions and exclusions that the specificity ofneoliberalism creates in China
This essay speaks as well to a hoary debate in queer studies or perhaps I
should say to the attacks on queer studies by those who used to accuse it of
being ldquomerely culturalrdquo or idealist as opposed to materialist queer8 Those
debates were never resolved they merely faded But they left certain dichot-
omies in place those who wanted so-called materialist studies of sexuality
and desire used the term ldquomaterialistrdquo in an obfuscatory manner Those
who had been criticized responded by pointing out that attention to family
kinship intimacy and the body are as ldquomaterialrdquo as one can get But what
those who invoked materialism really meant which they did also say was
that studies of desire should be grounded in a study of capitalist relations
of production Ironically however as soon as they set out that context they
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 429
also let desire drop out of the picture because they couldnrsquot really figure out
within a certain classical Marxism how to study the myriad forms desire
takes Thus Donald Morton for example establishes a dichotomy between
need and desire and asserts that need is what we excuse the pun need to
study but desire is merely an ideological by-product of capitalism9 It was
difficult to get past such homophobia and so the debate petered out after
both sides had had their say The debate was ironic because it was based on
a basic opposition between the instrumental and the affective that which is
instrumental belongs to a study of capitalism proper mdash the rational subjectwith needs mdash while that which is affective is relegated to a realm that is not
part of capitalist relations of production proper I say it is ironic to base a
critique of queer studies on the instrumental versus the affective because as
Marshall Sahlins pointed out a long time ago this opposition was produced
out of capitalism itself10 Queer studies on the other hand has not really
figured out how to get past the homophobia implicit in so many of these
critiques and analyze the relationship between capitalism and desire Myhope is that this essay contributes to bridging that division
The desiring subject has taken center stage in China because of the his-
torically specific allegory constructed to reject Maoism This allegory revises
historical memory through the emancipatory tale that Maoism suppressed
a natural human nature and that by rejecting the socialist state people can
unshackle their gendered and sexual selves11 Given the specificity of this
history mdash and its revisionist historiography mdash the goal in China appearsto be not merely to end the suppression of so-called innate gendered and
sexual selves but the positive development of subjects with elaborate sexual
material and affective self-interests After the June 983092th crisis of legitimacy
in 983089983097983096983097 the constitution of a postsocialist humanity in China entailed the
intensification of this goal in order to create cosmopolitan citizens of a
post ndash Cold War world12
For these historical reasons homoeroticism has created a great deal of
ambivalence in China This ambivalence is evident in public culture debates
about well-known legal cases concerning homoerotic desire and gay identity
as well as in informal conversation13 Indeed homoeroticism plays a cen-
tral role in public discussions about licit and illicit or proper and improper
desires There are no laws against homosexuality in China But some con-
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positions 182 Fall 2010 430
demn homosexuality in the name of Chinese morality while others who do
not identify as gay proclaim that although they do not understand homo-
sexuality everyone should be free to express their desires This complex situ-
ation means that lesbians and gay men provide a particularly compelling
and ambivalent challenge to postsocialist constructions of human nature
Lesbians and gay men in China could view themselves as standing at the
forefront of a universal humanity in the expression of their desires Yet they
must struggle with public debates in China about the differentiation among
those deemed appropriate subjects of desire and those cast as inappropriateThe instabilities inherent in the experimental nature of Chinarsquos neoliberal
reforms means that these ldquodesiring-actionsrdquo to borrow a term from Neferti
Tadiar were not determined in advance14 Nonetheless these debates revolved
around attempts to draw a clear boundary between normative and nonnor-
mative desires both within and outside gay communities in China
Money boys thus became a lightening rod among gay men in their efforts
to grapple with homophobia and the proper class-inflected ways to be adesiring subject in this postsocialist world As queer theory has taught us
desires normalize and in so doing constitute those who are also excluded
and marked as nonnormative15 Queer theorists of color have challenged
and expanded this canon in order to make compelling arguments about the
critical role of postcolonial histories of racism and diaspora in construct-
ing normative desires among lesbians and gay men16 Queer theorists have
also argued that normalizations require a great deal of effort to make themeffective and in that work gaps and fissures lead to unexpected outcomes
Gay men who condemn money boys marginalize them as a way to make
their own desires appear simultaneously cosmopolitan (in its contemporary
neoliberal guise) and appropriately Chinese But they sometimes have dif-
ficulty in crafting absolute distinctions between themselves and these ldquooth-
ersrdquo even as they use these others to make themselves appear to have the
more appropriate desires befitting a postsocialist China17 Thus I locate an
anxiety expressed about the ldquomoney boyrdquo as a production of the market
economy that threatens the ontological certainty of the desiring individual
The fact that the unique term ldquomoney boyrdquo is used to refer to these
men mdash rather than say ldquogigolordquo or ldquomale prostituterdquo mdash is not to be dis-
missed as incidental but bears a critical relation to commodification and the
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 431
anxieties attendant upon the loss or the blurring of the boundaries between
epistemic zones After repeatedly hearing disparaging remarks about money
boys I decided I should talk to money boys themselves I was hesitant at
first because I was not sure how one would go about asking someone ques-
tions about their engagement in an activity that is so roundly condemned I
began to ask some of my gay male friends in Beijing to introduce me to any
money boys they knew While I am sure there are men who sell sex to other
men mdash one stroll through Beijingrsquos famous Dongdan Park makes that activ-
ity obvious mdash the men I was introduced to as money boys all refused thatlabel They argued that their actions did not represent a simple equation of
sex for money18 As I describe below their rejection of the money boy label is
more than simply a matter of denial These men had a much more complex
interpretation of their activities that as with other gay men broadened out
into a consideration of the place of desire in contemporary China They led
me to understand that their activities were as much an intimate part of the
transformations that had moved China away from socialism and toward aworld of what I would call neoliberal cosmopolitanism as any other activi-
ties centered around desire Indeed their analyses of their own lives and the
debates among gay men over money boys led me to realize that the question
of desire lies at the very heart of these transformations
I offer two ldquoscenesrdquo that develop my arguments about not simply the
views of those labeled money boys but also the cultural anxieties of other gay
men about money boys That is my intent is not just to describe so-calledmoney boysrsquo attempts to decouple money and sex but other gay menrsquos fears
about their own inabilities to do so the reasons why this distinction comes
to matter at all and the politically and culturally specific context that shapes
these anxieties The first scene occurred in my room in Beijing when one of
my gay male friends introduced me to someone he labeled a money boy The
disagreements that ensued in the conversation exemplify the anxious pursuit
of neoliberal respectability among certain gay men The second scene is a
film by the well-known queer filmmaker Cui Zirsquoen Through satire and
subversion Cui Zirsquoen challenges gay men about their desires for neoliberal
normalization
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 432
Scene One
It was a spring evening in 983089983097983097983096 Ah Zhuang had agreed to introduce meto someone he said was a money boy19 I had first met Ah Zhuang through
other foreign lesbians and gay men living in Beijing Then in his early for-
ties Ah Zhuang was a radiologist Ah Zhuang considered himself to be
someone who had always known he was gay He had never married as have
so many other gay men but lived at home taking care of his mother He
also considered himself to be part of a long-lost line of aristocratic Mongo-
lians through his fatherrsquos ancestors Ah Zhuang had embraced the newlyemergent gay scene with unabashed enthusiasm Though many older men
who have sex with other men shunned that scene and given their histori-
cal experiences of harassment feared exposure Ah Zhuang in contrast
worked on the gay hotline attended all the salon discussions met with psy-
chiatrists to argue with them about the normality of homosexuality and
established himself as an ldquoelderrdquo among what were mostly young gay men
in their twenties He loved dispensing advice Ah Zhuang felt it was critical
for all people who have a homoerotic orientation to identify themselves as
gay and embrace that identity His experience of having been arrested in the
983089983097983096983088s for approaching another man for sex in the public bathrooms made
him all the more adamant that normalizing a gay identity would put an
end to the police harassment to which he had been subjected20 On the other
hand he felt equally vehement about the need to not expose onersquos family to
social condemnation and thus he felt it important to be discreet
Ah Zhuang had decided ideas about what constitutes a proper gay iden-
tity These ideas were made most apparent to me on the evening in question
That night Ah Zhuang arrived at my room with a young man named Ah
Pei Ah Zhuang introduced him as his former boyfriend I was immediately
confused I thought he had said he would introduce me to a money boy
And if this person was his former boyfriend was he telling me he had beeninvolved with a money boy As the conversation developed things turned
out to be more complex For Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang argued during the
entire evening about whether Ah Pei was indeed a money boy at all Ah
Zhuang stayed for the whole conversation in part because Ah Pei has a very
thick Beijing working-class accent and I sometimes found it hard to follow
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 433
him Ah Zhuang helpfully repeated some of Ah Peirsquos statements to make
sure I understood But Ah Zhuang also kept inserting his own views inter-
rupting Ah Pei at every turn
We began the conversation in a desultory manner with my questions
about Ah Peirsquos background He explained that his parents both had had a
hard life when they were young before the 983089983097983092983097 revolution His father was
from the Northeast and had always had to move around looking for work
But fortunately he had ended up in Beijing working in a factory under
the Central Television Bureau constructing television reception towers Hismother worked in a radio factory When his father fell ill with cancer Ah
Pei had taken over his factory position At the time of course job inheri-
tance in state-run factories was seen as a privilege Then Ah Peirsquos second
brother and sister-in-law also came to work there By the time of our con-
versation Ah Pei had taken what was then the risky step of abandoning his
secure position in the factory Perhaps he had the foresight to realize that
factory workersrsquo living conditions were declining under economic reformIndeed by the time of our conversation half the factory had been let go and
were on unemployment Ah Pei had become a taxi driver He was then in
his mid-thirties
Perhaps I was moving too slowly toward the ostensible topic of the eve-
ning Or perhaps he had his own agenda In any case Ah Zhuang suddenly
interjected with a question that abruptly changed the direction of our con-
versation ldquoWhat are your feelings when you are with womenrdquo Ah Pei pro-ceeded to tell a story about his factory ldquoAll the women I have encountered
have been from our factoryrdquo He then described how at the age of 983089983097 he had
his first sexual relationship with an older married woman after another
woman he was apprenticed to introduced them to each other She too was
an apprentice According to Ah Pei she had seduced him Prior to that he
had no interest in sex with women at least not women his age They carried
on their affair for over a year The womanrsquos husband never knew he worked
in another factory The main point that Ah Pei stressed in telling this story
was that with an older person he finally felt secure Since then he added
he has always wanted to be with older people
When he first made this assertion I did not pick up on its larger implica-
tion in relation to the issue of money boys Only later when Ah Zhuang was
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 434
arguing with him did I realize that since that first affair with a woman
Ah Pei had been mainly with older men who took care of him mdash including
Ah Zhuang In talking about his first affair Ah Pei thus traced his inter-
est in older men to an emotional and sexual history of feeling comfortable
with older people Ah Zhuang as we will see reduced Ah Peirsquos story to
one of opportunism For at this point Ah Zhuang sarcastically interjected
a counterpoint to Ah Peirsquos insistence that this older woman had taken the
initiative ldquoMaybe the first time but then what about the second and third
ones Because yoursquove told me that there were quite a few including the topleader of the factory And even the managerrsquos wife Didnrsquot you take some
of the initiative in these later encounters I would really like to know what
exactly is your psychological attitude when you are with older peoplerdquo Ah
Pei ignored the first part of Ah Zhuangrsquos question answering that with
older people he feels particularly able to relax and let go
Here we find the first point of contention between Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang
over whether Ah Pei fits into the category of money boy Ah Pei tried to tellme a story of his psychological and emotional history He feels that older
people take the initiative with him which puts him at ease Ah Zhuang on
the other hand tried to turn Ah Peirsquos actions into self-seeking advantage Ah
Zhuang was not objecting so much to a seeming bisexuality that might make
a gay identity more ambiguous as to what in his view was naked opportun-
ism that did not distinguish between genders Ah Zhuang elaborated on his
view when I asked Ah Pei how he felt starting an affair with this womanAh Pei responded about the sex saying that looking back on it he could
see that he didnrsquot feel entirely comfortable because she did everything he
didnrsquot have to budge She helped him with everything Ah Zhuang then
interjected ldquoChina has a way of saying this this woman served ( cihou) him
Thatrsquos a clearer way to put it Chinarsquos traditional view is that the man should
take care of ( cihou) the woman and make her feel comfortable In his case
he made the woman do it so that he could feel comfortablerdquo This situation
in Ah Zhuangrsquos view was evidently one clear marker of a money boy Other-
wise why would a man not act like the man that he should be Why would
a man let himself be treated like a woman Ah Zhuangrsquos decided views on
appropriate gender attributes reproduce the dominant mode of delineating
the boundary between normative and nonnormative desire through gen-
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 435
der His interpretation is testimony to a contradictory antinomy between a
fluidity of desire which is supposed to change continuously in line with a
free trade cosmopolitan market economy and a renaturalization of a binary
gender in its ldquorecoveryrdquo from Maoist suppression
Ah Zhuangrsquos views also echo a longer history of gender and sexuality
in China in which as Keith MacMahon has argued one of the main signs
of male privilege is the polygamous ability to have and manage multiple
sexual partners21 Ah Zhuang as a medical doctor is undoubtedly famil-
iar with traditional medical prescriptions for male potency and the needto retain male energy Moreover as Judith Farquhar has argued these tra-
ditional medical texts have been recovered and popularized in post-Mao
China through a discourse on excess and deficiency that is simultaneously
an allegory about Chinarsquos past and future22 Ah Zhuangrsquos critique of Ah Pei
reflects an understanding that to ldquotake care ofrdquo a woman sexually means
that the male is in charge of managing pleasure because he needs to control
the depletion of his own energies Clearly in Ah Zhuangrsquos view Ah Pei hasnot followed the proper prescriptions and therefore is not contributing to the
proper development of social life in China
Ah Pei then proceeded to tell a story of the factory as a site of sexual excess
Rather than paint a conventional portrait of a large state-run factory as a
place of hard work alternating with boredom Ah Pei offered a tale in which
it seemed a matter of course for people to develop their sexual proclivities in
such an oppressive situation Ah Pei explained for example how he startedsleeping with one woman Her husband had been arrested and thrown into
prison for sleeping around with the younger women in the factory His wife
the woman Ah Pei had an affair with brought the women home for him The
husband was arrested however not owing to the moral probity of other fac-
tory leaders but according to Ah Pei because another factory leader wanted
to have sex with one of the young women and was jealous of this man and
so reported him to the public security bureau When this manrsquos wife invitedhim over to her home he figured he wouldnrsquot get into any trouble having an
affair with her By implication Ah Pei was explaining how he had come to
have such a free and easy approach to sex But Ah Zhuang used this story to
conclude that Ah Pei had a profound lack of ethical sense when establishing
relationships with people particularly men
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positions 182 Fall 2010 436
Ah Zhuang then goaded Ah Pei into explaining his theory about lack of
father love Ah Pei told me about his violent father who drank too much and
hit his children Then one day when Ah Pei was a teenager he stood up to
his father But he always felt the keen loss of having a fatherrsquos love Thatrsquos
why he thinks he feels particularly comfortable with older men Ah Zhuang
promptly disagreed ldquoI donrsquot agree with this that a gay is someone who lacks
father love so they go in search of father love or someone older23 If his
view is correct then I am suspicious of whether he is really a gayrdquo Ah Pei
responded indirectly by saying that he knows for sure he will never get mar-
ried that even though no one living near him knows he is gay and thinks he
goes around with women he feels most comfortable with men Ah Zhuang
has a decided view of the correct way to be gay one that contains a normal-
izing pressure to present only positive or ldquonaturalrdquo reasons why one would
turn out to be gay This naturalization of gay identity parallels the natu-
ralization of the ability to be a desiring subject in post-Mao China Both
naturalizations create hierarchies of inclusion and exclusion that articulatewith the neoliberal naturalization of social inequality In contrast Ah Pei
implied that there are varied ways of having homoerotic encounters and
involvements His story highlights contingency history and experience The
inequalities in his story are class- and gender-based
Ah Pei then launched into a story of how he started to get involved with
men He had come into Tiananmen Square one evening and met some-
one there Ah Zhuang interrupted and said that Ah Pei had still been withwomen after that But Ah Pei responded that though he had been with
women after his first man he nonetheless preferred men He continued his
story ldquoI walked by Zhongshan Park and went to the [public] toilet I saw a
lot of men who went in but didnrsquot come out I just stood there didnrsquot dare
to go in and piss What were they doing in there Curiosity got the better of
me I went in and found two men playing around After that I went there
every day Thatrsquos how I met a guy Thatrsquos how I started I was just a littleover twenty years oldrdquo He began to meet a lot of men through that public
toilet finally meeting his first real lover Lao Chen (Old Chen) With Lao
Chen ldquoI finally started a new life I had a homerdquo
Ah Pei explained about the suffering that he had endured in order to be
with men One evening he was nabbed by the police He lied and said he
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 437
didnrsquot understand what the other man wanted from him The police officer
made him do hard labor for a couple of hours but let him go after he saw
Ah Pei crying The police thought he looked very young Here Ah Zhuang
interjected that he too had thought Ah Pei looked much younger than his
years when he first met him ldquoWhen he meets up with other peoplerdquo Ah
Zhuang concluded ldquohe uses his brains Hersquos good at performingrdquo In other
words Ah Zhuang implied that At Pei had perfected the art of deception
When Ah Pei described his relationship with his first long-term male
lover Lao Chen he and Ah Zhuang began to argue in earnest Ah Zhuangset out the terms by stating that Lao Chen basically ldquokeptrdquo ( yang) Ah Pei
that he took care of him in every way24 He asserted his privileged access to
the truth of the situation by telling me that Lao Chen was a dear friend of
his and it was actually through Lao Chen that he had met Ah Pei He also
set up Lao Chenrsquos class background from a wealthy family in Shanghai Lao
Chen was privileged to lead the life of a playboy However according to Ah
Zhuang Lao Chen was also a deep thinker he had graduated from FuDanUniversity (the most prestigious university in Shanghai) and Ah Zhuang
had spent many pleasurable evenings talking to him about politics Thus
before Ah Pei had a chance to get very far into his version Ah Zhuang had
already established a clear class division between himself and Lao Chen on
the one side and Ah Pei on the other This division Ah Zhuang implied
should also reflect whose version of this social and biographical history was
reliableAgainst this weighty class backdrop Ah Pei struggled to put forth his
perspective Lao Chen had raised him true but he had given Lao Chen
great sexual satisfaction taking the initiative to do so He had also paid his
price by doing a lot of things for him such as taking care of Lao Chenrsquos
wife and other friends when they visited from Shanghai ldquoThat was money
I spent out of my own pocket I feel I treated his family well Hersquos older
than me and has a lot of money I admit thatrdquo In Ah Peirsquos view Lao Chenand he had a fair exchange Lao Chen had the money to buy things for Ah
Pei who in turn gave Lao Chen a satisfying sexual and emotional life In
Ah Peirsquos view it was through Lao Chenrsquos lavish expenditures on him that he
began to have true feelings of love for Lao Chen This issue of true feelings
was critical in Ah Peirsquos view in distinguishing himself from a money boy
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Ah Pei further asserted that unlike money boys he never stuck out his hand
and asked for money People have always offered to buy things for him he
said but he never asked for anything ldquoI have always relied on myselfrdquo
Ah Zhuang quickly jumped in at this point ldquoIf I consider him to be a
money boy itrsquos because hersquos extremely intelligent in this regard Thatrsquos why
I think todayrsquos conversation is especially interesting We could talk about it
for a long time Lao Chen shed a lot of tears over him So he is a little dif-
ferent than the money boys at Half and Half [the gay bar] Do they have
these kind of money boys in the United States Sometimes he really did payfor things himself and their relationship was real I see it this way Hersquos a
little different than those others He still has a little feeling involvedrdquo David
Eng (this volume) astutely evaluates the difficulties in neoliberal modernity
of distinguishing between what he calls tokens of affection and tokens of
exchange
After Ah Zhuangrsquos explication Ah Pei did not directly address the com-
parison of himself with money boys Instead he inarticulately reasserted hisview that he had never stuck out his hand asking for money and had always
relied on himself Given Ah Zhuangrsquos blunt assertion I wanted Ah Pei to
respond I asked whether he saw himself as like those men in any way He
was direct ldquoI am absolutely not like themrdquo Ah Zhuang laughed furiously
ldquoI never stuck out my hand with Ah Zhuang eitherrdquo he replied to the laugh
ldquoLet Ah Zhuang tell you himself Do you admit it Ah Zhuang liked me so
he bought me things My old man [his current lover] is like this too Irsquom notvery smart Irsquom actually stupid my level is low but Lao Chen told him I was
clever Where am I cleverrdquo
I then bluntly asked him if he only sought out lovers who had money ldquoAh
Zhuang is a clear examplerdquo he replied ldquoAh Zhuang has nowhere near the
money of these other men but I still tell him I learned a lot from him I
used to have a foul mouth I still thank him for these past four years Thatrsquos
why I still keep a relationship with him no matter with gay friends or notI always introduce himrdquo
Ah Zhuang directed Ah Pei to explain how his relationship with Lao
Chen ended Ah Pei told a story of how Lao Chen began to see someone
else and did not want Ah Pei to come home anymore Ah Pei was furious
and refused to let him go He did all sorts of things to stop the relationship
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 439
from ending including threatening to expose Lao Chen at work Lao Chen
would certainly have lost his job not only because of homophobia but as
Ah Pei explained because he was already in hot water with the Party due
to his outspoken criticisms Ah Zhuang jumped in to point out how Ah
Peirsquos behavior with Lao Chen provided yet one more set of money boy sig-
nifiers ldquoIrsquoll explainrdquo insisted Ah Zhuang after Ah Pei had presented his
perspective ldquoFrom his point of view he wanted to occupy a position This
position was incredibly important to him Only with this position could he
have money Now it was very possible that this position could be taken overby someone else So thatrsquos why he wanted to take revenge Lao Chen came
looking for me to ask me what he should do lsquoServes you rightrsquo I said He
asked lsquoMaybe if I give him some money then he would be willing to leave
me alonersquo He asked me how much I said lsquoI donrsquot knowrsquo How could I
know how much money he should give him At the time I told him lsquoYou
can end things but you have to think of a way to do itrsquo rdquo Ah Pei diffidently
responded that he hadnrsquot wanted to let go of Lao Chen because yes he leda comfortable life with him and also he had feelings for him For Ah Pei
the fact that his life was comfortable with Lao Chen was quite distinct from
a money boyrsquos desire to be paid for sex But Ah Zhuang saw them as one
and the same Finally Lao Chen left for Canada promising to bring Ah Pei
with him after he had arrived there ldquoI was naiverdquo Ah Pei said because he
had believed him
Surprisingly Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang never explained to me much oftheir own relationship Perhaps in the end they sought to preserve some of
the fragments of their friendship They ended their conversation with me by
briefly mentioning Ah Peirsquos latest relationship with an older man someone
from France whom he had met in a bar one evening Ah Pei doesnrsquot speak
any French and this man doesnrsquot speak any Chinese Ah Zhuang translated
for them when necessary This man who worked for the French airlines
was planning to bring Ah Pei to France with him They had already appliedfor his visa In subsequent conversations Ah Zhuang derided Ah Peirsquos plans
How would Ah Pei make a living in France What could he do He would
have a hard time learning the language et cetera It was as if to say Ah Pei
did not deserve the special privilege of living in a Western country
One could dismiss this whole conversation as the obvious denouement of
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a relationship that had ended bitterly Indeed Ah Zhuang had thrown Ah
Pei out of his house But Ah Zhuangrsquos insistence that Ah Pei was a money
boy reflected more than mere bitterness By rejecting Ah Peirsquos claims that
he too could place himself in the category of ldquogay manrdquo Ah Zhuang was
attempting to establish a hegemonic definition of respectable gayness For
Ah Zhuang this respectability adhered in appropriate gender sensibilities
class embodiment the proper balance between dependency and equality
a strict separation of money and love and a worldliness that only those of
a certain class stature should aspire to display Ah Zhuang was trying to
establish what Lisa Duggan has called the ldquonew homonormativityrdquo Dug-
gan argues that this new homonormativity is the equivalent of neoliberal
politics in the sexual realm25 These sexual politics uphold rather than con-
test dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions and promise
a depoliticized gay culture While Duggan concerns herself only with the
United States and does not consider transnational queer politics we can still
consider how her argument illuminates the sexual politics of someone likeAh Zhuang Ah Zhuang hopes to make gay identity respectable within
the terms of postsocialist neoliberalism The fact that neoliberalism has
made desire the central realm for producing proper citizen-subjects made
Ah Zhuangrsquos discourse all the more fraught with anxiety Ah Peirsquos own
intimacy with a well-to-do foreign gay man further goaded Ah Zhuang to
condemn Ah Peirsquos actions as inappropriate in terms of sexual gendered and
culturalnational identity For Ah Pei was going abroad to live in a Westerncountry long before Ah Zhuang would have the opportunity to do so
While Ah Peirsquos views do not simply reverse this moral equation nor do
they exemplify resistance to homonormativity in any straightforward sense
they provide an incipient means of gaining insight into the techniques of neo-
liberal normalizations as well as their instabilities Ah Zhuangrsquos condemna-
tion of Ah Peirsquos plans to move to France with his lover reveals the extent to
which the transnationalism that made Ah Peirsquos current relationship possiblechanges how ldquoinappropriaterdquo desires manifest themselves in the postsocialist
era It was after all only after the transformations in the last few decades
that a person from France would come to live and work again in China and
that an ldquoinappropriaterdquo desire could now also be a transnational desire The
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 441
fact that they do not speak each otherrsquos language exemplifies how neoliberal-
ism has allowed for new possibilities in the manner in which people desire
each other not just which kinds of desires are legitimate but which kinds of
desires are sustainable through which kinds of technological aids and socio-
economic conditions and across which kinds of borders Yet in Ah Zhuangrsquos
view someone of Ah Peirsquos class background could only succeed in such an
achievement by entangling the desires for money sex and love rather than
keeping them separate However the separations between entrepreneurialism
and intimacy that Ah Zhuang wants to establish for respectable gayness are
difficult to maintain26 Neoliberal cosmopolitanism appears to be all about
entrepreneurial savvy Yet there is more than one way to be an entrepreneur
And there is more than one way to be a nonnormalized or even antinormal-
ized gay subject27
Scene 2
Two young men are squatting at the edge of a bridge passing the time by
blowing up condoms ldquoThis way it looks like a dick It changes into breasts
when it gets bigger The breast changes into a dick and the dick into a
breastrdquo one of them says and laughs As they continue to play with their
condom-balloons the other one asks ldquoDo you like the feeling of being pen-
etrated or the feeling when you stick it inrdquo ldquoBothrdquo comes the answer
This scene opens Feeding Boys Ayaya ( Aiyaya Qu Buru) a queer filmabout male hustlers or money boys by the well-known experimental film-
maker Cui Zirsquoen28 This first scene immediately cuts to a contrasting scene
Two men are in a small closed room filled with computer and filmmaking
equipment The older one is in the background sitting in front of his com-
puter The other much younger is in the forefront of the screen The per-
son manipulating the computer equipment says ldquoZaizai [characterrsquos name]
this theme is for you It might not completely match your character in thefilm The distance makes it more precise Do you have any objectionsrdquo The
young man standing in the forefront of the screen has a somber look on his
face He refuses to speak The camera angle is an extreme close-up enlarg-
ing his face to fill the screen and nearly blocking out a view of the film-
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positions 182 Fall 2010 442
maker The effect is of a split screen We hear the filmmaker from behind
urging him several times ldquoSay somethingrdquo But the other refuses to speak
The quick juxtaposition of these two scenes and their contrasting mise-
en-scene prefigure the major motifs in Feeding Boys Ayaya The opposition
is established visually in the lighting camera angles locations and position-
ing of the characters The first scene presents characters who we will later
come to realize are money boys though at this point their identities are
unclear The scene mixes irony and pathos freedom and marginalization
The ironic and lighthearted humor of the dialogue contrasts with the curi-
ous positioning of the two young men They are at the edge of a deserted
bridge in the very early morning sunlight The camera places both of them
in the center of the screen in a medium close-up thus highlighting rela-
tionality but also distance or alienation The bantering friendship of the
two young men is visually contrasted with their distance from the rest of
the population and from the normative workday Yet this alienation is also
a liberation from the very same mdash the freedom to play at any hour the lackof confinement in space This scene represents what Judith Halberstam has
called ldquoqueer time and spacerdquo Halberstam argues that queer time and space
are ldquowillfully eccentric modes of beingrdquo that challenge heteronormativity by
providing alternative relations to time and space29
The very next scene reminds us that what we have just seen and what we
will view in the rest of the film is a set of representations The question of
how to represent money boys and who can and should speak in their nameis highlighted in this film The filmmaker character in the second scene
is choosing the theme music not the young man The dark closed room
and the split screen raise the question of whether and how the young man
can escape the framing of his life by the other The silence of the young
man mdash another money boy mdash recalls Gayatri Spivakrsquos famous dictum that
the subaltern cannot speak by which she meant that only traces of their
own interpretations of their lives remains in the texts written about them bycolonial elites30
Feeding Boys is a continual juxtaposition of these two types of images mdash
one of money boys displaying a queer sociality and the other of someone mdash
whether the filmmaker character a Christian missionary out to save money
boys his girlfriend who takes over his work or the parents of an aspir-
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 443
ing money boy mdash speaking for or about them Although the film does not
romanticize their lives the money boy characters not only exceed but also
challenge these representations of them both their content and their mode
of representation They continually frustrate attempts to represent capture
or change them Zaizai for example later demands to choose his own theme
music an insistence that frustrates the filmmaker who claims it will ruin
his film Their queerness emerges in these challenges
With Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen enters the larger debates that have central-
ized the question of desire in postsocialist China Cui Zirsquoen uses experimen-
tal visual logics that blur documentary and fiction and that refuse narrative
linearity or closure to challenge not only the specific judgments about money
boys among gay men but the entire apparatus of normalization in China
that tries to delimit desire Cui Zirsquoen addresses the specificity of neoliberal-
ism in China by challenging the hegemonic articulations between Chinese
culture and proper desire on the one hand and labor money and desire on
the other The film has a carnivalesque quality reinforced by the hand-heldcamera techniques which is at once somber and playful It subverts bour-
geois heterosexuality as that which subtends Chinese culture by robbing it of
its glory The film represents money boys as people with an integral human-
ity who take the full measure of their lives while the people who judge
them in the name of neoliberal desires Chinese morality or Christianity
appear damaged filled with contradictory desires themselves or just plain
boring The film thus further subverts postsocialist normalizing desires bydirecting our gaze away from what many think is perverse or rather by
making the normal perverse and the perverse normal The people to be
pitied in this film are the heterosexuals who condemn the hustlersrsquo profes-
sion They are the ones who wither and die Hustlers in contrast have time
to play and enjoy life Yet Cui Zirsquoen does not indulge in a simple decon-
structive reversal Hustlers suffer too but mainly from the condemnation
and exploitation they experience as a result of the hypocritical desires of theheteronormative world
Although Feeding Boys seems to establish a debate between heterosexu-
als and gay male hustlers the themes raised in the film rehearse anxieties
similar to those I presented in my first scene that occur among gay men
Are hustlers respectable or do they sully the good name of other gay men
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positions 182 Fall 2010 444
Do they deserve sympathy or condemnation Are they gay or just exploit-
ing vulnerable gay men Are their desires to be celebrated or condemned
Are they appropriate for Chinarsquos postsocialist neoliberal future or do they
represent the degradation of that future Feeding Boys refuses these dichoto-
mous terms Rather than simply reverse their valence the film addresses
other queer questions that displace these normalizing ones How should
we engage our desires How can this engagement lead to nonnormative
lives How does class inflect desire How can nonnormative desires chal-
lenge class-based temporalities What is the relationship between money
and sex Finally what is the role of religion
Feeding Boys loosely revolves around the elusive search of a Christian het-
erosexual brother Dabin for his younger brother Xiao Bao who has dis-
appeared into the money boy life During his search he discovers that one
of his younger ldquoChristian brothersrdquo Xiao Jian has also decided to become
a money boy to practice Christian love Juxtaposing money boysrsquo serious
banter with the normalizing judgments of others Feeding Boys weaves inand out of several recurrent image-themes the everyday life of hustlers
Xiao Jianrsquos exploration of how to become a hustler the missionizing zeal of
Dabin to dissuade hustlers from continuing in their profession and finally
the desire to represent and normalize the lives of hustlers Throughout
Feeding Boys jumps between these image-themes thus putting them in
dialogue with one another The experimental filmrsquos refusal to present a
linear narrative mirrors the refusal by the money boy characters to accedeto the normalizing judgments of others Thus the form to echo Hayden
White is also the content31 Cui Zirsquoenrsquos filmmaking techniques warn us
that endeavors to normalize create severe dislocations and damage And
not merely to money boys
Image-Theme 1 The Mundanity of Money Boy Life
Feeding Boys strikingly refuses to display any images of money boys actually
engaged in sex or hustling for customers This lack of sex scenes contrasts
with Cui Zirsquoenrsquos other films which generally go out of their way to show sex
between men The only way we even know that these young men are money
boys is through the dialogue More specifically we hear the arguments that
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 445
straight people who disapprove of them engender Indeed the film is quite
chaste The one scene in which we see two people showing erotic affection
is between the older heterosexual brother of one of the money boys (XiaoBao) whose missionary goal is to convert hustlers and his girlfriend Feed-
ing Boys thus refuses to indulge viewersrsquo scopophilic desires Cui Zirsquoen teases
the viewer from the first scene Watching two men blowing up condoms
and briefly chatting about sex hints at more erotic scenes to come But they
never materialize A condom-balloon is all we ever get By thus tapping into
a gaze desirous for the perverse and then frustrating that desire Cui Zirsquoen
confronts the viewer with the need to think about representation and the
role of representation in normalizing desire mdash both in public discourse and
in his film
In place of the erotic the viewer is offered the stuff of everyday life One
recurrent image as in the first scene is of money boys on a bridge early in
the morning In one scene they playfully engage in ballet-like dance ges-
tures In another one of them displays his acrobatic skills doing severalback flips Later we see these same young men practicing taiji quan (a mar-
tial arts exercise) again early in the morning on the bridge These images
immediately bring to mind the ldquonormalrdquo populace in Chinarsquos cities who go
out each morning to do precisely these group exercises This idea is rein-
forced by the camera angle in these scenes which is a medium wide-angle
shot taking in both the bridge and the surrounding metropolis But the
bridge is also symptomatic of a moment of suspension between directionsin life or between worlds A bridge represents a gap as well as an attempt to
overcome a fissure in the landscape In one telling scene near the end of the
film a money boy begs for money on the bridge pleading with passersby
that he has given up his dissolute life and reformed himself Yet immediately
after we see him with another friend arguing with the Christian mission-
aryrsquos girlfriend stating unequivocally that even though they treated begging
as a ldquorealrdquo job no one wanted to give them money and that in todayrsquos worldpeople respect a prostitute more than a poor person The bridge thus repre-
sents two intertwined passages mdash from a socialist world of time and space
in which citizens had the leisure to do morning exercises and their lives
were not measured by money to a neoliberal world in which wealth is the
only measure of human dignity and no one mdash except those on the outside
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positions 182 Fall 2010 446
of bourgeois respectability mdash has time to spend exercising on a bridge This
passage is intertwined then with a passage from heteronormative relations
of time and space to queer time and space mdash the refusal of the relationshipbetween time work money and desire that neoliberalism has established
Another recurrent scene is of several young men playing in the park
They walk through the park in a desultory manner enjoying the day One
of them has his dog on a leash The dog is obviously well groomed and
well fed Only recently have Beijing residents been allowed to keep pets in
the city Dogs quickly became a key signifier of bourgeois cosmopolitan
accomplishment Why shouldnrsquot money boys be allowed to have them too
In the film the pet belies the idea that money boys lead an unstable dirty
and unreliable life as many believe Moreover it forces open the cluster of
oppositions between respectable and degraded desires in which bourgeois
heterosexual family life goes together with accoutrements like pets while
prostitution is supposed to represent nothing but lack
Other scenes reinforce the sense that money boys are like everyone else inthe way they go about the stuff of everyday life We see them singing in a
karaoke bar playing with a young boy on a playground and having a meal
with their families These young men are portrayed as neither angels nor
demons They are neither ecstatic nor suicidal But the film makes clear that
they live on the margins and have only one another for support
In only a few scenes do these money boys talk about their work But even
here their conversations resemble those of anyone who has ever grumbledabout his or her workplace At one point in the bar for example one of
the money boys tells the other Xiao Bao that his brother (the missionary)
has been looking for him Xiao Bao shakes his head and complains that a
customer has just ripped him off by refusing to pay In another scene in the
park during the daytime one of the money boys complains to the other that
he canrsquot seem to save any money because he always has to buy expensive
clothes to look nice for his customers The other responds that he should besmarter and get the customers to buy the clothes for him He proudly reveals
that he has saved quite a bit of money with which he plans to buy a house
for his mother
The film also playfully satirizes normalized work lives In one scene one
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 447
of the money boys says ldquoWe need structure We have to become profes-
sionalsrdquo Pointing to a gay bar behind him he says ldquoThis is our interna-
tional head officerdquo Another money boy repeats virtually the same wordsbut this time points to a twenty-story high rise building The film shifts to
an eerie scene of colorful masks then quickly to what looks to be a confer-
ence meeting in a bar Someone presumably their boss is taking roll call
They all stand to attention some of them wearing name tags as if at an aca-
demic meeting In this manner Cui Zirsquoen calls into question the relationship
between sex work and desire in China He highlights the instabilities in
how neoliberalism in China has produced social inequalities through trans-
national structures of differentially valued labors But he further demon-
strates the inextricability of sexuality bodies desire and labor To labor for
wealth is supposed to be the foremost desire in a neoliberal world Thus
normalization techniques reduce and embed desire in a structured world
of intensive labor extraction one that produces a capitalist-inflected heter-
onormativity (even as it has a nondeterministic relationship to that heter-onormativity) In other words Cui Zirsquoen deconstructs how the whole person
becomes a commodity in a neoliberal world and how that world while it
fosters desires also robs people of their desires for a full humanity Through
this humorous filmic meditation on desire Cui Zirsquoen thus provides biting
queer commentary on the reduction and devaluation of necessary labor in
postsocialist China
This commentary is most explicit in a scene near the end of the filmwhen the missionaryrsquos girlfriend pleadingly asks several money boys why
they do this work One of them responds with ten reasons ldquoOne you donrsquot
have to be president Two you donrsquot have to be a soldier Three you donrsquot
have to be a farmer and work the land Four you donrsquot have to wash dishes
Five you donrsquot have to marry and have kids Six you donrsquot have to become a
movie star Seven you donrsquot have to be a movie director Eight you donrsquot get
fat Nine you are exploited by others but donrsquot exploit others And ten youdonrsquot die because we use our bodies to satisfy both good and bad peoplersquos
desiresrdquo Through arguments with and about money boys the film thus
creates commentary on how neoliberalism in China appropriates not just
labor-power but the laborer as a desiring subject32 The queer commentary
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positions 182 Fall 2010 448
of Feeding Boys demonstrates how nonnormative alternatives lie outside of
those temporal and spatial markers of respectable Chinese experience mdash
namely marriage reproduction kinship and death The film thus chal-lenges the oppositions of respectability and shame
Image-Theme 2 How to Become a Money Boy
The thread of this image-theme most explicitly mocks normalizing judg-
ments about desire work class and sex Through this image-theme the
film represents gay male hustling as a profession as honorable as becom-
ing a lawyer or computer scientist In perhaps the most iconic scene in this
regard Feeding Boys stages an argument between Xiao Jian and his parents
that crafts a mimicry of family gatherings to decide the childrenrsquos future33
His parents appear to be respectable middle-class intellectuals The mise-
en-scene is a plushly decorated apartment in which the family lives together
The family is all seated there The father states unequivocally that this kindof work leads nowhere They bemoan the fact that they raised their son for
so many years and gave him the opportunity to do many things with his life
They insist they just want the best for him The parents are oddly calm and
though disgusted do not throw him out of the house Indeed in the next
scene he arrives early in the morning to the apartment stating boldly to his
parents that they arrived home from work earlier than him His mother
asks if he isnrsquot supposed to work the night shift and he responds that he willwork any shift The mother turns to the father and makes the pithy com-
ment ldquoSo we failed to discourage him from this line of workrdquo
In another scene in which Xiao Jian defends to Dabin his reasons for
wanting to become a money boy Cui Zirsquoen crafts a doubled-edged mock-
ery of socialist ideals as well by invoking the old socialist honor of learn-
ing from and serving the masses His satire in this regard cuts in multiple
directions It recalls not just the marginalization but the condemnationand punishment under socialism of those with inappropriate desires But
it also uses those socialist ideals to critique the neoliberal normalization of
the appropriate relationship between labor and desire Xiao Jian initiates an
argument with Dabin when he announces that he too wants to become
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 449
a money boy Xiao Jian is insistent ldquoI want to sell my body like Xiao Bao
[Dabinrsquos brother]rdquo He then explains that when Xiao Bao disappeared he
went to check out the male prostitution business ldquoMost of these youngstersare from villages and from very poor family backgrounds I was born into
a happy family I want to join the hustlers and change their social statusrdquo
Dabin retorts ldquoCan you make those people happy Itrsquos all about making
millionaires officials and rich guys happyrdquo ldquoYou told me that we have to
serve the humble Now I want to become one of themrdquo replies Xiao Jian
ldquoI want to become the lowest of the low together with robbers hooligans
petty thieves ex-convicts homosexuals and hustlers I want to stay at the
bottomrdquo Dabin then launches into classical Chinese metaphors ldquoWater
flows downward but man soars heavenwardrdquo Xiao Jian has an answer to
that as well insisting that man is also part of nature and is also capable of
running downhill ldquoItrsquos only natural and makes things more equalrdquo
The visual logics of this scene provide the ironic counter-commentary
During the entire scene Xiao Jian is fully dressed while we watch Dabin halfnaked as he dresses after a shower The viewer becomes engaged in the erot-
ics of watching Dabin slowly lather lotion over his entire body then pull on
tight-fitting underwear The camera lingers on his well built body By the end
of the scene Dabin is still half naked The erotics of the scene are heightened
by the effect of a mirror that stages Xiao Jian in reverse That is Xiao Jian is
seated to the left of Dabin but we only view him through the mirror where
he appears on Dabinrsquos right while Dabin occupies center stage as the half- naked figure of erotic righteousness The mirror clues us in to a split between
the dialogue and the visual logics This split reflects back to the spectator the
hypocritical contradictions in postsocialist enticements of desire
Image-Theme 3 The Trials and Tribulations of Missionary Work
Early in the film we see someone driving through Beijing in a nice carHe is a good looking serious young man It turns out to be Dabin search-
ing for Xiao Bao his younger brother Dabin walks into a bar looking for
him without success He proceeds to follow one of the money boys into the
bathroom and argues with him saying that he doesnrsquot understand why his
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positions 182 Fall 2010 450
job is so attractive ldquoHow could it attract you How can you enjoy it without
getting tiredrdquo The money boy calmly responds ldquoThe job has three advan-
tages First you earn money Second freedom Third you can fool aroundwith different peoplerdquo When Dabin aggressively asks if there are any dis-
advantages the money boy responds ldquoFirst you get sick easily Second itrsquos
a waste of condoms and KY jelly Third you donrsquot get enough sleeprdquo Dabin
cries ldquoIf you keep doing this you will get AIDSrdquo Thus opens the third
image-theme the heterosexual Christian evangelist who attempts to convert
money boys
Dabinrsquos idea of conversion conflates normative sexual desire and Chris-
tianity Thus in the next major scene in which he appears he argues with
two money boys telling them that birds in the sky donrsquot sell their bodies
but they have food to eat that lotus flowers donrsquot sell their bodies but they
are beautiful that dogs and earthworms donrsquot sell their bodies but they live
vigorous lives so why should they sell their bodies He then offers to give
them the Bible Cui Zirsquoen was raised as a Catholic in the northeast city of
Dalian In his previous films he took a Derek Jarman approach and made
symbolic Jesus figures suffer the slings and arrows of heterosexual rage He
tried to reconcile homoerotic desire with what he viewed as the true essence
of Catholicism In Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen has taken a distinctive approach
Here he asserts that those who use Christianity to suppress nonnormative
desires have a hopeless case on their hands Moreover the true essence of
Christianity is ambiguous Perhaps it really is a source of oppression ratherthan as in his previous films a potential guide for love
This ambiguity is underscored in the next major scene in which Dabin
attempts to win converts among money boys He is reading the Bible together
with his younger ldquoChristian brotherrdquo Xiao Jian who has also chosen to be a
money boy Xiao Jian appears earnest He asks ldquoDo you think Jesus would
like that I mean would he like the fact that men and women and men and
men and women and women have sexrdquo Dabin responds ldquoMen and menand women and men have sexual relationships That means that God gave
them their sexual desires and afterwards even gave them the ability to have
sex So who gave men and women the ability to have sex God did The
fact that God gave us this ability proves that he allows us to do itrdquo But the
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 451
young man persists ldquoYou said men and women do it for procreation If men
have sex with men they canrsquot procreate How do you explain thisrdquo Dabin
is stumped ldquoI have to turn to the Bible again for this questionrdquoThe moral inconclusiveness of the Bible and the ability to glean multiple
interpretations of desire from it leads the viewer to understand that there is
a distinction between heteronormativity and the normalization of desire
Strikingly Dabin does not condemn these young men for having sex with
other men He does not in other words condemn sexual desire tout court
or even homoerotic desire What he condemns is the exchange of sex for
money
Dabin is passionate in his missionary work In one scene we see him
standing on the bridge where money boys gather Christian Bible held up
high intoning his plea to them ldquoThe end of the world is near and you still
sell your bodiesrdquo No one speaks to him his travails seem fruitless Dabin on
the bridge recalls by contrast the money boys on the bridge But whereas
the money boys were shot in mid-range at wide angle Dabin is shot from
below with a zoom lens that makes him appear more distant as if he is high
up on a pulpit or a cross
Somewhat unexpectedly Dabin takes seriously ill and dies His death
recalls that of Jesus of course dying for othersrsquo sins but there is a distinct
ambiguity in Dabinrsquos death Does he die for othersrsquo sins or has he suffered
under his own illusions Is his the work of a savior or do normalized people
with judgments of others suffer because of their judgmental values Thefilm never resolves this ambiguity
On his deathbed Dabin pleads with his girlfriend to take over his work
to preach the gospel and save male prostitutes She promises to do so and
indeed in the next scene we see her standing on the same bridge holding
up the same Bible intoning monotonously ldquoDonrsquot sell anymorerdquo In the end
the girlfriend also ends up exhausted and sick in bed having similarly sacri-
ficed herself to a hopeless cause
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positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
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positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 429
also let desire drop out of the picture because they couldnrsquot really figure out
within a certain classical Marxism how to study the myriad forms desire
takes Thus Donald Morton for example establishes a dichotomy between
need and desire and asserts that need is what we excuse the pun need to
study but desire is merely an ideological by-product of capitalism9 It was
difficult to get past such homophobia and so the debate petered out after
both sides had had their say The debate was ironic because it was based on
a basic opposition between the instrumental and the affective that which is
instrumental belongs to a study of capitalism proper mdash the rational subjectwith needs mdash while that which is affective is relegated to a realm that is not
part of capitalist relations of production proper I say it is ironic to base a
critique of queer studies on the instrumental versus the affective because as
Marshall Sahlins pointed out a long time ago this opposition was produced
out of capitalism itself10 Queer studies on the other hand has not really
figured out how to get past the homophobia implicit in so many of these
critiques and analyze the relationship between capitalism and desire Myhope is that this essay contributes to bridging that division
The desiring subject has taken center stage in China because of the his-
torically specific allegory constructed to reject Maoism This allegory revises
historical memory through the emancipatory tale that Maoism suppressed
a natural human nature and that by rejecting the socialist state people can
unshackle their gendered and sexual selves11 Given the specificity of this
history mdash and its revisionist historiography mdash the goal in China appearsto be not merely to end the suppression of so-called innate gendered and
sexual selves but the positive development of subjects with elaborate sexual
material and affective self-interests After the June 983092th crisis of legitimacy
in 983089983097983096983097 the constitution of a postsocialist humanity in China entailed the
intensification of this goal in order to create cosmopolitan citizens of a
post ndash Cold War world12
For these historical reasons homoeroticism has created a great deal of
ambivalence in China This ambivalence is evident in public culture debates
about well-known legal cases concerning homoerotic desire and gay identity
as well as in informal conversation13 Indeed homoeroticism plays a cen-
tral role in public discussions about licit and illicit or proper and improper
desires There are no laws against homosexuality in China But some con-
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 430
demn homosexuality in the name of Chinese morality while others who do
not identify as gay proclaim that although they do not understand homo-
sexuality everyone should be free to express their desires This complex situ-
ation means that lesbians and gay men provide a particularly compelling
and ambivalent challenge to postsocialist constructions of human nature
Lesbians and gay men in China could view themselves as standing at the
forefront of a universal humanity in the expression of their desires Yet they
must struggle with public debates in China about the differentiation among
those deemed appropriate subjects of desire and those cast as inappropriateThe instabilities inherent in the experimental nature of Chinarsquos neoliberal
reforms means that these ldquodesiring-actionsrdquo to borrow a term from Neferti
Tadiar were not determined in advance14 Nonetheless these debates revolved
around attempts to draw a clear boundary between normative and nonnor-
mative desires both within and outside gay communities in China
Money boys thus became a lightening rod among gay men in their efforts
to grapple with homophobia and the proper class-inflected ways to be adesiring subject in this postsocialist world As queer theory has taught us
desires normalize and in so doing constitute those who are also excluded
and marked as nonnormative15 Queer theorists of color have challenged
and expanded this canon in order to make compelling arguments about the
critical role of postcolonial histories of racism and diaspora in construct-
ing normative desires among lesbians and gay men16 Queer theorists have
also argued that normalizations require a great deal of effort to make themeffective and in that work gaps and fissures lead to unexpected outcomes
Gay men who condemn money boys marginalize them as a way to make
their own desires appear simultaneously cosmopolitan (in its contemporary
neoliberal guise) and appropriately Chinese But they sometimes have dif-
ficulty in crafting absolute distinctions between themselves and these ldquooth-
ersrdquo even as they use these others to make themselves appear to have the
more appropriate desires befitting a postsocialist China17 Thus I locate an
anxiety expressed about the ldquomoney boyrdquo as a production of the market
economy that threatens the ontological certainty of the desiring individual
The fact that the unique term ldquomoney boyrdquo is used to refer to these
men mdash rather than say ldquogigolordquo or ldquomale prostituterdquo mdash is not to be dis-
missed as incidental but bears a critical relation to commodification and the
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 431
anxieties attendant upon the loss or the blurring of the boundaries between
epistemic zones After repeatedly hearing disparaging remarks about money
boys I decided I should talk to money boys themselves I was hesitant at
first because I was not sure how one would go about asking someone ques-
tions about their engagement in an activity that is so roundly condemned I
began to ask some of my gay male friends in Beijing to introduce me to any
money boys they knew While I am sure there are men who sell sex to other
men mdash one stroll through Beijingrsquos famous Dongdan Park makes that activ-
ity obvious mdash the men I was introduced to as money boys all refused thatlabel They argued that their actions did not represent a simple equation of
sex for money18 As I describe below their rejection of the money boy label is
more than simply a matter of denial These men had a much more complex
interpretation of their activities that as with other gay men broadened out
into a consideration of the place of desire in contemporary China They led
me to understand that their activities were as much an intimate part of the
transformations that had moved China away from socialism and toward aworld of what I would call neoliberal cosmopolitanism as any other activi-
ties centered around desire Indeed their analyses of their own lives and the
debates among gay men over money boys led me to realize that the question
of desire lies at the very heart of these transformations
I offer two ldquoscenesrdquo that develop my arguments about not simply the
views of those labeled money boys but also the cultural anxieties of other gay
men about money boys That is my intent is not just to describe so-calledmoney boysrsquo attempts to decouple money and sex but other gay menrsquos fears
about their own inabilities to do so the reasons why this distinction comes
to matter at all and the politically and culturally specific context that shapes
these anxieties The first scene occurred in my room in Beijing when one of
my gay male friends introduced me to someone he labeled a money boy The
disagreements that ensued in the conversation exemplify the anxious pursuit
of neoliberal respectability among certain gay men The second scene is a
film by the well-known queer filmmaker Cui Zirsquoen Through satire and
subversion Cui Zirsquoen challenges gay men about their desires for neoliberal
normalization
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positions 182 Fall 2010 432
Scene One
It was a spring evening in 983089983097983097983096 Ah Zhuang had agreed to introduce meto someone he said was a money boy19 I had first met Ah Zhuang through
other foreign lesbians and gay men living in Beijing Then in his early for-
ties Ah Zhuang was a radiologist Ah Zhuang considered himself to be
someone who had always known he was gay He had never married as have
so many other gay men but lived at home taking care of his mother He
also considered himself to be part of a long-lost line of aristocratic Mongo-
lians through his fatherrsquos ancestors Ah Zhuang had embraced the newlyemergent gay scene with unabashed enthusiasm Though many older men
who have sex with other men shunned that scene and given their histori-
cal experiences of harassment feared exposure Ah Zhuang in contrast
worked on the gay hotline attended all the salon discussions met with psy-
chiatrists to argue with them about the normality of homosexuality and
established himself as an ldquoelderrdquo among what were mostly young gay men
in their twenties He loved dispensing advice Ah Zhuang felt it was critical
for all people who have a homoerotic orientation to identify themselves as
gay and embrace that identity His experience of having been arrested in the
983089983097983096983088s for approaching another man for sex in the public bathrooms made
him all the more adamant that normalizing a gay identity would put an
end to the police harassment to which he had been subjected20 On the other
hand he felt equally vehement about the need to not expose onersquos family to
social condemnation and thus he felt it important to be discreet
Ah Zhuang had decided ideas about what constitutes a proper gay iden-
tity These ideas were made most apparent to me on the evening in question
That night Ah Zhuang arrived at my room with a young man named Ah
Pei Ah Zhuang introduced him as his former boyfriend I was immediately
confused I thought he had said he would introduce me to a money boy
And if this person was his former boyfriend was he telling me he had beeninvolved with a money boy As the conversation developed things turned
out to be more complex For Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang argued during the
entire evening about whether Ah Pei was indeed a money boy at all Ah
Zhuang stayed for the whole conversation in part because Ah Pei has a very
thick Beijing working-class accent and I sometimes found it hard to follow
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 433
him Ah Zhuang helpfully repeated some of Ah Peirsquos statements to make
sure I understood But Ah Zhuang also kept inserting his own views inter-
rupting Ah Pei at every turn
We began the conversation in a desultory manner with my questions
about Ah Peirsquos background He explained that his parents both had had a
hard life when they were young before the 983089983097983092983097 revolution His father was
from the Northeast and had always had to move around looking for work
But fortunately he had ended up in Beijing working in a factory under
the Central Television Bureau constructing television reception towers Hismother worked in a radio factory When his father fell ill with cancer Ah
Pei had taken over his factory position At the time of course job inheri-
tance in state-run factories was seen as a privilege Then Ah Peirsquos second
brother and sister-in-law also came to work there By the time of our con-
versation Ah Pei had taken what was then the risky step of abandoning his
secure position in the factory Perhaps he had the foresight to realize that
factory workersrsquo living conditions were declining under economic reformIndeed by the time of our conversation half the factory had been let go and
were on unemployment Ah Pei had become a taxi driver He was then in
his mid-thirties
Perhaps I was moving too slowly toward the ostensible topic of the eve-
ning Or perhaps he had his own agenda In any case Ah Zhuang suddenly
interjected with a question that abruptly changed the direction of our con-
versation ldquoWhat are your feelings when you are with womenrdquo Ah Pei pro-ceeded to tell a story about his factory ldquoAll the women I have encountered
have been from our factoryrdquo He then described how at the age of 983089983097 he had
his first sexual relationship with an older married woman after another
woman he was apprenticed to introduced them to each other She too was
an apprentice According to Ah Pei she had seduced him Prior to that he
had no interest in sex with women at least not women his age They carried
on their affair for over a year The womanrsquos husband never knew he worked
in another factory The main point that Ah Pei stressed in telling this story
was that with an older person he finally felt secure Since then he added
he has always wanted to be with older people
When he first made this assertion I did not pick up on its larger implica-
tion in relation to the issue of money boys Only later when Ah Zhuang was
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positions 182 Fall 2010 434
arguing with him did I realize that since that first affair with a woman
Ah Pei had been mainly with older men who took care of him mdash including
Ah Zhuang In talking about his first affair Ah Pei thus traced his inter-
est in older men to an emotional and sexual history of feeling comfortable
with older people Ah Zhuang as we will see reduced Ah Peirsquos story to
one of opportunism For at this point Ah Zhuang sarcastically interjected
a counterpoint to Ah Peirsquos insistence that this older woman had taken the
initiative ldquoMaybe the first time but then what about the second and third
ones Because yoursquove told me that there were quite a few including the topleader of the factory And even the managerrsquos wife Didnrsquot you take some
of the initiative in these later encounters I would really like to know what
exactly is your psychological attitude when you are with older peoplerdquo Ah
Pei ignored the first part of Ah Zhuangrsquos question answering that with
older people he feels particularly able to relax and let go
Here we find the first point of contention between Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang
over whether Ah Pei fits into the category of money boy Ah Pei tried to tellme a story of his psychological and emotional history He feels that older
people take the initiative with him which puts him at ease Ah Zhuang on
the other hand tried to turn Ah Peirsquos actions into self-seeking advantage Ah
Zhuang was not objecting so much to a seeming bisexuality that might make
a gay identity more ambiguous as to what in his view was naked opportun-
ism that did not distinguish between genders Ah Zhuang elaborated on his
view when I asked Ah Pei how he felt starting an affair with this womanAh Pei responded about the sex saying that looking back on it he could
see that he didnrsquot feel entirely comfortable because she did everything he
didnrsquot have to budge She helped him with everything Ah Zhuang then
interjected ldquoChina has a way of saying this this woman served ( cihou) him
Thatrsquos a clearer way to put it Chinarsquos traditional view is that the man should
take care of ( cihou) the woman and make her feel comfortable In his case
he made the woman do it so that he could feel comfortablerdquo This situation
in Ah Zhuangrsquos view was evidently one clear marker of a money boy Other-
wise why would a man not act like the man that he should be Why would
a man let himself be treated like a woman Ah Zhuangrsquos decided views on
appropriate gender attributes reproduce the dominant mode of delineating
the boundary between normative and nonnormative desire through gen-
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 435
der His interpretation is testimony to a contradictory antinomy between a
fluidity of desire which is supposed to change continuously in line with a
free trade cosmopolitan market economy and a renaturalization of a binary
gender in its ldquorecoveryrdquo from Maoist suppression
Ah Zhuangrsquos views also echo a longer history of gender and sexuality
in China in which as Keith MacMahon has argued one of the main signs
of male privilege is the polygamous ability to have and manage multiple
sexual partners21 Ah Zhuang as a medical doctor is undoubtedly famil-
iar with traditional medical prescriptions for male potency and the needto retain male energy Moreover as Judith Farquhar has argued these tra-
ditional medical texts have been recovered and popularized in post-Mao
China through a discourse on excess and deficiency that is simultaneously
an allegory about Chinarsquos past and future22 Ah Zhuangrsquos critique of Ah Pei
reflects an understanding that to ldquotake care ofrdquo a woman sexually means
that the male is in charge of managing pleasure because he needs to control
the depletion of his own energies Clearly in Ah Zhuangrsquos view Ah Pei hasnot followed the proper prescriptions and therefore is not contributing to the
proper development of social life in China
Ah Pei then proceeded to tell a story of the factory as a site of sexual excess
Rather than paint a conventional portrait of a large state-run factory as a
place of hard work alternating with boredom Ah Pei offered a tale in which
it seemed a matter of course for people to develop their sexual proclivities in
such an oppressive situation Ah Pei explained for example how he startedsleeping with one woman Her husband had been arrested and thrown into
prison for sleeping around with the younger women in the factory His wife
the woman Ah Pei had an affair with brought the women home for him The
husband was arrested however not owing to the moral probity of other fac-
tory leaders but according to Ah Pei because another factory leader wanted
to have sex with one of the young women and was jealous of this man and
so reported him to the public security bureau When this manrsquos wife invitedhim over to her home he figured he wouldnrsquot get into any trouble having an
affair with her By implication Ah Pei was explaining how he had come to
have such a free and easy approach to sex But Ah Zhuang used this story to
conclude that Ah Pei had a profound lack of ethical sense when establishing
relationships with people particularly men
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positions 182 Fall 2010 436
Ah Zhuang then goaded Ah Pei into explaining his theory about lack of
father love Ah Pei told me about his violent father who drank too much and
hit his children Then one day when Ah Pei was a teenager he stood up to
his father But he always felt the keen loss of having a fatherrsquos love Thatrsquos
why he thinks he feels particularly comfortable with older men Ah Zhuang
promptly disagreed ldquoI donrsquot agree with this that a gay is someone who lacks
father love so they go in search of father love or someone older23 If his
view is correct then I am suspicious of whether he is really a gayrdquo Ah Pei
responded indirectly by saying that he knows for sure he will never get mar-
ried that even though no one living near him knows he is gay and thinks he
goes around with women he feels most comfortable with men Ah Zhuang
has a decided view of the correct way to be gay one that contains a normal-
izing pressure to present only positive or ldquonaturalrdquo reasons why one would
turn out to be gay This naturalization of gay identity parallels the natu-
ralization of the ability to be a desiring subject in post-Mao China Both
naturalizations create hierarchies of inclusion and exclusion that articulatewith the neoliberal naturalization of social inequality In contrast Ah Pei
implied that there are varied ways of having homoerotic encounters and
involvements His story highlights contingency history and experience The
inequalities in his story are class- and gender-based
Ah Pei then launched into a story of how he started to get involved with
men He had come into Tiananmen Square one evening and met some-
one there Ah Zhuang interrupted and said that Ah Pei had still been withwomen after that But Ah Pei responded that though he had been with
women after his first man he nonetheless preferred men He continued his
story ldquoI walked by Zhongshan Park and went to the [public] toilet I saw a
lot of men who went in but didnrsquot come out I just stood there didnrsquot dare
to go in and piss What were they doing in there Curiosity got the better of
me I went in and found two men playing around After that I went there
every day Thatrsquos how I met a guy Thatrsquos how I started I was just a littleover twenty years oldrdquo He began to meet a lot of men through that public
toilet finally meeting his first real lover Lao Chen (Old Chen) With Lao
Chen ldquoI finally started a new life I had a homerdquo
Ah Pei explained about the suffering that he had endured in order to be
with men One evening he was nabbed by the police He lied and said he
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 437
didnrsquot understand what the other man wanted from him The police officer
made him do hard labor for a couple of hours but let him go after he saw
Ah Pei crying The police thought he looked very young Here Ah Zhuang
interjected that he too had thought Ah Pei looked much younger than his
years when he first met him ldquoWhen he meets up with other peoplerdquo Ah
Zhuang concluded ldquohe uses his brains Hersquos good at performingrdquo In other
words Ah Zhuang implied that At Pei had perfected the art of deception
When Ah Pei described his relationship with his first long-term male
lover Lao Chen he and Ah Zhuang began to argue in earnest Ah Zhuangset out the terms by stating that Lao Chen basically ldquokeptrdquo ( yang) Ah Pei
that he took care of him in every way24 He asserted his privileged access to
the truth of the situation by telling me that Lao Chen was a dear friend of
his and it was actually through Lao Chen that he had met Ah Pei He also
set up Lao Chenrsquos class background from a wealthy family in Shanghai Lao
Chen was privileged to lead the life of a playboy However according to Ah
Zhuang Lao Chen was also a deep thinker he had graduated from FuDanUniversity (the most prestigious university in Shanghai) and Ah Zhuang
had spent many pleasurable evenings talking to him about politics Thus
before Ah Pei had a chance to get very far into his version Ah Zhuang had
already established a clear class division between himself and Lao Chen on
the one side and Ah Pei on the other This division Ah Zhuang implied
should also reflect whose version of this social and biographical history was
reliableAgainst this weighty class backdrop Ah Pei struggled to put forth his
perspective Lao Chen had raised him true but he had given Lao Chen
great sexual satisfaction taking the initiative to do so He had also paid his
price by doing a lot of things for him such as taking care of Lao Chenrsquos
wife and other friends when they visited from Shanghai ldquoThat was money
I spent out of my own pocket I feel I treated his family well Hersquos older
than me and has a lot of money I admit thatrdquo In Ah Peirsquos view Lao Chenand he had a fair exchange Lao Chen had the money to buy things for Ah
Pei who in turn gave Lao Chen a satisfying sexual and emotional life In
Ah Peirsquos view it was through Lao Chenrsquos lavish expenditures on him that he
began to have true feelings of love for Lao Chen This issue of true feelings
was critical in Ah Peirsquos view in distinguishing himself from a money boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 438
Ah Pei further asserted that unlike money boys he never stuck out his hand
and asked for money People have always offered to buy things for him he
said but he never asked for anything ldquoI have always relied on myselfrdquo
Ah Zhuang quickly jumped in at this point ldquoIf I consider him to be a
money boy itrsquos because hersquos extremely intelligent in this regard Thatrsquos why
I think todayrsquos conversation is especially interesting We could talk about it
for a long time Lao Chen shed a lot of tears over him So he is a little dif-
ferent than the money boys at Half and Half [the gay bar] Do they have
these kind of money boys in the United States Sometimes he really did payfor things himself and their relationship was real I see it this way Hersquos a
little different than those others He still has a little feeling involvedrdquo David
Eng (this volume) astutely evaluates the difficulties in neoliberal modernity
of distinguishing between what he calls tokens of affection and tokens of
exchange
After Ah Zhuangrsquos explication Ah Pei did not directly address the com-
parison of himself with money boys Instead he inarticulately reasserted hisview that he had never stuck out his hand asking for money and had always
relied on himself Given Ah Zhuangrsquos blunt assertion I wanted Ah Pei to
respond I asked whether he saw himself as like those men in any way He
was direct ldquoI am absolutely not like themrdquo Ah Zhuang laughed furiously
ldquoI never stuck out my hand with Ah Zhuang eitherrdquo he replied to the laugh
ldquoLet Ah Zhuang tell you himself Do you admit it Ah Zhuang liked me so
he bought me things My old man [his current lover] is like this too Irsquom notvery smart Irsquom actually stupid my level is low but Lao Chen told him I was
clever Where am I cleverrdquo
I then bluntly asked him if he only sought out lovers who had money ldquoAh
Zhuang is a clear examplerdquo he replied ldquoAh Zhuang has nowhere near the
money of these other men but I still tell him I learned a lot from him I
used to have a foul mouth I still thank him for these past four years Thatrsquos
why I still keep a relationship with him no matter with gay friends or notI always introduce himrdquo
Ah Zhuang directed Ah Pei to explain how his relationship with Lao
Chen ended Ah Pei told a story of how Lao Chen began to see someone
else and did not want Ah Pei to come home anymore Ah Pei was furious
and refused to let him go He did all sorts of things to stop the relationship
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 439
from ending including threatening to expose Lao Chen at work Lao Chen
would certainly have lost his job not only because of homophobia but as
Ah Pei explained because he was already in hot water with the Party due
to his outspoken criticisms Ah Zhuang jumped in to point out how Ah
Peirsquos behavior with Lao Chen provided yet one more set of money boy sig-
nifiers ldquoIrsquoll explainrdquo insisted Ah Zhuang after Ah Pei had presented his
perspective ldquoFrom his point of view he wanted to occupy a position This
position was incredibly important to him Only with this position could he
have money Now it was very possible that this position could be taken overby someone else So thatrsquos why he wanted to take revenge Lao Chen came
looking for me to ask me what he should do lsquoServes you rightrsquo I said He
asked lsquoMaybe if I give him some money then he would be willing to leave
me alonersquo He asked me how much I said lsquoI donrsquot knowrsquo How could I
know how much money he should give him At the time I told him lsquoYou
can end things but you have to think of a way to do itrsquo rdquo Ah Pei diffidently
responded that he hadnrsquot wanted to let go of Lao Chen because yes he leda comfortable life with him and also he had feelings for him For Ah Pei
the fact that his life was comfortable with Lao Chen was quite distinct from
a money boyrsquos desire to be paid for sex But Ah Zhuang saw them as one
and the same Finally Lao Chen left for Canada promising to bring Ah Pei
with him after he had arrived there ldquoI was naiverdquo Ah Pei said because he
had believed him
Surprisingly Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang never explained to me much oftheir own relationship Perhaps in the end they sought to preserve some of
the fragments of their friendship They ended their conversation with me by
briefly mentioning Ah Peirsquos latest relationship with an older man someone
from France whom he had met in a bar one evening Ah Pei doesnrsquot speak
any French and this man doesnrsquot speak any Chinese Ah Zhuang translated
for them when necessary This man who worked for the French airlines
was planning to bring Ah Pei to France with him They had already appliedfor his visa In subsequent conversations Ah Zhuang derided Ah Peirsquos plans
How would Ah Pei make a living in France What could he do He would
have a hard time learning the language et cetera It was as if to say Ah Pei
did not deserve the special privilege of living in a Western country
One could dismiss this whole conversation as the obvious denouement of
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positions 182 Fall 2010 440
a relationship that had ended bitterly Indeed Ah Zhuang had thrown Ah
Pei out of his house But Ah Zhuangrsquos insistence that Ah Pei was a money
boy reflected more than mere bitterness By rejecting Ah Peirsquos claims that
he too could place himself in the category of ldquogay manrdquo Ah Zhuang was
attempting to establish a hegemonic definition of respectable gayness For
Ah Zhuang this respectability adhered in appropriate gender sensibilities
class embodiment the proper balance between dependency and equality
a strict separation of money and love and a worldliness that only those of
a certain class stature should aspire to display Ah Zhuang was trying to
establish what Lisa Duggan has called the ldquonew homonormativityrdquo Dug-
gan argues that this new homonormativity is the equivalent of neoliberal
politics in the sexual realm25 These sexual politics uphold rather than con-
test dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions and promise
a depoliticized gay culture While Duggan concerns herself only with the
United States and does not consider transnational queer politics we can still
consider how her argument illuminates the sexual politics of someone likeAh Zhuang Ah Zhuang hopes to make gay identity respectable within
the terms of postsocialist neoliberalism The fact that neoliberalism has
made desire the central realm for producing proper citizen-subjects made
Ah Zhuangrsquos discourse all the more fraught with anxiety Ah Peirsquos own
intimacy with a well-to-do foreign gay man further goaded Ah Zhuang to
condemn Ah Peirsquos actions as inappropriate in terms of sexual gendered and
culturalnational identity For Ah Pei was going abroad to live in a Westerncountry long before Ah Zhuang would have the opportunity to do so
While Ah Peirsquos views do not simply reverse this moral equation nor do
they exemplify resistance to homonormativity in any straightforward sense
they provide an incipient means of gaining insight into the techniques of neo-
liberal normalizations as well as their instabilities Ah Zhuangrsquos condemna-
tion of Ah Peirsquos plans to move to France with his lover reveals the extent to
which the transnationalism that made Ah Peirsquos current relationship possiblechanges how ldquoinappropriaterdquo desires manifest themselves in the postsocialist
era It was after all only after the transformations in the last few decades
that a person from France would come to live and work again in China and
that an ldquoinappropriaterdquo desire could now also be a transnational desire The
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 441
fact that they do not speak each otherrsquos language exemplifies how neoliberal-
ism has allowed for new possibilities in the manner in which people desire
each other not just which kinds of desires are legitimate but which kinds of
desires are sustainable through which kinds of technological aids and socio-
economic conditions and across which kinds of borders Yet in Ah Zhuangrsquos
view someone of Ah Peirsquos class background could only succeed in such an
achievement by entangling the desires for money sex and love rather than
keeping them separate However the separations between entrepreneurialism
and intimacy that Ah Zhuang wants to establish for respectable gayness are
difficult to maintain26 Neoliberal cosmopolitanism appears to be all about
entrepreneurial savvy Yet there is more than one way to be an entrepreneur
And there is more than one way to be a nonnormalized or even antinormal-
ized gay subject27
Scene 2
Two young men are squatting at the edge of a bridge passing the time by
blowing up condoms ldquoThis way it looks like a dick It changes into breasts
when it gets bigger The breast changes into a dick and the dick into a
breastrdquo one of them says and laughs As they continue to play with their
condom-balloons the other one asks ldquoDo you like the feeling of being pen-
etrated or the feeling when you stick it inrdquo ldquoBothrdquo comes the answer
This scene opens Feeding Boys Ayaya ( Aiyaya Qu Buru) a queer filmabout male hustlers or money boys by the well-known experimental film-
maker Cui Zirsquoen28 This first scene immediately cuts to a contrasting scene
Two men are in a small closed room filled with computer and filmmaking
equipment The older one is in the background sitting in front of his com-
puter The other much younger is in the forefront of the screen The per-
son manipulating the computer equipment says ldquoZaizai [characterrsquos name]
this theme is for you It might not completely match your character in thefilm The distance makes it more precise Do you have any objectionsrdquo The
young man standing in the forefront of the screen has a somber look on his
face He refuses to speak The camera angle is an extreme close-up enlarg-
ing his face to fill the screen and nearly blocking out a view of the film-
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positions 182 Fall 2010 442
maker The effect is of a split screen We hear the filmmaker from behind
urging him several times ldquoSay somethingrdquo But the other refuses to speak
The quick juxtaposition of these two scenes and their contrasting mise-
en-scene prefigure the major motifs in Feeding Boys Ayaya The opposition
is established visually in the lighting camera angles locations and position-
ing of the characters The first scene presents characters who we will later
come to realize are money boys though at this point their identities are
unclear The scene mixes irony and pathos freedom and marginalization
The ironic and lighthearted humor of the dialogue contrasts with the curi-
ous positioning of the two young men They are at the edge of a deserted
bridge in the very early morning sunlight The camera places both of them
in the center of the screen in a medium close-up thus highlighting rela-
tionality but also distance or alienation The bantering friendship of the
two young men is visually contrasted with their distance from the rest of
the population and from the normative workday Yet this alienation is also
a liberation from the very same mdash the freedom to play at any hour the lackof confinement in space This scene represents what Judith Halberstam has
called ldquoqueer time and spacerdquo Halberstam argues that queer time and space
are ldquowillfully eccentric modes of beingrdquo that challenge heteronormativity by
providing alternative relations to time and space29
The very next scene reminds us that what we have just seen and what we
will view in the rest of the film is a set of representations The question of
how to represent money boys and who can and should speak in their nameis highlighted in this film The filmmaker character in the second scene
is choosing the theme music not the young man The dark closed room
and the split screen raise the question of whether and how the young man
can escape the framing of his life by the other The silence of the young
man mdash another money boy mdash recalls Gayatri Spivakrsquos famous dictum that
the subaltern cannot speak by which she meant that only traces of their
own interpretations of their lives remains in the texts written about them bycolonial elites30
Feeding Boys is a continual juxtaposition of these two types of images mdash
one of money boys displaying a queer sociality and the other of someone mdash
whether the filmmaker character a Christian missionary out to save money
boys his girlfriend who takes over his work or the parents of an aspir-
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 443
ing money boy mdash speaking for or about them Although the film does not
romanticize their lives the money boy characters not only exceed but also
challenge these representations of them both their content and their mode
of representation They continually frustrate attempts to represent capture
or change them Zaizai for example later demands to choose his own theme
music an insistence that frustrates the filmmaker who claims it will ruin
his film Their queerness emerges in these challenges
With Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen enters the larger debates that have central-
ized the question of desire in postsocialist China Cui Zirsquoen uses experimen-
tal visual logics that blur documentary and fiction and that refuse narrative
linearity or closure to challenge not only the specific judgments about money
boys among gay men but the entire apparatus of normalization in China
that tries to delimit desire Cui Zirsquoen addresses the specificity of neoliberal-
ism in China by challenging the hegemonic articulations between Chinese
culture and proper desire on the one hand and labor money and desire on
the other The film has a carnivalesque quality reinforced by the hand-heldcamera techniques which is at once somber and playful It subverts bour-
geois heterosexuality as that which subtends Chinese culture by robbing it of
its glory The film represents money boys as people with an integral human-
ity who take the full measure of their lives while the people who judge
them in the name of neoliberal desires Chinese morality or Christianity
appear damaged filled with contradictory desires themselves or just plain
boring The film thus further subverts postsocialist normalizing desires bydirecting our gaze away from what many think is perverse or rather by
making the normal perverse and the perverse normal The people to be
pitied in this film are the heterosexuals who condemn the hustlersrsquo profes-
sion They are the ones who wither and die Hustlers in contrast have time
to play and enjoy life Yet Cui Zirsquoen does not indulge in a simple decon-
structive reversal Hustlers suffer too but mainly from the condemnation
and exploitation they experience as a result of the hypocritical desires of theheteronormative world
Although Feeding Boys seems to establish a debate between heterosexu-
als and gay male hustlers the themes raised in the film rehearse anxieties
similar to those I presented in my first scene that occur among gay men
Are hustlers respectable or do they sully the good name of other gay men
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positions 182 Fall 2010 444
Do they deserve sympathy or condemnation Are they gay or just exploit-
ing vulnerable gay men Are their desires to be celebrated or condemned
Are they appropriate for Chinarsquos postsocialist neoliberal future or do they
represent the degradation of that future Feeding Boys refuses these dichoto-
mous terms Rather than simply reverse their valence the film addresses
other queer questions that displace these normalizing ones How should
we engage our desires How can this engagement lead to nonnormative
lives How does class inflect desire How can nonnormative desires chal-
lenge class-based temporalities What is the relationship between money
and sex Finally what is the role of religion
Feeding Boys loosely revolves around the elusive search of a Christian het-
erosexual brother Dabin for his younger brother Xiao Bao who has dis-
appeared into the money boy life During his search he discovers that one
of his younger ldquoChristian brothersrdquo Xiao Jian has also decided to become
a money boy to practice Christian love Juxtaposing money boysrsquo serious
banter with the normalizing judgments of others Feeding Boys weaves inand out of several recurrent image-themes the everyday life of hustlers
Xiao Jianrsquos exploration of how to become a hustler the missionizing zeal of
Dabin to dissuade hustlers from continuing in their profession and finally
the desire to represent and normalize the lives of hustlers Throughout
Feeding Boys jumps between these image-themes thus putting them in
dialogue with one another The experimental filmrsquos refusal to present a
linear narrative mirrors the refusal by the money boy characters to accedeto the normalizing judgments of others Thus the form to echo Hayden
White is also the content31 Cui Zirsquoenrsquos filmmaking techniques warn us
that endeavors to normalize create severe dislocations and damage And
not merely to money boys
Image-Theme 1 The Mundanity of Money Boy Life
Feeding Boys strikingly refuses to display any images of money boys actually
engaged in sex or hustling for customers This lack of sex scenes contrasts
with Cui Zirsquoenrsquos other films which generally go out of their way to show sex
between men The only way we even know that these young men are money
boys is through the dialogue More specifically we hear the arguments that
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 445
straight people who disapprove of them engender Indeed the film is quite
chaste The one scene in which we see two people showing erotic affection
is between the older heterosexual brother of one of the money boys (XiaoBao) whose missionary goal is to convert hustlers and his girlfriend Feed-
ing Boys thus refuses to indulge viewersrsquo scopophilic desires Cui Zirsquoen teases
the viewer from the first scene Watching two men blowing up condoms
and briefly chatting about sex hints at more erotic scenes to come But they
never materialize A condom-balloon is all we ever get By thus tapping into
a gaze desirous for the perverse and then frustrating that desire Cui Zirsquoen
confronts the viewer with the need to think about representation and the
role of representation in normalizing desire mdash both in public discourse and
in his film
In place of the erotic the viewer is offered the stuff of everyday life One
recurrent image as in the first scene is of money boys on a bridge early in
the morning In one scene they playfully engage in ballet-like dance ges-
tures In another one of them displays his acrobatic skills doing severalback flips Later we see these same young men practicing taiji quan (a mar-
tial arts exercise) again early in the morning on the bridge These images
immediately bring to mind the ldquonormalrdquo populace in Chinarsquos cities who go
out each morning to do precisely these group exercises This idea is rein-
forced by the camera angle in these scenes which is a medium wide-angle
shot taking in both the bridge and the surrounding metropolis But the
bridge is also symptomatic of a moment of suspension between directionsin life or between worlds A bridge represents a gap as well as an attempt to
overcome a fissure in the landscape In one telling scene near the end of the
film a money boy begs for money on the bridge pleading with passersby
that he has given up his dissolute life and reformed himself Yet immediately
after we see him with another friend arguing with the Christian mission-
aryrsquos girlfriend stating unequivocally that even though they treated begging
as a ldquorealrdquo job no one wanted to give them money and that in todayrsquos worldpeople respect a prostitute more than a poor person The bridge thus repre-
sents two intertwined passages mdash from a socialist world of time and space
in which citizens had the leisure to do morning exercises and their lives
were not measured by money to a neoliberal world in which wealth is the
only measure of human dignity and no one mdash except those on the outside
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positions 182 Fall 2010 446
of bourgeois respectability mdash has time to spend exercising on a bridge This
passage is intertwined then with a passage from heteronormative relations
of time and space to queer time and space mdash the refusal of the relationshipbetween time work money and desire that neoliberalism has established
Another recurrent scene is of several young men playing in the park
They walk through the park in a desultory manner enjoying the day One
of them has his dog on a leash The dog is obviously well groomed and
well fed Only recently have Beijing residents been allowed to keep pets in
the city Dogs quickly became a key signifier of bourgeois cosmopolitan
accomplishment Why shouldnrsquot money boys be allowed to have them too
In the film the pet belies the idea that money boys lead an unstable dirty
and unreliable life as many believe Moreover it forces open the cluster of
oppositions between respectable and degraded desires in which bourgeois
heterosexual family life goes together with accoutrements like pets while
prostitution is supposed to represent nothing but lack
Other scenes reinforce the sense that money boys are like everyone else inthe way they go about the stuff of everyday life We see them singing in a
karaoke bar playing with a young boy on a playground and having a meal
with their families These young men are portrayed as neither angels nor
demons They are neither ecstatic nor suicidal But the film makes clear that
they live on the margins and have only one another for support
In only a few scenes do these money boys talk about their work But even
here their conversations resemble those of anyone who has ever grumbledabout his or her workplace At one point in the bar for example one of
the money boys tells the other Xiao Bao that his brother (the missionary)
has been looking for him Xiao Bao shakes his head and complains that a
customer has just ripped him off by refusing to pay In another scene in the
park during the daytime one of the money boys complains to the other that
he canrsquot seem to save any money because he always has to buy expensive
clothes to look nice for his customers The other responds that he should besmarter and get the customers to buy the clothes for him He proudly reveals
that he has saved quite a bit of money with which he plans to buy a house
for his mother
The film also playfully satirizes normalized work lives In one scene one
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 447
of the money boys says ldquoWe need structure We have to become profes-
sionalsrdquo Pointing to a gay bar behind him he says ldquoThis is our interna-
tional head officerdquo Another money boy repeats virtually the same wordsbut this time points to a twenty-story high rise building The film shifts to
an eerie scene of colorful masks then quickly to what looks to be a confer-
ence meeting in a bar Someone presumably their boss is taking roll call
They all stand to attention some of them wearing name tags as if at an aca-
demic meeting In this manner Cui Zirsquoen calls into question the relationship
between sex work and desire in China He highlights the instabilities in
how neoliberalism in China has produced social inequalities through trans-
national structures of differentially valued labors But he further demon-
strates the inextricability of sexuality bodies desire and labor To labor for
wealth is supposed to be the foremost desire in a neoliberal world Thus
normalization techniques reduce and embed desire in a structured world
of intensive labor extraction one that produces a capitalist-inflected heter-
onormativity (even as it has a nondeterministic relationship to that heter-onormativity) In other words Cui Zirsquoen deconstructs how the whole person
becomes a commodity in a neoliberal world and how that world while it
fosters desires also robs people of their desires for a full humanity Through
this humorous filmic meditation on desire Cui Zirsquoen thus provides biting
queer commentary on the reduction and devaluation of necessary labor in
postsocialist China
This commentary is most explicit in a scene near the end of the filmwhen the missionaryrsquos girlfriend pleadingly asks several money boys why
they do this work One of them responds with ten reasons ldquoOne you donrsquot
have to be president Two you donrsquot have to be a soldier Three you donrsquot
have to be a farmer and work the land Four you donrsquot have to wash dishes
Five you donrsquot have to marry and have kids Six you donrsquot have to become a
movie star Seven you donrsquot have to be a movie director Eight you donrsquot get
fat Nine you are exploited by others but donrsquot exploit others And ten youdonrsquot die because we use our bodies to satisfy both good and bad peoplersquos
desiresrdquo Through arguments with and about money boys the film thus
creates commentary on how neoliberalism in China appropriates not just
labor-power but the laborer as a desiring subject32 The queer commentary
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positions 182 Fall 2010 448
of Feeding Boys demonstrates how nonnormative alternatives lie outside of
those temporal and spatial markers of respectable Chinese experience mdash
namely marriage reproduction kinship and death The film thus chal-lenges the oppositions of respectability and shame
Image-Theme 2 How to Become a Money Boy
The thread of this image-theme most explicitly mocks normalizing judg-
ments about desire work class and sex Through this image-theme the
film represents gay male hustling as a profession as honorable as becom-
ing a lawyer or computer scientist In perhaps the most iconic scene in this
regard Feeding Boys stages an argument between Xiao Jian and his parents
that crafts a mimicry of family gatherings to decide the childrenrsquos future33
His parents appear to be respectable middle-class intellectuals The mise-
en-scene is a plushly decorated apartment in which the family lives together
The family is all seated there The father states unequivocally that this kindof work leads nowhere They bemoan the fact that they raised their son for
so many years and gave him the opportunity to do many things with his life
They insist they just want the best for him The parents are oddly calm and
though disgusted do not throw him out of the house Indeed in the next
scene he arrives early in the morning to the apartment stating boldly to his
parents that they arrived home from work earlier than him His mother
asks if he isnrsquot supposed to work the night shift and he responds that he willwork any shift The mother turns to the father and makes the pithy com-
ment ldquoSo we failed to discourage him from this line of workrdquo
In another scene in which Xiao Jian defends to Dabin his reasons for
wanting to become a money boy Cui Zirsquoen crafts a doubled-edged mock-
ery of socialist ideals as well by invoking the old socialist honor of learn-
ing from and serving the masses His satire in this regard cuts in multiple
directions It recalls not just the marginalization but the condemnationand punishment under socialism of those with inappropriate desires But
it also uses those socialist ideals to critique the neoliberal normalization of
the appropriate relationship between labor and desire Xiao Jian initiates an
argument with Dabin when he announces that he too wants to become
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 449
a money boy Xiao Jian is insistent ldquoI want to sell my body like Xiao Bao
[Dabinrsquos brother]rdquo He then explains that when Xiao Bao disappeared he
went to check out the male prostitution business ldquoMost of these youngstersare from villages and from very poor family backgrounds I was born into
a happy family I want to join the hustlers and change their social statusrdquo
Dabin retorts ldquoCan you make those people happy Itrsquos all about making
millionaires officials and rich guys happyrdquo ldquoYou told me that we have to
serve the humble Now I want to become one of themrdquo replies Xiao Jian
ldquoI want to become the lowest of the low together with robbers hooligans
petty thieves ex-convicts homosexuals and hustlers I want to stay at the
bottomrdquo Dabin then launches into classical Chinese metaphors ldquoWater
flows downward but man soars heavenwardrdquo Xiao Jian has an answer to
that as well insisting that man is also part of nature and is also capable of
running downhill ldquoItrsquos only natural and makes things more equalrdquo
The visual logics of this scene provide the ironic counter-commentary
During the entire scene Xiao Jian is fully dressed while we watch Dabin halfnaked as he dresses after a shower The viewer becomes engaged in the erot-
ics of watching Dabin slowly lather lotion over his entire body then pull on
tight-fitting underwear The camera lingers on his well built body By the end
of the scene Dabin is still half naked The erotics of the scene are heightened
by the effect of a mirror that stages Xiao Jian in reverse That is Xiao Jian is
seated to the left of Dabin but we only view him through the mirror where
he appears on Dabinrsquos right while Dabin occupies center stage as the half- naked figure of erotic righteousness The mirror clues us in to a split between
the dialogue and the visual logics This split reflects back to the spectator the
hypocritical contradictions in postsocialist enticements of desire
Image-Theme 3 The Trials and Tribulations of Missionary Work
Early in the film we see someone driving through Beijing in a nice carHe is a good looking serious young man It turns out to be Dabin search-
ing for Xiao Bao his younger brother Dabin walks into a bar looking for
him without success He proceeds to follow one of the money boys into the
bathroom and argues with him saying that he doesnrsquot understand why his
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positions 182 Fall 2010 450
job is so attractive ldquoHow could it attract you How can you enjoy it without
getting tiredrdquo The money boy calmly responds ldquoThe job has three advan-
tages First you earn money Second freedom Third you can fool aroundwith different peoplerdquo When Dabin aggressively asks if there are any dis-
advantages the money boy responds ldquoFirst you get sick easily Second itrsquos
a waste of condoms and KY jelly Third you donrsquot get enough sleeprdquo Dabin
cries ldquoIf you keep doing this you will get AIDSrdquo Thus opens the third
image-theme the heterosexual Christian evangelist who attempts to convert
money boys
Dabinrsquos idea of conversion conflates normative sexual desire and Chris-
tianity Thus in the next major scene in which he appears he argues with
two money boys telling them that birds in the sky donrsquot sell their bodies
but they have food to eat that lotus flowers donrsquot sell their bodies but they
are beautiful that dogs and earthworms donrsquot sell their bodies but they live
vigorous lives so why should they sell their bodies He then offers to give
them the Bible Cui Zirsquoen was raised as a Catholic in the northeast city of
Dalian In his previous films he took a Derek Jarman approach and made
symbolic Jesus figures suffer the slings and arrows of heterosexual rage He
tried to reconcile homoerotic desire with what he viewed as the true essence
of Catholicism In Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen has taken a distinctive approach
Here he asserts that those who use Christianity to suppress nonnormative
desires have a hopeless case on their hands Moreover the true essence of
Christianity is ambiguous Perhaps it really is a source of oppression ratherthan as in his previous films a potential guide for love
This ambiguity is underscored in the next major scene in which Dabin
attempts to win converts among money boys He is reading the Bible together
with his younger ldquoChristian brotherrdquo Xiao Jian who has also chosen to be a
money boy Xiao Jian appears earnest He asks ldquoDo you think Jesus would
like that I mean would he like the fact that men and women and men and
men and women and women have sexrdquo Dabin responds ldquoMen and menand women and men have sexual relationships That means that God gave
them their sexual desires and afterwards even gave them the ability to have
sex So who gave men and women the ability to have sex God did The
fact that God gave us this ability proves that he allows us to do itrdquo But the
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 451
young man persists ldquoYou said men and women do it for procreation If men
have sex with men they canrsquot procreate How do you explain thisrdquo Dabin
is stumped ldquoI have to turn to the Bible again for this questionrdquoThe moral inconclusiveness of the Bible and the ability to glean multiple
interpretations of desire from it leads the viewer to understand that there is
a distinction between heteronormativity and the normalization of desire
Strikingly Dabin does not condemn these young men for having sex with
other men He does not in other words condemn sexual desire tout court
or even homoerotic desire What he condemns is the exchange of sex for
money
Dabin is passionate in his missionary work In one scene we see him
standing on the bridge where money boys gather Christian Bible held up
high intoning his plea to them ldquoThe end of the world is near and you still
sell your bodiesrdquo No one speaks to him his travails seem fruitless Dabin on
the bridge recalls by contrast the money boys on the bridge But whereas
the money boys were shot in mid-range at wide angle Dabin is shot from
below with a zoom lens that makes him appear more distant as if he is high
up on a pulpit or a cross
Somewhat unexpectedly Dabin takes seriously ill and dies His death
recalls that of Jesus of course dying for othersrsquo sins but there is a distinct
ambiguity in Dabinrsquos death Does he die for othersrsquo sins or has he suffered
under his own illusions Is his the work of a savior or do normalized people
with judgments of others suffer because of their judgmental values Thefilm never resolves this ambiguity
On his deathbed Dabin pleads with his girlfriend to take over his work
to preach the gospel and save male prostitutes She promises to do so and
indeed in the next scene we see her standing on the same bridge holding
up the same Bible intoning monotonously ldquoDonrsquot sell anymorerdquo In the end
the girlfriend also ends up exhausted and sick in bed having similarly sacri-
ficed herself to a hopeless cause
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positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
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positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 430
demn homosexuality in the name of Chinese morality while others who do
not identify as gay proclaim that although they do not understand homo-
sexuality everyone should be free to express their desires This complex situ-
ation means that lesbians and gay men provide a particularly compelling
and ambivalent challenge to postsocialist constructions of human nature
Lesbians and gay men in China could view themselves as standing at the
forefront of a universal humanity in the expression of their desires Yet they
must struggle with public debates in China about the differentiation among
those deemed appropriate subjects of desire and those cast as inappropriateThe instabilities inherent in the experimental nature of Chinarsquos neoliberal
reforms means that these ldquodesiring-actionsrdquo to borrow a term from Neferti
Tadiar were not determined in advance14 Nonetheless these debates revolved
around attempts to draw a clear boundary between normative and nonnor-
mative desires both within and outside gay communities in China
Money boys thus became a lightening rod among gay men in their efforts
to grapple with homophobia and the proper class-inflected ways to be adesiring subject in this postsocialist world As queer theory has taught us
desires normalize and in so doing constitute those who are also excluded
and marked as nonnormative15 Queer theorists of color have challenged
and expanded this canon in order to make compelling arguments about the
critical role of postcolonial histories of racism and diaspora in construct-
ing normative desires among lesbians and gay men16 Queer theorists have
also argued that normalizations require a great deal of effort to make themeffective and in that work gaps and fissures lead to unexpected outcomes
Gay men who condemn money boys marginalize them as a way to make
their own desires appear simultaneously cosmopolitan (in its contemporary
neoliberal guise) and appropriately Chinese But they sometimes have dif-
ficulty in crafting absolute distinctions between themselves and these ldquooth-
ersrdquo even as they use these others to make themselves appear to have the
more appropriate desires befitting a postsocialist China17 Thus I locate an
anxiety expressed about the ldquomoney boyrdquo as a production of the market
economy that threatens the ontological certainty of the desiring individual
The fact that the unique term ldquomoney boyrdquo is used to refer to these
men mdash rather than say ldquogigolordquo or ldquomale prostituterdquo mdash is not to be dis-
missed as incidental but bears a critical relation to commodification and the
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 431
anxieties attendant upon the loss or the blurring of the boundaries between
epistemic zones After repeatedly hearing disparaging remarks about money
boys I decided I should talk to money boys themselves I was hesitant at
first because I was not sure how one would go about asking someone ques-
tions about their engagement in an activity that is so roundly condemned I
began to ask some of my gay male friends in Beijing to introduce me to any
money boys they knew While I am sure there are men who sell sex to other
men mdash one stroll through Beijingrsquos famous Dongdan Park makes that activ-
ity obvious mdash the men I was introduced to as money boys all refused thatlabel They argued that their actions did not represent a simple equation of
sex for money18 As I describe below their rejection of the money boy label is
more than simply a matter of denial These men had a much more complex
interpretation of their activities that as with other gay men broadened out
into a consideration of the place of desire in contemporary China They led
me to understand that their activities were as much an intimate part of the
transformations that had moved China away from socialism and toward aworld of what I would call neoliberal cosmopolitanism as any other activi-
ties centered around desire Indeed their analyses of their own lives and the
debates among gay men over money boys led me to realize that the question
of desire lies at the very heart of these transformations
I offer two ldquoscenesrdquo that develop my arguments about not simply the
views of those labeled money boys but also the cultural anxieties of other gay
men about money boys That is my intent is not just to describe so-calledmoney boysrsquo attempts to decouple money and sex but other gay menrsquos fears
about their own inabilities to do so the reasons why this distinction comes
to matter at all and the politically and culturally specific context that shapes
these anxieties The first scene occurred in my room in Beijing when one of
my gay male friends introduced me to someone he labeled a money boy The
disagreements that ensued in the conversation exemplify the anxious pursuit
of neoliberal respectability among certain gay men The second scene is a
film by the well-known queer filmmaker Cui Zirsquoen Through satire and
subversion Cui Zirsquoen challenges gay men about their desires for neoliberal
normalization
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positions 182 Fall 2010 432
Scene One
It was a spring evening in 983089983097983097983096 Ah Zhuang had agreed to introduce meto someone he said was a money boy19 I had first met Ah Zhuang through
other foreign lesbians and gay men living in Beijing Then in his early for-
ties Ah Zhuang was a radiologist Ah Zhuang considered himself to be
someone who had always known he was gay He had never married as have
so many other gay men but lived at home taking care of his mother He
also considered himself to be part of a long-lost line of aristocratic Mongo-
lians through his fatherrsquos ancestors Ah Zhuang had embraced the newlyemergent gay scene with unabashed enthusiasm Though many older men
who have sex with other men shunned that scene and given their histori-
cal experiences of harassment feared exposure Ah Zhuang in contrast
worked on the gay hotline attended all the salon discussions met with psy-
chiatrists to argue with them about the normality of homosexuality and
established himself as an ldquoelderrdquo among what were mostly young gay men
in their twenties He loved dispensing advice Ah Zhuang felt it was critical
for all people who have a homoerotic orientation to identify themselves as
gay and embrace that identity His experience of having been arrested in the
983089983097983096983088s for approaching another man for sex in the public bathrooms made
him all the more adamant that normalizing a gay identity would put an
end to the police harassment to which he had been subjected20 On the other
hand he felt equally vehement about the need to not expose onersquos family to
social condemnation and thus he felt it important to be discreet
Ah Zhuang had decided ideas about what constitutes a proper gay iden-
tity These ideas were made most apparent to me on the evening in question
That night Ah Zhuang arrived at my room with a young man named Ah
Pei Ah Zhuang introduced him as his former boyfriend I was immediately
confused I thought he had said he would introduce me to a money boy
And if this person was his former boyfriend was he telling me he had beeninvolved with a money boy As the conversation developed things turned
out to be more complex For Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang argued during the
entire evening about whether Ah Pei was indeed a money boy at all Ah
Zhuang stayed for the whole conversation in part because Ah Pei has a very
thick Beijing working-class accent and I sometimes found it hard to follow
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 433
him Ah Zhuang helpfully repeated some of Ah Peirsquos statements to make
sure I understood But Ah Zhuang also kept inserting his own views inter-
rupting Ah Pei at every turn
We began the conversation in a desultory manner with my questions
about Ah Peirsquos background He explained that his parents both had had a
hard life when they were young before the 983089983097983092983097 revolution His father was
from the Northeast and had always had to move around looking for work
But fortunately he had ended up in Beijing working in a factory under
the Central Television Bureau constructing television reception towers Hismother worked in a radio factory When his father fell ill with cancer Ah
Pei had taken over his factory position At the time of course job inheri-
tance in state-run factories was seen as a privilege Then Ah Peirsquos second
brother and sister-in-law also came to work there By the time of our con-
versation Ah Pei had taken what was then the risky step of abandoning his
secure position in the factory Perhaps he had the foresight to realize that
factory workersrsquo living conditions were declining under economic reformIndeed by the time of our conversation half the factory had been let go and
were on unemployment Ah Pei had become a taxi driver He was then in
his mid-thirties
Perhaps I was moving too slowly toward the ostensible topic of the eve-
ning Or perhaps he had his own agenda In any case Ah Zhuang suddenly
interjected with a question that abruptly changed the direction of our con-
versation ldquoWhat are your feelings when you are with womenrdquo Ah Pei pro-ceeded to tell a story about his factory ldquoAll the women I have encountered
have been from our factoryrdquo He then described how at the age of 983089983097 he had
his first sexual relationship with an older married woman after another
woman he was apprenticed to introduced them to each other She too was
an apprentice According to Ah Pei she had seduced him Prior to that he
had no interest in sex with women at least not women his age They carried
on their affair for over a year The womanrsquos husband never knew he worked
in another factory The main point that Ah Pei stressed in telling this story
was that with an older person he finally felt secure Since then he added
he has always wanted to be with older people
When he first made this assertion I did not pick up on its larger implica-
tion in relation to the issue of money boys Only later when Ah Zhuang was
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positions 182 Fall 2010 434
arguing with him did I realize that since that first affair with a woman
Ah Pei had been mainly with older men who took care of him mdash including
Ah Zhuang In talking about his first affair Ah Pei thus traced his inter-
est in older men to an emotional and sexual history of feeling comfortable
with older people Ah Zhuang as we will see reduced Ah Peirsquos story to
one of opportunism For at this point Ah Zhuang sarcastically interjected
a counterpoint to Ah Peirsquos insistence that this older woman had taken the
initiative ldquoMaybe the first time but then what about the second and third
ones Because yoursquove told me that there were quite a few including the topleader of the factory And even the managerrsquos wife Didnrsquot you take some
of the initiative in these later encounters I would really like to know what
exactly is your psychological attitude when you are with older peoplerdquo Ah
Pei ignored the first part of Ah Zhuangrsquos question answering that with
older people he feels particularly able to relax and let go
Here we find the first point of contention between Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang
over whether Ah Pei fits into the category of money boy Ah Pei tried to tellme a story of his psychological and emotional history He feels that older
people take the initiative with him which puts him at ease Ah Zhuang on
the other hand tried to turn Ah Peirsquos actions into self-seeking advantage Ah
Zhuang was not objecting so much to a seeming bisexuality that might make
a gay identity more ambiguous as to what in his view was naked opportun-
ism that did not distinguish between genders Ah Zhuang elaborated on his
view when I asked Ah Pei how he felt starting an affair with this womanAh Pei responded about the sex saying that looking back on it he could
see that he didnrsquot feel entirely comfortable because she did everything he
didnrsquot have to budge She helped him with everything Ah Zhuang then
interjected ldquoChina has a way of saying this this woman served ( cihou) him
Thatrsquos a clearer way to put it Chinarsquos traditional view is that the man should
take care of ( cihou) the woman and make her feel comfortable In his case
he made the woman do it so that he could feel comfortablerdquo This situation
in Ah Zhuangrsquos view was evidently one clear marker of a money boy Other-
wise why would a man not act like the man that he should be Why would
a man let himself be treated like a woman Ah Zhuangrsquos decided views on
appropriate gender attributes reproduce the dominant mode of delineating
the boundary between normative and nonnormative desire through gen-
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 435
der His interpretation is testimony to a contradictory antinomy between a
fluidity of desire which is supposed to change continuously in line with a
free trade cosmopolitan market economy and a renaturalization of a binary
gender in its ldquorecoveryrdquo from Maoist suppression
Ah Zhuangrsquos views also echo a longer history of gender and sexuality
in China in which as Keith MacMahon has argued one of the main signs
of male privilege is the polygamous ability to have and manage multiple
sexual partners21 Ah Zhuang as a medical doctor is undoubtedly famil-
iar with traditional medical prescriptions for male potency and the needto retain male energy Moreover as Judith Farquhar has argued these tra-
ditional medical texts have been recovered and popularized in post-Mao
China through a discourse on excess and deficiency that is simultaneously
an allegory about Chinarsquos past and future22 Ah Zhuangrsquos critique of Ah Pei
reflects an understanding that to ldquotake care ofrdquo a woman sexually means
that the male is in charge of managing pleasure because he needs to control
the depletion of his own energies Clearly in Ah Zhuangrsquos view Ah Pei hasnot followed the proper prescriptions and therefore is not contributing to the
proper development of social life in China
Ah Pei then proceeded to tell a story of the factory as a site of sexual excess
Rather than paint a conventional portrait of a large state-run factory as a
place of hard work alternating with boredom Ah Pei offered a tale in which
it seemed a matter of course for people to develop their sexual proclivities in
such an oppressive situation Ah Pei explained for example how he startedsleeping with one woman Her husband had been arrested and thrown into
prison for sleeping around with the younger women in the factory His wife
the woman Ah Pei had an affair with brought the women home for him The
husband was arrested however not owing to the moral probity of other fac-
tory leaders but according to Ah Pei because another factory leader wanted
to have sex with one of the young women and was jealous of this man and
so reported him to the public security bureau When this manrsquos wife invitedhim over to her home he figured he wouldnrsquot get into any trouble having an
affair with her By implication Ah Pei was explaining how he had come to
have such a free and easy approach to sex But Ah Zhuang used this story to
conclude that Ah Pei had a profound lack of ethical sense when establishing
relationships with people particularly men
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 436
Ah Zhuang then goaded Ah Pei into explaining his theory about lack of
father love Ah Pei told me about his violent father who drank too much and
hit his children Then one day when Ah Pei was a teenager he stood up to
his father But he always felt the keen loss of having a fatherrsquos love Thatrsquos
why he thinks he feels particularly comfortable with older men Ah Zhuang
promptly disagreed ldquoI donrsquot agree with this that a gay is someone who lacks
father love so they go in search of father love or someone older23 If his
view is correct then I am suspicious of whether he is really a gayrdquo Ah Pei
responded indirectly by saying that he knows for sure he will never get mar-
ried that even though no one living near him knows he is gay and thinks he
goes around with women he feels most comfortable with men Ah Zhuang
has a decided view of the correct way to be gay one that contains a normal-
izing pressure to present only positive or ldquonaturalrdquo reasons why one would
turn out to be gay This naturalization of gay identity parallels the natu-
ralization of the ability to be a desiring subject in post-Mao China Both
naturalizations create hierarchies of inclusion and exclusion that articulatewith the neoliberal naturalization of social inequality In contrast Ah Pei
implied that there are varied ways of having homoerotic encounters and
involvements His story highlights contingency history and experience The
inequalities in his story are class- and gender-based
Ah Pei then launched into a story of how he started to get involved with
men He had come into Tiananmen Square one evening and met some-
one there Ah Zhuang interrupted and said that Ah Pei had still been withwomen after that But Ah Pei responded that though he had been with
women after his first man he nonetheless preferred men He continued his
story ldquoI walked by Zhongshan Park and went to the [public] toilet I saw a
lot of men who went in but didnrsquot come out I just stood there didnrsquot dare
to go in and piss What were they doing in there Curiosity got the better of
me I went in and found two men playing around After that I went there
every day Thatrsquos how I met a guy Thatrsquos how I started I was just a littleover twenty years oldrdquo He began to meet a lot of men through that public
toilet finally meeting his first real lover Lao Chen (Old Chen) With Lao
Chen ldquoI finally started a new life I had a homerdquo
Ah Pei explained about the suffering that he had endured in order to be
with men One evening he was nabbed by the police He lied and said he
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 437
didnrsquot understand what the other man wanted from him The police officer
made him do hard labor for a couple of hours but let him go after he saw
Ah Pei crying The police thought he looked very young Here Ah Zhuang
interjected that he too had thought Ah Pei looked much younger than his
years when he first met him ldquoWhen he meets up with other peoplerdquo Ah
Zhuang concluded ldquohe uses his brains Hersquos good at performingrdquo In other
words Ah Zhuang implied that At Pei had perfected the art of deception
When Ah Pei described his relationship with his first long-term male
lover Lao Chen he and Ah Zhuang began to argue in earnest Ah Zhuangset out the terms by stating that Lao Chen basically ldquokeptrdquo ( yang) Ah Pei
that he took care of him in every way24 He asserted his privileged access to
the truth of the situation by telling me that Lao Chen was a dear friend of
his and it was actually through Lao Chen that he had met Ah Pei He also
set up Lao Chenrsquos class background from a wealthy family in Shanghai Lao
Chen was privileged to lead the life of a playboy However according to Ah
Zhuang Lao Chen was also a deep thinker he had graduated from FuDanUniversity (the most prestigious university in Shanghai) and Ah Zhuang
had spent many pleasurable evenings talking to him about politics Thus
before Ah Pei had a chance to get very far into his version Ah Zhuang had
already established a clear class division between himself and Lao Chen on
the one side and Ah Pei on the other This division Ah Zhuang implied
should also reflect whose version of this social and biographical history was
reliableAgainst this weighty class backdrop Ah Pei struggled to put forth his
perspective Lao Chen had raised him true but he had given Lao Chen
great sexual satisfaction taking the initiative to do so He had also paid his
price by doing a lot of things for him such as taking care of Lao Chenrsquos
wife and other friends when they visited from Shanghai ldquoThat was money
I spent out of my own pocket I feel I treated his family well Hersquos older
than me and has a lot of money I admit thatrdquo In Ah Peirsquos view Lao Chenand he had a fair exchange Lao Chen had the money to buy things for Ah
Pei who in turn gave Lao Chen a satisfying sexual and emotional life In
Ah Peirsquos view it was through Lao Chenrsquos lavish expenditures on him that he
began to have true feelings of love for Lao Chen This issue of true feelings
was critical in Ah Peirsquos view in distinguishing himself from a money boy
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 438
Ah Pei further asserted that unlike money boys he never stuck out his hand
and asked for money People have always offered to buy things for him he
said but he never asked for anything ldquoI have always relied on myselfrdquo
Ah Zhuang quickly jumped in at this point ldquoIf I consider him to be a
money boy itrsquos because hersquos extremely intelligent in this regard Thatrsquos why
I think todayrsquos conversation is especially interesting We could talk about it
for a long time Lao Chen shed a lot of tears over him So he is a little dif-
ferent than the money boys at Half and Half [the gay bar] Do they have
these kind of money boys in the United States Sometimes he really did payfor things himself and their relationship was real I see it this way Hersquos a
little different than those others He still has a little feeling involvedrdquo David
Eng (this volume) astutely evaluates the difficulties in neoliberal modernity
of distinguishing between what he calls tokens of affection and tokens of
exchange
After Ah Zhuangrsquos explication Ah Pei did not directly address the com-
parison of himself with money boys Instead he inarticulately reasserted hisview that he had never stuck out his hand asking for money and had always
relied on himself Given Ah Zhuangrsquos blunt assertion I wanted Ah Pei to
respond I asked whether he saw himself as like those men in any way He
was direct ldquoI am absolutely not like themrdquo Ah Zhuang laughed furiously
ldquoI never stuck out my hand with Ah Zhuang eitherrdquo he replied to the laugh
ldquoLet Ah Zhuang tell you himself Do you admit it Ah Zhuang liked me so
he bought me things My old man [his current lover] is like this too Irsquom notvery smart Irsquom actually stupid my level is low but Lao Chen told him I was
clever Where am I cleverrdquo
I then bluntly asked him if he only sought out lovers who had money ldquoAh
Zhuang is a clear examplerdquo he replied ldquoAh Zhuang has nowhere near the
money of these other men but I still tell him I learned a lot from him I
used to have a foul mouth I still thank him for these past four years Thatrsquos
why I still keep a relationship with him no matter with gay friends or notI always introduce himrdquo
Ah Zhuang directed Ah Pei to explain how his relationship with Lao
Chen ended Ah Pei told a story of how Lao Chen began to see someone
else and did not want Ah Pei to come home anymore Ah Pei was furious
and refused to let him go He did all sorts of things to stop the relationship
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 439
from ending including threatening to expose Lao Chen at work Lao Chen
would certainly have lost his job not only because of homophobia but as
Ah Pei explained because he was already in hot water with the Party due
to his outspoken criticisms Ah Zhuang jumped in to point out how Ah
Peirsquos behavior with Lao Chen provided yet one more set of money boy sig-
nifiers ldquoIrsquoll explainrdquo insisted Ah Zhuang after Ah Pei had presented his
perspective ldquoFrom his point of view he wanted to occupy a position This
position was incredibly important to him Only with this position could he
have money Now it was very possible that this position could be taken overby someone else So thatrsquos why he wanted to take revenge Lao Chen came
looking for me to ask me what he should do lsquoServes you rightrsquo I said He
asked lsquoMaybe if I give him some money then he would be willing to leave
me alonersquo He asked me how much I said lsquoI donrsquot knowrsquo How could I
know how much money he should give him At the time I told him lsquoYou
can end things but you have to think of a way to do itrsquo rdquo Ah Pei diffidently
responded that he hadnrsquot wanted to let go of Lao Chen because yes he leda comfortable life with him and also he had feelings for him For Ah Pei
the fact that his life was comfortable with Lao Chen was quite distinct from
a money boyrsquos desire to be paid for sex But Ah Zhuang saw them as one
and the same Finally Lao Chen left for Canada promising to bring Ah Pei
with him after he had arrived there ldquoI was naiverdquo Ah Pei said because he
had believed him
Surprisingly Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang never explained to me much oftheir own relationship Perhaps in the end they sought to preserve some of
the fragments of their friendship They ended their conversation with me by
briefly mentioning Ah Peirsquos latest relationship with an older man someone
from France whom he had met in a bar one evening Ah Pei doesnrsquot speak
any French and this man doesnrsquot speak any Chinese Ah Zhuang translated
for them when necessary This man who worked for the French airlines
was planning to bring Ah Pei to France with him They had already appliedfor his visa In subsequent conversations Ah Zhuang derided Ah Peirsquos plans
How would Ah Pei make a living in France What could he do He would
have a hard time learning the language et cetera It was as if to say Ah Pei
did not deserve the special privilege of living in a Western country
One could dismiss this whole conversation as the obvious denouement of
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positions 182 Fall 2010 440
a relationship that had ended bitterly Indeed Ah Zhuang had thrown Ah
Pei out of his house But Ah Zhuangrsquos insistence that Ah Pei was a money
boy reflected more than mere bitterness By rejecting Ah Peirsquos claims that
he too could place himself in the category of ldquogay manrdquo Ah Zhuang was
attempting to establish a hegemonic definition of respectable gayness For
Ah Zhuang this respectability adhered in appropriate gender sensibilities
class embodiment the proper balance between dependency and equality
a strict separation of money and love and a worldliness that only those of
a certain class stature should aspire to display Ah Zhuang was trying to
establish what Lisa Duggan has called the ldquonew homonormativityrdquo Dug-
gan argues that this new homonormativity is the equivalent of neoliberal
politics in the sexual realm25 These sexual politics uphold rather than con-
test dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions and promise
a depoliticized gay culture While Duggan concerns herself only with the
United States and does not consider transnational queer politics we can still
consider how her argument illuminates the sexual politics of someone likeAh Zhuang Ah Zhuang hopes to make gay identity respectable within
the terms of postsocialist neoliberalism The fact that neoliberalism has
made desire the central realm for producing proper citizen-subjects made
Ah Zhuangrsquos discourse all the more fraught with anxiety Ah Peirsquos own
intimacy with a well-to-do foreign gay man further goaded Ah Zhuang to
condemn Ah Peirsquos actions as inappropriate in terms of sexual gendered and
culturalnational identity For Ah Pei was going abroad to live in a Westerncountry long before Ah Zhuang would have the opportunity to do so
While Ah Peirsquos views do not simply reverse this moral equation nor do
they exemplify resistance to homonormativity in any straightforward sense
they provide an incipient means of gaining insight into the techniques of neo-
liberal normalizations as well as their instabilities Ah Zhuangrsquos condemna-
tion of Ah Peirsquos plans to move to France with his lover reveals the extent to
which the transnationalism that made Ah Peirsquos current relationship possiblechanges how ldquoinappropriaterdquo desires manifest themselves in the postsocialist
era It was after all only after the transformations in the last few decades
that a person from France would come to live and work again in China and
that an ldquoinappropriaterdquo desire could now also be a transnational desire The
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 441
fact that they do not speak each otherrsquos language exemplifies how neoliberal-
ism has allowed for new possibilities in the manner in which people desire
each other not just which kinds of desires are legitimate but which kinds of
desires are sustainable through which kinds of technological aids and socio-
economic conditions and across which kinds of borders Yet in Ah Zhuangrsquos
view someone of Ah Peirsquos class background could only succeed in such an
achievement by entangling the desires for money sex and love rather than
keeping them separate However the separations between entrepreneurialism
and intimacy that Ah Zhuang wants to establish for respectable gayness are
difficult to maintain26 Neoliberal cosmopolitanism appears to be all about
entrepreneurial savvy Yet there is more than one way to be an entrepreneur
And there is more than one way to be a nonnormalized or even antinormal-
ized gay subject27
Scene 2
Two young men are squatting at the edge of a bridge passing the time by
blowing up condoms ldquoThis way it looks like a dick It changes into breasts
when it gets bigger The breast changes into a dick and the dick into a
breastrdquo one of them says and laughs As they continue to play with their
condom-balloons the other one asks ldquoDo you like the feeling of being pen-
etrated or the feeling when you stick it inrdquo ldquoBothrdquo comes the answer
This scene opens Feeding Boys Ayaya ( Aiyaya Qu Buru) a queer filmabout male hustlers or money boys by the well-known experimental film-
maker Cui Zirsquoen28 This first scene immediately cuts to a contrasting scene
Two men are in a small closed room filled with computer and filmmaking
equipment The older one is in the background sitting in front of his com-
puter The other much younger is in the forefront of the screen The per-
son manipulating the computer equipment says ldquoZaizai [characterrsquos name]
this theme is for you It might not completely match your character in thefilm The distance makes it more precise Do you have any objectionsrdquo The
young man standing in the forefront of the screen has a somber look on his
face He refuses to speak The camera angle is an extreme close-up enlarg-
ing his face to fill the screen and nearly blocking out a view of the film-
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positions 182 Fall 2010 442
maker The effect is of a split screen We hear the filmmaker from behind
urging him several times ldquoSay somethingrdquo But the other refuses to speak
The quick juxtaposition of these two scenes and their contrasting mise-
en-scene prefigure the major motifs in Feeding Boys Ayaya The opposition
is established visually in the lighting camera angles locations and position-
ing of the characters The first scene presents characters who we will later
come to realize are money boys though at this point their identities are
unclear The scene mixes irony and pathos freedom and marginalization
The ironic and lighthearted humor of the dialogue contrasts with the curi-
ous positioning of the two young men They are at the edge of a deserted
bridge in the very early morning sunlight The camera places both of them
in the center of the screen in a medium close-up thus highlighting rela-
tionality but also distance or alienation The bantering friendship of the
two young men is visually contrasted with their distance from the rest of
the population and from the normative workday Yet this alienation is also
a liberation from the very same mdash the freedom to play at any hour the lackof confinement in space This scene represents what Judith Halberstam has
called ldquoqueer time and spacerdquo Halberstam argues that queer time and space
are ldquowillfully eccentric modes of beingrdquo that challenge heteronormativity by
providing alternative relations to time and space29
The very next scene reminds us that what we have just seen and what we
will view in the rest of the film is a set of representations The question of
how to represent money boys and who can and should speak in their nameis highlighted in this film The filmmaker character in the second scene
is choosing the theme music not the young man The dark closed room
and the split screen raise the question of whether and how the young man
can escape the framing of his life by the other The silence of the young
man mdash another money boy mdash recalls Gayatri Spivakrsquos famous dictum that
the subaltern cannot speak by which she meant that only traces of their
own interpretations of their lives remains in the texts written about them bycolonial elites30
Feeding Boys is a continual juxtaposition of these two types of images mdash
one of money boys displaying a queer sociality and the other of someone mdash
whether the filmmaker character a Christian missionary out to save money
boys his girlfriend who takes over his work or the parents of an aspir-
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 443
ing money boy mdash speaking for or about them Although the film does not
romanticize their lives the money boy characters not only exceed but also
challenge these representations of them both their content and their mode
of representation They continually frustrate attempts to represent capture
or change them Zaizai for example later demands to choose his own theme
music an insistence that frustrates the filmmaker who claims it will ruin
his film Their queerness emerges in these challenges
With Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen enters the larger debates that have central-
ized the question of desire in postsocialist China Cui Zirsquoen uses experimen-
tal visual logics that blur documentary and fiction and that refuse narrative
linearity or closure to challenge not only the specific judgments about money
boys among gay men but the entire apparatus of normalization in China
that tries to delimit desire Cui Zirsquoen addresses the specificity of neoliberal-
ism in China by challenging the hegemonic articulations between Chinese
culture and proper desire on the one hand and labor money and desire on
the other The film has a carnivalesque quality reinforced by the hand-heldcamera techniques which is at once somber and playful It subverts bour-
geois heterosexuality as that which subtends Chinese culture by robbing it of
its glory The film represents money boys as people with an integral human-
ity who take the full measure of their lives while the people who judge
them in the name of neoliberal desires Chinese morality or Christianity
appear damaged filled with contradictory desires themselves or just plain
boring The film thus further subverts postsocialist normalizing desires bydirecting our gaze away from what many think is perverse or rather by
making the normal perverse and the perverse normal The people to be
pitied in this film are the heterosexuals who condemn the hustlersrsquo profes-
sion They are the ones who wither and die Hustlers in contrast have time
to play and enjoy life Yet Cui Zirsquoen does not indulge in a simple decon-
structive reversal Hustlers suffer too but mainly from the condemnation
and exploitation they experience as a result of the hypocritical desires of theheteronormative world
Although Feeding Boys seems to establish a debate between heterosexu-
als and gay male hustlers the themes raised in the film rehearse anxieties
similar to those I presented in my first scene that occur among gay men
Are hustlers respectable or do they sully the good name of other gay men
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positions 182 Fall 2010 444
Do they deserve sympathy or condemnation Are they gay or just exploit-
ing vulnerable gay men Are their desires to be celebrated or condemned
Are they appropriate for Chinarsquos postsocialist neoliberal future or do they
represent the degradation of that future Feeding Boys refuses these dichoto-
mous terms Rather than simply reverse their valence the film addresses
other queer questions that displace these normalizing ones How should
we engage our desires How can this engagement lead to nonnormative
lives How does class inflect desire How can nonnormative desires chal-
lenge class-based temporalities What is the relationship between money
and sex Finally what is the role of religion
Feeding Boys loosely revolves around the elusive search of a Christian het-
erosexual brother Dabin for his younger brother Xiao Bao who has dis-
appeared into the money boy life During his search he discovers that one
of his younger ldquoChristian brothersrdquo Xiao Jian has also decided to become
a money boy to practice Christian love Juxtaposing money boysrsquo serious
banter with the normalizing judgments of others Feeding Boys weaves inand out of several recurrent image-themes the everyday life of hustlers
Xiao Jianrsquos exploration of how to become a hustler the missionizing zeal of
Dabin to dissuade hustlers from continuing in their profession and finally
the desire to represent and normalize the lives of hustlers Throughout
Feeding Boys jumps between these image-themes thus putting them in
dialogue with one another The experimental filmrsquos refusal to present a
linear narrative mirrors the refusal by the money boy characters to accedeto the normalizing judgments of others Thus the form to echo Hayden
White is also the content31 Cui Zirsquoenrsquos filmmaking techniques warn us
that endeavors to normalize create severe dislocations and damage And
not merely to money boys
Image-Theme 1 The Mundanity of Money Boy Life
Feeding Boys strikingly refuses to display any images of money boys actually
engaged in sex or hustling for customers This lack of sex scenes contrasts
with Cui Zirsquoenrsquos other films which generally go out of their way to show sex
between men The only way we even know that these young men are money
boys is through the dialogue More specifically we hear the arguments that
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 445
straight people who disapprove of them engender Indeed the film is quite
chaste The one scene in which we see two people showing erotic affection
is between the older heterosexual brother of one of the money boys (XiaoBao) whose missionary goal is to convert hustlers and his girlfriend Feed-
ing Boys thus refuses to indulge viewersrsquo scopophilic desires Cui Zirsquoen teases
the viewer from the first scene Watching two men blowing up condoms
and briefly chatting about sex hints at more erotic scenes to come But they
never materialize A condom-balloon is all we ever get By thus tapping into
a gaze desirous for the perverse and then frustrating that desire Cui Zirsquoen
confronts the viewer with the need to think about representation and the
role of representation in normalizing desire mdash both in public discourse and
in his film
In place of the erotic the viewer is offered the stuff of everyday life One
recurrent image as in the first scene is of money boys on a bridge early in
the morning In one scene they playfully engage in ballet-like dance ges-
tures In another one of them displays his acrobatic skills doing severalback flips Later we see these same young men practicing taiji quan (a mar-
tial arts exercise) again early in the morning on the bridge These images
immediately bring to mind the ldquonormalrdquo populace in Chinarsquos cities who go
out each morning to do precisely these group exercises This idea is rein-
forced by the camera angle in these scenes which is a medium wide-angle
shot taking in both the bridge and the surrounding metropolis But the
bridge is also symptomatic of a moment of suspension between directionsin life or between worlds A bridge represents a gap as well as an attempt to
overcome a fissure in the landscape In one telling scene near the end of the
film a money boy begs for money on the bridge pleading with passersby
that he has given up his dissolute life and reformed himself Yet immediately
after we see him with another friend arguing with the Christian mission-
aryrsquos girlfriend stating unequivocally that even though they treated begging
as a ldquorealrdquo job no one wanted to give them money and that in todayrsquos worldpeople respect a prostitute more than a poor person The bridge thus repre-
sents two intertwined passages mdash from a socialist world of time and space
in which citizens had the leisure to do morning exercises and their lives
were not measured by money to a neoliberal world in which wealth is the
only measure of human dignity and no one mdash except those on the outside
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positions 182 Fall 2010 446
of bourgeois respectability mdash has time to spend exercising on a bridge This
passage is intertwined then with a passage from heteronormative relations
of time and space to queer time and space mdash the refusal of the relationshipbetween time work money and desire that neoliberalism has established
Another recurrent scene is of several young men playing in the park
They walk through the park in a desultory manner enjoying the day One
of them has his dog on a leash The dog is obviously well groomed and
well fed Only recently have Beijing residents been allowed to keep pets in
the city Dogs quickly became a key signifier of bourgeois cosmopolitan
accomplishment Why shouldnrsquot money boys be allowed to have them too
In the film the pet belies the idea that money boys lead an unstable dirty
and unreliable life as many believe Moreover it forces open the cluster of
oppositions between respectable and degraded desires in which bourgeois
heterosexual family life goes together with accoutrements like pets while
prostitution is supposed to represent nothing but lack
Other scenes reinforce the sense that money boys are like everyone else inthe way they go about the stuff of everyday life We see them singing in a
karaoke bar playing with a young boy on a playground and having a meal
with their families These young men are portrayed as neither angels nor
demons They are neither ecstatic nor suicidal But the film makes clear that
they live on the margins and have only one another for support
In only a few scenes do these money boys talk about their work But even
here their conversations resemble those of anyone who has ever grumbledabout his or her workplace At one point in the bar for example one of
the money boys tells the other Xiao Bao that his brother (the missionary)
has been looking for him Xiao Bao shakes his head and complains that a
customer has just ripped him off by refusing to pay In another scene in the
park during the daytime one of the money boys complains to the other that
he canrsquot seem to save any money because he always has to buy expensive
clothes to look nice for his customers The other responds that he should besmarter and get the customers to buy the clothes for him He proudly reveals
that he has saved quite a bit of money with which he plans to buy a house
for his mother
The film also playfully satirizes normalized work lives In one scene one
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 447
of the money boys says ldquoWe need structure We have to become profes-
sionalsrdquo Pointing to a gay bar behind him he says ldquoThis is our interna-
tional head officerdquo Another money boy repeats virtually the same wordsbut this time points to a twenty-story high rise building The film shifts to
an eerie scene of colorful masks then quickly to what looks to be a confer-
ence meeting in a bar Someone presumably their boss is taking roll call
They all stand to attention some of them wearing name tags as if at an aca-
demic meeting In this manner Cui Zirsquoen calls into question the relationship
between sex work and desire in China He highlights the instabilities in
how neoliberalism in China has produced social inequalities through trans-
national structures of differentially valued labors But he further demon-
strates the inextricability of sexuality bodies desire and labor To labor for
wealth is supposed to be the foremost desire in a neoliberal world Thus
normalization techniques reduce and embed desire in a structured world
of intensive labor extraction one that produces a capitalist-inflected heter-
onormativity (even as it has a nondeterministic relationship to that heter-onormativity) In other words Cui Zirsquoen deconstructs how the whole person
becomes a commodity in a neoliberal world and how that world while it
fosters desires also robs people of their desires for a full humanity Through
this humorous filmic meditation on desire Cui Zirsquoen thus provides biting
queer commentary on the reduction and devaluation of necessary labor in
postsocialist China
This commentary is most explicit in a scene near the end of the filmwhen the missionaryrsquos girlfriend pleadingly asks several money boys why
they do this work One of them responds with ten reasons ldquoOne you donrsquot
have to be president Two you donrsquot have to be a soldier Three you donrsquot
have to be a farmer and work the land Four you donrsquot have to wash dishes
Five you donrsquot have to marry and have kids Six you donrsquot have to become a
movie star Seven you donrsquot have to be a movie director Eight you donrsquot get
fat Nine you are exploited by others but donrsquot exploit others And ten youdonrsquot die because we use our bodies to satisfy both good and bad peoplersquos
desiresrdquo Through arguments with and about money boys the film thus
creates commentary on how neoliberalism in China appropriates not just
labor-power but the laborer as a desiring subject32 The queer commentary
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positions 182 Fall 2010 448
of Feeding Boys demonstrates how nonnormative alternatives lie outside of
those temporal and spatial markers of respectable Chinese experience mdash
namely marriage reproduction kinship and death The film thus chal-lenges the oppositions of respectability and shame
Image-Theme 2 How to Become a Money Boy
The thread of this image-theme most explicitly mocks normalizing judg-
ments about desire work class and sex Through this image-theme the
film represents gay male hustling as a profession as honorable as becom-
ing a lawyer or computer scientist In perhaps the most iconic scene in this
regard Feeding Boys stages an argument between Xiao Jian and his parents
that crafts a mimicry of family gatherings to decide the childrenrsquos future33
His parents appear to be respectable middle-class intellectuals The mise-
en-scene is a plushly decorated apartment in which the family lives together
The family is all seated there The father states unequivocally that this kindof work leads nowhere They bemoan the fact that they raised their son for
so many years and gave him the opportunity to do many things with his life
They insist they just want the best for him The parents are oddly calm and
though disgusted do not throw him out of the house Indeed in the next
scene he arrives early in the morning to the apartment stating boldly to his
parents that they arrived home from work earlier than him His mother
asks if he isnrsquot supposed to work the night shift and he responds that he willwork any shift The mother turns to the father and makes the pithy com-
ment ldquoSo we failed to discourage him from this line of workrdquo
In another scene in which Xiao Jian defends to Dabin his reasons for
wanting to become a money boy Cui Zirsquoen crafts a doubled-edged mock-
ery of socialist ideals as well by invoking the old socialist honor of learn-
ing from and serving the masses His satire in this regard cuts in multiple
directions It recalls not just the marginalization but the condemnationand punishment under socialism of those with inappropriate desires But
it also uses those socialist ideals to critique the neoliberal normalization of
the appropriate relationship between labor and desire Xiao Jian initiates an
argument with Dabin when he announces that he too wants to become
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 449
a money boy Xiao Jian is insistent ldquoI want to sell my body like Xiao Bao
[Dabinrsquos brother]rdquo He then explains that when Xiao Bao disappeared he
went to check out the male prostitution business ldquoMost of these youngstersare from villages and from very poor family backgrounds I was born into
a happy family I want to join the hustlers and change their social statusrdquo
Dabin retorts ldquoCan you make those people happy Itrsquos all about making
millionaires officials and rich guys happyrdquo ldquoYou told me that we have to
serve the humble Now I want to become one of themrdquo replies Xiao Jian
ldquoI want to become the lowest of the low together with robbers hooligans
petty thieves ex-convicts homosexuals and hustlers I want to stay at the
bottomrdquo Dabin then launches into classical Chinese metaphors ldquoWater
flows downward but man soars heavenwardrdquo Xiao Jian has an answer to
that as well insisting that man is also part of nature and is also capable of
running downhill ldquoItrsquos only natural and makes things more equalrdquo
The visual logics of this scene provide the ironic counter-commentary
During the entire scene Xiao Jian is fully dressed while we watch Dabin halfnaked as he dresses after a shower The viewer becomes engaged in the erot-
ics of watching Dabin slowly lather lotion over his entire body then pull on
tight-fitting underwear The camera lingers on his well built body By the end
of the scene Dabin is still half naked The erotics of the scene are heightened
by the effect of a mirror that stages Xiao Jian in reverse That is Xiao Jian is
seated to the left of Dabin but we only view him through the mirror where
he appears on Dabinrsquos right while Dabin occupies center stage as the half- naked figure of erotic righteousness The mirror clues us in to a split between
the dialogue and the visual logics This split reflects back to the spectator the
hypocritical contradictions in postsocialist enticements of desire
Image-Theme 3 The Trials and Tribulations of Missionary Work
Early in the film we see someone driving through Beijing in a nice carHe is a good looking serious young man It turns out to be Dabin search-
ing for Xiao Bao his younger brother Dabin walks into a bar looking for
him without success He proceeds to follow one of the money boys into the
bathroom and argues with him saying that he doesnrsquot understand why his
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positions 182 Fall 2010 450
job is so attractive ldquoHow could it attract you How can you enjoy it without
getting tiredrdquo The money boy calmly responds ldquoThe job has three advan-
tages First you earn money Second freedom Third you can fool aroundwith different peoplerdquo When Dabin aggressively asks if there are any dis-
advantages the money boy responds ldquoFirst you get sick easily Second itrsquos
a waste of condoms and KY jelly Third you donrsquot get enough sleeprdquo Dabin
cries ldquoIf you keep doing this you will get AIDSrdquo Thus opens the third
image-theme the heterosexual Christian evangelist who attempts to convert
money boys
Dabinrsquos idea of conversion conflates normative sexual desire and Chris-
tianity Thus in the next major scene in which he appears he argues with
two money boys telling them that birds in the sky donrsquot sell their bodies
but they have food to eat that lotus flowers donrsquot sell their bodies but they
are beautiful that dogs and earthworms donrsquot sell their bodies but they live
vigorous lives so why should they sell their bodies He then offers to give
them the Bible Cui Zirsquoen was raised as a Catholic in the northeast city of
Dalian In his previous films he took a Derek Jarman approach and made
symbolic Jesus figures suffer the slings and arrows of heterosexual rage He
tried to reconcile homoerotic desire with what he viewed as the true essence
of Catholicism In Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen has taken a distinctive approach
Here he asserts that those who use Christianity to suppress nonnormative
desires have a hopeless case on their hands Moreover the true essence of
Christianity is ambiguous Perhaps it really is a source of oppression ratherthan as in his previous films a potential guide for love
This ambiguity is underscored in the next major scene in which Dabin
attempts to win converts among money boys He is reading the Bible together
with his younger ldquoChristian brotherrdquo Xiao Jian who has also chosen to be a
money boy Xiao Jian appears earnest He asks ldquoDo you think Jesus would
like that I mean would he like the fact that men and women and men and
men and women and women have sexrdquo Dabin responds ldquoMen and menand women and men have sexual relationships That means that God gave
them their sexual desires and afterwards even gave them the ability to have
sex So who gave men and women the ability to have sex God did The
fact that God gave us this ability proves that he allows us to do itrdquo But the
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 451
young man persists ldquoYou said men and women do it for procreation If men
have sex with men they canrsquot procreate How do you explain thisrdquo Dabin
is stumped ldquoI have to turn to the Bible again for this questionrdquoThe moral inconclusiveness of the Bible and the ability to glean multiple
interpretations of desire from it leads the viewer to understand that there is
a distinction between heteronormativity and the normalization of desire
Strikingly Dabin does not condemn these young men for having sex with
other men He does not in other words condemn sexual desire tout court
or even homoerotic desire What he condemns is the exchange of sex for
money
Dabin is passionate in his missionary work In one scene we see him
standing on the bridge where money boys gather Christian Bible held up
high intoning his plea to them ldquoThe end of the world is near and you still
sell your bodiesrdquo No one speaks to him his travails seem fruitless Dabin on
the bridge recalls by contrast the money boys on the bridge But whereas
the money boys were shot in mid-range at wide angle Dabin is shot from
below with a zoom lens that makes him appear more distant as if he is high
up on a pulpit or a cross
Somewhat unexpectedly Dabin takes seriously ill and dies His death
recalls that of Jesus of course dying for othersrsquo sins but there is a distinct
ambiguity in Dabinrsquos death Does he die for othersrsquo sins or has he suffered
under his own illusions Is his the work of a savior or do normalized people
with judgments of others suffer because of their judgmental values Thefilm never resolves this ambiguity
On his deathbed Dabin pleads with his girlfriend to take over his work
to preach the gospel and save male prostitutes She promises to do so and
indeed in the next scene we see her standing on the same bridge holding
up the same Bible intoning monotonously ldquoDonrsquot sell anymorerdquo In the end
the girlfriend also ends up exhausted and sick in bed having similarly sacri-
ficed herself to a hopeless cause
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positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3134
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3234
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3334
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 431
anxieties attendant upon the loss or the blurring of the boundaries between
epistemic zones After repeatedly hearing disparaging remarks about money
boys I decided I should talk to money boys themselves I was hesitant at
first because I was not sure how one would go about asking someone ques-
tions about their engagement in an activity that is so roundly condemned I
began to ask some of my gay male friends in Beijing to introduce me to any
money boys they knew While I am sure there are men who sell sex to other
men mdash one stroll through Beijingrsquos famous Dongdan Park makes that activ-
ity obvious mdash the men I was introduced to as money boys all refused thatlabel They argued that their actions did not represent a simple equation of
sex for money18 As I describe below their rejection of the money boy label is
more than simply a matter of denial These men had a much more complex
interpretation of their activities that as with other gay men broadened out
into a consideration of the place of desire in contemporary China They led
me to understand that their activities were as much an intimate part of the
transformations that had moved China away from socialism and toward aworld of what I would call neoliberal cosmopolitanism as any other activi-
ties centered around desire Indeed their analyses of their own lives and the
debates among gay men over money boys led me to realize that the question
of desire lies at the very heart of these transformations
I offer two ldquoscenesrdquo that develop my arguments about not simply the
views of those labeled money boys but also the cultural anxieties of other gay
men about money boys That is my intent is not just to describe so-calledmoney boysrsquo attempts to decouple money and sex but other gay menrsquos fears
about their own inabilities to do so the reasons why this distinction comes
to matter at all and the politically and culturally specific context that shapes
these anxieties The first scene occurred in my room in Beijing when one of
my gay male friends introduced me to someone he labeled a money boy The
disagreements that ensued in the conversation exemplify the anxious pursuit
of neoliberal respectability among certain gay men The second scene is a
film by the well-known queer filmmaker Cui Zirsquoen Through satire and
subversion Cui Zirsquoen challenges gay men about their desires for neoliberal
normalization
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 432
Scene One
It was a spring evening in 983089983097983097983096 Ah Zhuang had agreed to introduce meto someone he said was a money boy19 I had first met Ah Zhuang through
other foreign lesbians and gay men living in Beijing Then in his early for-
ties Ah Zhuang was a radiologist Ah Zhuang considered himself to be
someone who had always known he was gay He had never married as have
so many other gay men but lived at home taking care of his mother He
also considered himself to be part of a long-lost line of aristocratic Mongo-
lians through his fatherrsquos ancestors Ah Zhuang had embraced the newlyemergent gay scene with unabashed enthusiasm Though many older men
who have sex with other men shunned that scene and given their histori-
cal experiences of harassment feared exposure Ah Zhuang in contrast
worked on the gay hotline attended all the salon discussions met with psy-
chiatrists to argue with them about the normality of homosexuality and
established himself as an ldquoelderrdquo among what were mostly young gay men
in their twenties He loved dispensing advice Ah Zhuang felt it was critical
for all people who have a homoerotic orientation to identify themselves as
gay and embrace that identity His experience of having been arrested in the
983089983097983096983088s for approaching another man for sex in the public bathrooms made
him all the more adamant that normalizing a gay identity would put an
end to the police harassment to which he had been subjected20 On the other
hand he felt equally vehement about the need to not expose onersquos family to
social condemnation and thus he felt it important to be discreet
Ah Zhuang had decided ideas about what constitutes a proper gay iden-
tity These ideas were made most apparent to me on the evening in question
That night Ah Zhuang arrived at my room with a young man named Ah
Pei Ah Zhuang introduced him as his former boyfriend I was immediately
confused I thought he had said he would introduce me to a money boy
And if this person was his former boyfriend was he telling me he had beeninvolved with a money boy As the conversation developed things turned
out to be more complex For Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang argued during the
entire evening about whether Ah Pei was indeed a money boy at all Ah
Zhuang stayed for the whole conversation in part because Ah Pei has a very
thick Beijing working-class accent and I sometimes found it hard to follow
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 433
him Ah Zhuang helpfully repeated some of Ah Peirsquos statements to make
sure I understood But Ah Zhuang also kept inserting his own views inter-
rupting Ah Pei at every turn
We began the conversation in a desultory manner with my questions
about Ah Peirsquos background He explained that his parents both had had a
hard life when they were young before the 983089983097983092983097 revolution His father was
from the Northeast and had always had to move around looking for work
But fortunately he had ended up in Beijing working in a factory under
the Central Television Bureau constructing television reception towers Hismother worked in a radio factory When his father fell ill with cancer Ah
Pei had taken over his factory position At the time of course job inheri-
tance in state-run factories was seen as a privilege Then Ah Peirsquos second
brother and sister-in-law also came to work there By the time of our con-
versation Ah Pei had taken what was then the risky step of abandoning his
secure position in the factory Perhaps he had the foresight to realize that
factory workersrsquo living conditions were declining under economic reformIndeed by the time of our conversation half the factory had been let go and
were on unemployment Ah Pei had become a taxi driver He was then in
his mid-thirties
Perhaps I was moving too slowly toward the ostensible topic of the eve-
ning Or perhaps he had his own agenda In any case Ah Zhuang suddenly
interjected with a question that abruptly changed the direction of our con-
versation ldquoWhat are your feelings when you are with womenrdquo Ah Pei pro-ceeded to tell a story about his factory ldquoAll the women I have encountered
have been from our factoryrdquo He then described how at the age of 983089983097 he had
his first sexual relationship with an older married woman after another
woman he was apprenticed to introduced them to each other She too was
an apprentice According to Ah Pei she had seduced him Prior to that he
had no interest in sex with women at least not women his age They carried
on their affair for over a year The womanrsquos husband never knew he worked
in another factory The main point that Ah Pei stressed in telling this story
was that with an older person he finally felt secure Since then he added
he has always wanted to be with older people
When he first made this assertion I did not pick up on its larger implica-
tion in relation to the issue of money boys Only later when Ah Zhuang was
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 434
arguing with him did I realize that since that first affair with a woman
Ah Pei had been mainly with older men who took care of him mdash including
Ah Zhuang In talking about his first affair Ah Pei thus traced his inter-
est in older men to an emotional and sexual history of feeling comfortable
with older people Ah Zhuang as we will see reduced Ah Peirsquos story to
one of opportunism For at this point Ah Zhuang sarcastically interjected
a counterpoint to Ah Peirsquos insistence that this older woman had taken the
initiative ldquoMaybe the first time but then what about the second and third
ones Because yoursquove told me that there were quite a few including the topleader of the factory And even the managerrsquos wife Didnrsquot you take some
of the initiative in these later encounters I would really like to know what
exactly is your psychological attitude when you are with older peoplerdquo Ah
Pei ignored the first part of Ah Zhuangrsquos question answering that with
older people he feels particularly able to relax and let go
Here we find the first point of contention between Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang
over whether Ah Pei fits into the category of money boy Ah Pei tried to tellme a story of his psychological and emotional history He feels that older
people take the initiative with him which puts him at ease Ah Zhuang on
the other hand tried to turn Ah Peirsquos actions into self-seeking advantage Ah
Zhuang was not objecting so much to a seeming bisexuality that might make
a gay identity more ambiguous as to what in his view was naked opportun-
ism that did not distinguish between genders Ah Zhuang elaborated on his
view when I asked Ah Pei how he felt starting an affair with this womanAh Pei responded about the sex saying that looking back on it he could
see that he didnrsquot feel entirely comfortable because she did everything he
didnrsquot have to budge She helped him with everything Ah Zhuang then
interjected ldquoChina has a way of saying this this woman served ( cihou) him
Thatrsquos a clearer way to put it Chinarsquos traditional view is that the man should
take care of ( cihou) the woman and make her feel comfortable In his case
he made the woman do it so that he could feel comfortablerdquo This situation
in Ah Zhuangrsquos view was evidently one clear marker of a money boy Other-
wise why would a man not act like the man that he should be Why would
a man let himself be treated like a woman Ah Zhuangrsquos decided views on
appropriate gender attributes reproduce the dominant mode of delineating
the boundary between normative and nonnormative desire through gen-
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 435
der His interpretation is testimony to a contradictory antinomy between a
fluidity of desire which is supposed to change continuously in line with a
free trade cosmopolitan market economy and a renaturalization of a binary
gender in its ldquorecoveryrdquo from Maoist suppression
Ah Zhuangrsquos views also echo a longer history of gender and sexuality
in China in which as Keith MacMahon has argued one of the main signs
of male privilege is the polygamous ability to have and manage multiple
sexual partners21 Ah Zhuang as a medical doctor is undoubtedly famil-
iar with traditional medical prescriptions for male potency and the needto retain male energy Moreover as Judith Farquhar has argued these tra-
ditional medical texts have been recovered and popularized in post-Mao
China through a discourse on excess and deficiency that is simultaneously
an allegory about Chinarsquos past and future22 Ah Zhuangrsquos critique of Ah Pei
reflects an understanding that to ldquotake care ofrdquo a woman sexually means
that the male is in charge of managing pleasure because he needs to control
the depletion of his own energies Clearly in Ah Zhuangrsquos view Ah Pei hasnot followed the proper prescriptions and therefore is not contributing to the
proper development of social life in China
Ah Pei then proceeded to tell a story of the factory as a site of sexual excess
Rather than paint a conventional portrait of a large state-run factory as a
place of hard work alternating with boredom Ah Pei offered a tale in which
it seemed a matter of course for people to develop their sexual proclivities in
such an oppressive situation Ah Pei explained for example how he startedsleeping with one woman Her husband had been arrested and thrown into
prison for sleeping around with the younger women in the factory His wife
the woman Ah Pei had an affair with brought the women home for him The
husband was arrested however not owing to the moral probity of other fac-
tory leaders but according to Ah Pei because another factory leader wanted
to have sex with one of the young women and was jealous of this man and
so reported him to the public security bureau When this manrsquos wife invitedhim over to her home he figured he wouldnrsquot get into any trouble having an
affair with her By implication Ah Pei was explaining how he had come to
have such a free and easy approach to sex But Ah Zhuang used this story to
conclude that Ah Pei had a profound lack of ethical sense when establishing
relationships with people particularly men
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 436
Ah Zhuang then goaded Ah Pei into explaining his theory about lack of
father love Ah Pei told me about his violent father who drank too much and
hit his children Then one day when Ah Pei was a teenager he stood up to
his father But he always felt the keen loss of having a fatherrsquos love Thatrsquos
why he thinks he feels particularly comfortable with older men Ah Zhuang
promptly disagreed ldquoI donrsquot agree with this that a gay is someone who lacks
father love so they go in search of father love or someone older23 If his
view is correct then I am suspicious of whether he is really a gayrdquo Ah Pei
responded indirectly by saying that he knows for sure he will never get mar-
ried that even though no one living near him knows he is gay and thinks he
goes around with women he feels most comfortable with men Ah Zhuang
has a decided view of the correct way to be gay one that contains a normal-
izing pressure to present only positive or ldquonaturalrdquo reasons why one would
turn out to be gay This naturalization of gay identity parallels the natu-
ralization of the ability to be a desiring subject in post-Mao China Both
naturalizations create hierarchies of inclusion and exclusion that articulatewith the neoliberal naturalization of social inequality In contrast Ah Pei
implied that there are varied ways of having homoerotic encounters and
involvements His story highlights contingency history and experience The
inequalities in his story are class- and gender-based
Ah Pei then launched into a story of how he started to get involved with
men He had come into Tiananmen Square one evening and met some-
one there Ah Zhuang interrupted and said that Ah Pei had still been withwomen after that But Ah Pei responded that though he had been with
women after his first man he nonetheless preferred men He continued his
story ldquoI walked by Zhongshan Park and went to the [public] toilet I saw a
lot of men who went in but didnrsquot come out I just stood there didnrsquot dare
to go in and piss What were they doing in there Curiosity got the better of
me I went in and found two men playing around After that I went there
every day Thatrsquos how I met a guy Thatrsquos how I started I was just a littleover twenty years oldrdquo He began to meet a lot of men through that public
toilet finally meeting his first real lover Lao Chen (Old Chen) With Lao
Chen ldquoI finally started a new life I had a homerdquo
Ah Pei explained about the suffering that he had endured in order to be
with men One evening he was nabbed by the police He lied and said he
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 437
didnrsquot understand what the other man wanted from him The police officer
made him do hard labor for a couple of hours but let him go after he saw
Ah Pei crying The police thought he looked very young Here Ah Zhuang
interjected that he too had thought Ah Pei looked much younger than his
years when he first met him ldquoWhen he meets up with other peoplerdquo Ah
Zhuang concluded ldquohe uses his brains Hersquos good at performingrdquo In other
words Ah Zhuang implied that At Pei had perfected the art of deception
When Ah Pei described his relationship with his first long-term male
lover Lao Chen he and Ah Zhuang began to argue in earnest Ah Zhuangset out the terms by stating that Lao Chen basically ldquokeptrdquo ( yang) Ah Pei
that he took care of him in every way24 He asserted his privileged access to
the truth of the situation by telling me that Lao Chen was a dear friend of
his and it was actually through Lao Chen that he had met Ah Pei He also
set up Lao Chenrsquos class background from a wealthy family in Shanghai Lao
Chen was privileged to lead the life of a playboy However according to Ah
Zhuang Lao Chen was also a deep thinker he had graduated from FuDanUniversity (the most prestigious university in Shanghai) and Ah Zhuang
had spent many pleasurable evenings talking to him about politics Thus
before Ah Pei had a chance to get very far into his version Ah Zhuang had
already established a clear class division between himself and Lao Chen on
the one side and Ah Pei on the other This division Ah Zhuang implied
should also reflect whose version of this social and biographical history was
reliableAgainst this weighty class backdrop Ah Pei struggled to put forth his
perspective Lao Chen had raised him true but he had given Lao Chen
great sexual satisfaction taking the initiative to do so He had also paid his
price by doing a lot of things for him such as taking care of Lao Chenrsquos
wife and other friends when they visited from Shanghai ldquoThat was money
I spent out of my own pocket I feel I treated his family well Hersquos older
than me and has a lot of money I admit thatrdquo In Ah Peirsquos view Lao Chenand he had a fair exchange Lao Chen had the money to buy things for Ah
Pei who in turn gave Lao Chen a satisfying sexual and emotional life In
Ah Peirsquos view it was through Lao Chenrsquos lavish expenditures on him that he
began to have true feelings of love for Lao Chen This issue of true feelings
was critical in Ah Peirsquos view in distinguishing himself from a money boy
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 438
Ah Pei further asserted that unlike money boys he never stuck out his hand
and asked for money People have always offered to buy things for him he
said but he never asked for anything ldquoI have always relied on myselfrdquo
Ah Zhuang quickly jumped in at this point ldquoIf I consider him to be a
money boy itrsquos because hersquos extremely intelligent in this regard Thatrsquos why
I think todayrsquos conversation is especially interesting We could talk about it
for a long time Lao Chen shed a lot of tears over him So he is a little dif-
ferent than the money boys at Half and Half [the gay bar] Do they have
these kind of money boys in the United States Sometimes he really did payfor things himself and their relationship was real I see it this way Hersquos a
little different than those others He still has a little feeling involvedrdquo David
Eng (this volume) astutely evaluates the difficulties in neoliberal modernity
of distinguishing between what he calls tokens of affection and tokens of
exchange
After Ah Zhuangrsquos explication Ah Pei did not directly address the com-
parison of himself with money boys Instead he inarticulately reasserted hisview that he had never stuck out his hand asking for money and had always
relied on himself Given Ah Zhuangrsquos blunt assertion I wanted Ah Pei to
respond I asked whether he saw himself as like those men in any way He
was direct ldquoI am absolutely not like themrdquo Ah Zhuang laughed furiously
ldquoI never stuck out my hand with Ah Zhuang eitherrdquo he replied to the laugh
ldquoLet Ah Zhuang tell you himself Do you admit it Ah Zhuang liked me so
he bought me things My old man [his current lover] is like this too Irsquom notvery smart Irsquom actually stupid my level is low but Lao Chen told him I was
clever Where am I cleverrdquo
I then bluntly asked him if he only sought out lovers who had money ldquoAh
Zhuang is a clear examplerdquo he replied ldquoAh Zhuang has nowhere near the
money of these other men but I still tell him I learned a lot from him I
used to have a foul mouth I still thank him for these past four years Thatrsquos
why I still keep a relationship with him no matter with gay friends or notI always introduce himrdquo
Ah Zhuang directed Ah Pei to explain how his relationship with Lao
Chen ended Ah Pei told a story of how Lao Chen began to see someone
else and did not want Ah Pei to come home anymore Ah Pei was furious
and refused to let him go He did all sorts of things to stop the relationship
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 439
from ending including threatening to expose Lao Chen at work Lao Chen
would certainly have lost his job not only because of homophobia but as
Ah Pei explained because he was already in hot water with the Party due
to his outspoken criticisms Ah Zhuang jumped in to point out how Ah
Peirsquos behavior with Lao Chen provided yet one more set of money boy sig-
nifiers ldquoIrsquoll explainrdquo insisted Ah Zhuang after Ah Pei had presented his
perspective ldquoFrom his point of view he wanted to occupy a position This
position was incredibly important to him Only with this position could he
have money Now it was very possible that this position could be taken overby someone else So thatrsquos why he wanted to take revenge Lao Chen came
looking for me to ask me what he should do lsquoServes you rightrsquo I said He
asked lsquoMaybe if I give him some money then he would be willing to leave
me alonersquo He asked me how much I said lsquoI donrsquot knowrsquo How could I
know how much money he should give him At the time I told him lsquoYou
can end things but you have to think of a way to do itrsquo rdquo Ah Pei diffidently
responded that he hadnrsquot wanted to let go of Lao Chen because yes he leda comfortable life with him and also he had feelings for him For Ah Pei
the fact that his life was comfortable with Lao Chen was quite distinct from
a money boyrsquos desire to be paid for sex But Ah Zhuang saw them as one
and the same Finally Lao Chen left for Canada promising to bring Ah Pei
with him after he had arrived there ldquoI was naiverdquo Ah Pei said because he
had believed him
Surprisingly Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang never explained to me much oftheir own relationship Perhaps in the end they sought to preserve some of
the fragments of their friendship They ended their conversation with me by
briefly mentioning Ah Peirsquos latest relationship with an older man someone
from France whom he had met in a bar one evening Ah Pei doesnrsquot speak
any French and this man doesnrsquot speak any Chinese Ah Zhuang translated
for them when necessary This man who worked for the French airlines
was planning to bring Ah Pei to France with him They had already appliedfor his visa In subsequent conversations Ah Zhuang derided Ah Peirsquos plans
How would Ah Pei make a living in France What could he do He would
have a hard time learning the language et cetera It was as if to say Ah Pei
did not deserve the special privilege of living in a Western country
One could dismiss this whole conversation as the obvious denouement of
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a relationship that had ended bitterly Indeed Ah Zhuang had thrown Ah
Pei out of his house But Ah Zhuangrsquos insistence that Ah Pei was a money
boy reflected more than mere bitterness By rejecting Ah Peirsquos claims that
he too could place himself in the category of ldquogay manrdquo Ah Zhuang was
attempting to establish a hegemonic definition of respectable gayness For
Ah Zhuang this respectability adhered in appropriate gender sensibilities
class embodiment the proper balance between dependency and equality
a strict separation of money and love and a worldliness that only those of
a certain class stature should aspire to display Ah Zhuang was trying to
establish what Lisa Duggan has called the ldquonew homonormativityrdquo Dug-
gan argues that this new homonormativity is the equivalent of neoliberal
politics in the sexual realm25 These sexual politics uphold rather than con-
test dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions and promise
a depoliticized gay culture While Duggan concerns herself only with the
United States and does not consider transnational queer politics we can still
consider how her argument illuminates the sexual politics of someone likeAh Zhuang Ah Zhuang hopes to make gay identity respectable within
the terms of postsocialist neoliberalism The fact that neoliberalism has
made desire the central realm for producing proper citizen-subjects made
Ah Zhuangrsquos discourse all the more fraught with anxiety Ah Peirsquos own
intimacy with a well-to-do foreign gay man further goaded Ah Zhuang to
condemn Ah Peirsquos actions as inappropriate in terms of sexual gendered and
culturalnational identity For Ah Pei was going abroad to live in a Westerncountry long before Ah Zhuang would have the opportunity to do so
While Ah Peirsquos views do not simply reverse this moral equation nor do
they exemplify resistance to homonormativity in any straightforward sense
they provide an incipient means of gaining insight into the techniques of neo-
liberal normalizations as well as their instabilities Ah Zhuangrsquos condemna-
tion of Ah Peirsquos plans to move to France with his lover reveals the extent to
which the transnationalism that made Ah Peirsquos current relationship possiblechanges how ldquoinappropriaterdquo desires manifest themselves in the postsocialist
era It was after all only after the transformations in the last few decades
that a person from France would come to live and work again in China and
that an ldquoinappropriaterdquo desire could now also be a transnational desire The
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 441
fact that they do not speak each otherrsquos language exemplifies how neoliberal-
ism has allowed for new possibilities in the manner in which people desire
each other not just which kinds of desires are legitimate but which kinds of
desires are sustainable through which kinds of technological aids and socio-
economic conditions and across which kinds of borders Yet in Ah Zhuangrsquos
view someone of Ah Peirsquos class background could only succeed in such an
achievement by entangling the desires for money sex and love rather than
keeping them separate However the separations between entrepreneurialism
and intimacy that Ah Zhuang wants to establish for respectable gayness are
difficult to maintain26 Neoliberal cosmopolitanism appears to be all about
entrepreneurial savvy Yet there is more than one way to be an entrepreneur
And there is more than one way to be a nonnormalized or even antinormal-
ized gay subject27
Scene 2
Two young men are squatting at the edge of a bridge passing the time by
blowing up condoms ldquoThis way it looks like a dick It changes into breasts
when it gets bigger The breast changes into a dick and the dick into a
breastrdquo one of them says and laughs As they continue to play with their
condom-balloons the other one asks ldquoDo you like the feeling of being pen-
etrated or the feeling when you stick it inrdquo ldquoBothrdquo comes the answer
This scene opens Feeding Boys Ayaya ( Aiyaya Qu Buru) a queer filmabout male hustlers or money boys by the well-known experimental film-
maker Cui Zirsquoen28 This first scene immediately cuts to a contrasting scene
Two men are in a small closed room filled with computer and filmmaking
equipment The older one is in the background sitting in front of his com-
puter The other much younger is in the forefront of the screen The per-
son manipulating the computer equipment says ldquoZaizai [characterrsquos name]
this theme is for you It might not completely match your character in thefilm The distance makes it more precise Do you have any objectionsrdquo The
young man standing in the forefront of the screen has a somber look on his
face He refuses to speak The camera angle is an extreme close-up enlarg-
ing his face to fill the screen and nearly blocking out a view of the film-
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positions 182 Fall 2010 442
maker The effect is of a split screen We hear the filmmaker from behind
urging him several times ldquoSay somethingrdquo But the other refuses to speak
The quick juxtaposition of these two scenes and their contrasting mise-
en-scene prefigure the major motifs in Feeding Boys Ayaya The opposition
is established visually in the lighting camera angles locations and position-
ing of the characters The first scene presents characters who we will later
come to realize are money boys though at this point their identities are
unclear The scene mixes irony and pathos freedom and marginalization
The ironic and lighthearted humor of the dialogue contrasts with the curi-
ous positioning of the two young men They are at the edge of a deserted
bridge in the very early morning sunlight The camera places both of them
in the center of the screen in a medium close-up thus highlighting rela-
tionality but also distance or alienation The bantering friendship of the
two young men is visually contrasted with their distance from the rest of
the population and from the normative workday Yet this alienation is also
a liberation from the very same mdash the freedom to play at any hour the lackof confinement in space This scene represents what Judith Halberstam has
called ldquoqueer time and spacerdquo Halberstam argues that queer time and space
are ldquowillfully eccentric modes of beingrdquo that challenge heteronormativity by
providing alternative relations to time and space29
The very next scene reminds us that what we have just seen and what we
will view in the rest of the film is a set of representations The question of
how to represent money boys and who can and should speak in their nameis highlighted in this film The filmmaker character in the second scene
is choosing the theme music not the young man The dark closed room
and the split screen raise the question of whether and how the young man
can escape the framing of his life by the other The silence of the young
man mdash another money boy mdash recalls Gayatri Spivakrsquos famous dictum that
the subaltern cannot speak by which she meant that only traces of their
own interpretations of their lives remains in the texts written about them bycolonial elites30
Feeding Boys is a continual juxtaposition of these two types of images mdash
one of money boys displaying a queer sociality and the other of someone mdash
whether the filmmaker character a Christian missionary out to save money
boys his girlfriend who takes over his work or the parents of an aspir-
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 443
ing money boy mdash speaking for or about them Although the film does not
romanticize their lives the money boy characters not only exceed but also
challenge these representations of them both their content and their mode
of representation They continually frustrate attempts to represent capture
or change them Zaizai for example later demands to choose his own theme
music an insistence that frustrates the filmmaker who claims it will ruin
his film Their queerness emerges in these challenges
With Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen enters the larger debates that have central-
ized the question of desire in postsocialist China Cui Zirsquoen uses experimen-
tal visual logics that blur documentary and fiction and that refuse narrative
linearity or closure to challenge not only the specific judgments about money
boys among gay men but the entire apparatus of normalization in China
that tries to delimit desire Cui Zirsquoen addresses the specificity of neoliberal-
ism in China by challenging the hegemonic articulations between Chinese
culture and proper desire on the one hand and labor money and desire on
the other The film has a carnivalesque quality reinforced by the hand-heldcamera techniques which is at once somber and playful It subverts bour-
geois heterosexuality as that which subtends Chinese culture by robbing it of
its glory The film represents money boys as people with an integral human-
ity who take the full measure of their lives while the people who judge
them in the name of neoliberal desires Chinese morality or Christianity
appear damaged filled with contradictory desires themselves or just plain
boring The film thus further subverts postsocialist normalizing desires bydirecting our gaze away from what many think is perverse or rather by
making the normal perverse and the perverse normal The people to be
pitied in this film are the heterosexuals who condemn the hustlersrsquo profes-
sion They are the ones who wither and die Hustlers in contrast have time
to play and enjoy life Yet Cui Zirsquoen does not indulge in a simple decon-
structive reversal Hustlers suffer too but mainly from the condemnation
and exploitation they experience as a result of the hypocritical desires of theheteronormative world
Although Feeding Boys seems to establish a debate between heterosexu-
als and gay male hustlers the themes raised in the film rehearse anxieties
similar to those I presented in my first scene that occur among gay men
Are hustlers respectable or do they sully the good name of other gay men
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positions 182 Fall 2010 444
Do they deserve sympathy or condemnation Are they gay or just exploit-
ing vulnerable gay men Are their desires to be celebrated or condemned
Are they appropriate for Chinarsquos postsocialist neoliberal future or do they
represent the degradation of that future Feeding Boys refuses these dichoto-
mous terms Rather than simply reverse their valence the film addresses
other queer questions that displace these normalizing ones How should
we engage our desires How can this engagement lead to nonnormative
lives How does class inflect desire How can nonnormative desires chal-
lenge class-based temporalities What is the relationship between money
and sex Finally what is the role of religion
Feeding Boys loosely revolves around the elusive search of a Christian het-
erosexual brother Dabin for his younger brother Xiao Bao who has dis-
appeared into the money boy life During his search he discovers that one
of his younger ldquoChristian brothersrdquo Xiao Jian has also decided to become
a money boy to practice Christian love Juxtaposing money boysrsquo serious
banter with the normalizing judgments of others Feeding Boys weaves inand out of several recurrent image-themes the everyday life of hustlers
Xiao Jianrsquos exploration of how to become a hustler the missionizing zeal of
Dabin to dissuade hustlers from continuing in their profession and finally
the desire to represent and normalize the lives of hustlers Throughout
Feeding Boys jumps between these image-themes thus putting them in
dialogue with one another The experimental filmrsquos refusal to present a
linear narrative mirrors the refusal by the money boy characters to accedeto the normalizing judgments of others Thus the form to echo Hayden
White is also the content31 Cui Zirsquoenrsquos filmmaking techniques warn us
that endeavors to normalize create severe dislocations and damage And
not merely to money boys
Image-Theme 1 The Mundanity of Money Boy Life
Feeding Boys strikingly refuses to display any images of money boys actually
engaged in sex or hustling for customers This lack of sex scenes contrasts
with Cui Zirsquoenrsquos other films which generally go out of their way to show sex
between men The only way we even know that these young men are money
boys is through the dialogue More specifically we hear the arguments that
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 445
straight people who disapprove of them engender Indeed the film is quite
chaste The one scene in which we see two people showing erotic affection
is between the older heterosexual brother of one of the money boys (XiaoBao) whose missionary goal is to convert hustlers and his girlfriend Feed-
ing Boys thus refuses to indulge viewersrsquo scopophilic desires Cui Zirsquoen teases
the viewer from the first scene Watching two men blowing up condoms
and briefly chatting about sex hints at more erotic scenes to come But they
never materialize A condom-balloon is all we ever get By thus tapping into
a gaze desirous for the perverse and then frustrating that desire Cui Zirsquoen
confronts the viewer with the need to think about representation and the
role of representation in normalizing desire mdash both in public discourse and
in his film
In place of the erotic the viewer is offered the stuff of everyday life One
recurrent image as in the first scene is of money boys on a bridge early in
the morning In one scene they playfully engage in ballet-like dance ges-
tures In another one of them displays his acrobatic skills doing severalback flips Later we see these same young men practicing taiji quan (a mar-
tial arts exercise) again early in the morning on the bridge These images
immediately bring to mind the ldquonormalrdquo populace in Chinarsquos cities who go
out each morning to do precisely these group exercises This idea is rein-
forced by the camera angle in these scenes which is a medium wide-angle
shot taking in both the bridge and the surrounding metropolis But the
bridge is also symptomatic of a moment of suspension between directionsin life or between worlds A bridge represents a gap as well as an attempt to
overcome a fissure in the landscape In one telling scene near the end of the
film a money boy begs for money on the bridge pleading with passersby
that he has given up his dissolute life and reformed himself Yet immediately
after we see him with another friend arguing with the Christian mission-
aryrsquos girlfriend stating unequivocally that even though they treated begging
as a ldquorealrdquo job no one wanted to give them money and that in todayrsquos worldpeople respect a prostitute more than a poor person The bridge thus repre-
sents two intertwined passages mdash from a socialist world of time and space
in which citizens had the leisure to do morning exercises and their lives
were not measured by money to a neoliberal world in which wealth is the
only measure of human dignity and no one mdash except those on the outside
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positions 182 Fall 2010 446
of bourgeois respectability mdash has time to spend exercising on a bridge This
passage is intertwined then with a passage from heteronormative relations
of time and space to queer time and space mdash the refusal of the relationshipbetween time work money and desire that neoliberalism has established
Another recurrent scene is of several young men playing in the park
They walk through the park in a desultory manner enjoying the day One
of them has his dog on a leash The dog is obviously well groomed and
well fed Only recently have Beijing residents been allowed to keep pets in
the city Dogs quickly became a key signifier of bourgeois cosmopolitan
accomplishment Why shouldnrsquot money boys be allowed to have them too
In the film the pet belies the idea that money boys lead an unstable dirty
and unreliable life as many believe Moreover it forces open the cluster of
oppositions between respectable and degraded desires in which bourgeois
heterosexual family life goes together with accoutrements like pets while
prostitution is supposed to represent nothing but lack
Other scenes reinforce the sense that money boys are like everyone else inthe way they go about the stuff of everyday life We see them singing in a
karaoke bar playing with a young boy on a playground and having a meal
with their families These young men are portrayed as neither angels nor
demons They are neither ecstatic nor suicidal But the film makes clear that
they live on the margins and have only one another for support
In only a few scenes do these money boys talk about their work But even
here their conversations resemble those of anyone who has ever grumbledabout his or her workplace At one point in the bar for example one of
the money boys tells the other Xiao Bao that his brother (the missionary)
has been looking for him Xiao Bao shakes his head and complains that a
customer has just ripped him off by refusing to pay In another scene in the
park during the daytime one of the money boys complains to the other that
he canrsquot seem to save any money because he always has to buy expensive
clothes to look nice for his customers The other responds that he should besmarter and get the customers to buy the clothes for him He proudly reveals
that he has saved quite a bit of money with which he plans to buy a house
for his mother
The film also playfully satirizes normalized work lives In one scene one
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 447
of the money boys says ldquoWe need structure We have to become profes-
sionalsrdquo Pointing to a gay bar behind him he says ldquoThis is our interna-
tional head officerdquo Another money boy repeats virtually the same wordsbut this time points to a twenty-story high rise building The film shifts to
an eerie scene of colorful masks then quickly to what looks to be a confer-
ence meeting in a bar Someone presumably their boss is taking roll call
They all stand to attention some of them wearing name tags as if at an aca-
demic meeting In this manner Cui Zirsquoen calls into question the relationship
between sex work and desire in China He highlights the instabilities in
how neoliberalism in China has produced social inequalities through trans-
national structures of differentially valued labors But he further demon-
strates the inextricability of sexuality bodies desire and labor To labor for
wealth is supposed to be the foremost desire in a neoliberal world Thus
normalization techniques reduce and embed desire in a structured world
of intensive labor extraction one that produces a capitalist-inflected heter-
onormativity (even as it has a nondeterministic relationship to that heter-onormativity) In other words Cui Zirsquoen deconstructs how the whole person
becomes a commodity in a neoliberal world and how that world while it
fosters desires also robs people of their desires for a full humanity Through
this humorous filmic meditation on desire Cui Zirsquoen thus provides biting
queer commentary on the reduction and devaluation of necessary labor in
postsocialist China
This commentary is most explicit in a scene near the end of the filmwhen the missionaryrsquos girlfriend pleadingly asks several money boys why
they do this work One of them responds with ten reasons ldquoOne you donrsquot
have to be president Two you donrsquot have to be a soldier Three you donrsquot
have to be a farmer and work the land Four you donrsquot have to wash dishes
Five you donrsquot have to marry and have kids Six you donrsquot have to become a
movie star Seven you donrsquot have to be a movie director Eight you donrsquot get
fat Nine you are exploited by others but donrsquot exploit others And ten youdonrsquot die because we use our bodies to satisfy both good and bad peoplersquos
desiresrdquo Through arguments with and about money boys the film thus
creates commentary on how neoliberalism in China appropriates not just
labor-power but the laborer as a desiring subject32 The queer commentary
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positions 182 Fall 2010 448
of Feeding Boys demonstrates how nonnormative alternatives lie outside of
those temporal and spatial markers of respectable Chinese experience mdash
namely marriage reproduction kinship and death The film thus chal-lenges the oppositions of respectability and shame
Image-Theme 2 How to Become a Money Boy
The thread of this image-theme most explicitly mocks normalizing judg-
ments about desire work class and sex Through this image-theme the
film represents gay male hustling as a profession as honorable as becom-
ing a lawyer or computer scientist In perhaps the most iconic scene in this
regard Feeding Boys stages an argument between Xiao Jian and his parents
that crafts a mimicry of family gatherings to decide the childrenrsquos future33
His parents appear to be respectable middle-class intellectuals The mise-
en-scene is a plushly decorated apartment in which the family lives together
The family is all seated there The father states unequivocally that this kindof work leads nowhere They bemoan the fact that they raised their son for
so many years and gave him the opportunity to do many things with his life
They insist they just want the best for him The parents are oddly calm and
though disgusted do not throw him out of the house Indeed in the next
scene he arrives early in the morning to the apartment stating boldly to his
parents that they arrived home from work earlier than him His mother
asks if he isnrsquot supposed to work the night shift and he responds that he willwork any shift The mother turns to the father and makes the pithy com-
ment ldquoSo we failed to discourage him from this line of workrdquo
In another scene in which Xiao Jian defends to Dabin his reasons for
wanting to become a money boy Cui Zirsquoen crafts a doubled-edged mock-
ery of socialist ideals as well by invoking the old socialist honor of learn-
ing from and serving the masses His satire in this regard cuts in multiple
directions It recalls not just the marginalization but the condemnationand punishment under socialism of those with inappropriate desires But
it also uses those socialist ideals to critique the neoliberal normalization of
the appropriate relationship between labor and desire Xiao Jian initiates an
argument with Dabin when he announces that he too wants to become
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 449
a money boy Xiao Jian is insistent ldquoI want to sell my body like Xiao Bao
[Dabinrsquos brother]rdquo He then explains that when Xiao Bao disappeared he
went to check out the male prostitution business ldquoMost of these youngstersare from villages and from very poor family backgrounds I was born into
a happy family I want to join the hustlers and change their social statusrdquo
Dabin retorts ldquoCan you make those people happy Itrsquos all about making
millionaires officials and rich guys happyrdquo ldquoYou told me that we have to
serve the humble Now I want to become one of themrdquo replies Xiao Jian
ldquoI want to become the lowest of the low together with robbers hooligans
petty thieves ex-convicts homosexuals and hustlers I want to stay at the
bottomrdquo Dabin then launches into classical Chinese metaphors ldquoWater
flows downward but man soars heavenwardrdquo Xiao Jian has an answer to
that as well insisting that man is also part of nature and is also capable of
running downhill ldquoItrsquos only natural and makes things more equalrdquo
The visual logics of this scene provide the ironic counter-commentary
During the entire scene Xiao Jian is fully dressed while we watch Dabin halfnaked as he dresses after a shower The viewer becomes engaged in the erot-
ics of watching Dabin slowly lather lotion over his entire body then pull on
tight-fitting underwear The camera lingers on his well built body By the end
of the scene Dabin is still half naked The erotics of the scene are heightened
by the effect of a mirror that stages Xiao Jian in reverse That is Xiao Jian is
seated to the left of Dabin but we only view him through the mirror where
he appears on Dabinrsquos right while Dabin occupies center stage as the half- naked figure of erotic righteousness The mirror clues us in to a split between
the dialogue and the visual logics This split reflects back to the spectator the
hypocritical contradictions in postsocialist enticements of desire
Image-Theme 3 The Trials and Tribulations of Missionary Work
Early in the film we see someone driving through Beijing in a nice carHe is a good looking serious young man It turns out to be Dabin search-
ing for Xiao Bao his younger brother Dabin walks into a bar looking for
him without success He proceeds to follow one of the money boys into the
bathroom and argues with him saying that he doesnrsquot understand why his
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positions 182 Fall 2010 450
job is so attractive ldquoHow could it attract you How can you enjoy it without
getting tiredrdquo The money boy calmly responds ldquoThe job has three advan-
tages First you earn money Second freedom Third you can fool aroundwith different peoplerdquo When Dabin aggressively asks if there are any dis-
advantages the money boy responds ldquoFirst you get sick easily Second itrsquos
a waste of condoms and KY jelly Third you donrsquot get enough sleeprdquo Dabin
cries ldquoIf you keep doing this you will get AIDSrdquo Thus opens the third
image-theme the heterosexual Christian evangelist who attempts to convert
money boys
Dabinrsquos idea of conversion conflates normative sexual desire and Chris-
tianity Thus in the next major scene in which he appears he argues with
two money boys telling them that birds in the sky donrsquot sell their bodies
but they have food to eat that lotus flowers donrsquot sell their bodies but they
are beautiful that dogs and earthworms donrsquot sell their bodies but they live
vigorous lives so why should they sell their bodies He then offers to give
them the Bible Cui Zirsquoen was raised as a Catholic in the northeast city of
Dalian In his previous films he took a Derek Jarman approach and made
symbolic Jesus figures suffer the slings and arrows of heterosexual rage He
tried to reconcile homoerotic desire with what he viewed as the true essence
of Catholicism In Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen has taken a distinctive approach
Here he asserts that those who use Christianity to suppress nonnormative
desires have a hopeless case on their hands Moreover the true essence of
Christianity is ambiguous Perhaps it really is a source of oppression ratherthan as in his previous films a potential guide for love
This ambiguity is underscored in the next major scene in which Dabin
attempts to win converts among money boys He is reading the Bible together
with his younger ldquoChristian brotherrdquo Xiao Jian who has also chosen to be a
money boy Xiao Jian appears earnest He asks ldquoDo you think Jesus would
like that I mean would he like the fact that men and women and men and
men and women and women have sexrdquo Dabin responds ldquoMen and menand women and men have sexual relationships That means that God gave
them their sexual desires and afterwards even gave them the ability to have
sex So who gave men and women the ability to have sex God did The
fact that God gave us this ability proves that he allows us to do itrdquo But the
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 451
young man persists ldquoYou said men and women do it for procreation If men
have sex with men they canrsquot procreate How do you explain thisrdquo Dabin
is stumped ldquoI have to turn to the Bible again for this questionrdquoThe moral inconclusiveness of the Bible and the ability to glean multiple
interpretations of desire from it leads the viewer to understand that there is
a distinction between heteronormativity and the normalization of desire
Strikingly Dabin does not condemn these young men for having sex with
other men He does not in other words condemn sexual desire tout court
or even homoerotic desire What he condemns is the exchange of sex for
money
Dabin is passionate in his missionary work In one scene we see him
standing on the bridge where money boys gather Christian Bible held up
high intoning his plea to them ldquoThe end of the world is near and you still
sell your bodiesrdquo No one speaks to him his travails seem fruitless Dabin on
the bridge recalls by contrast the money boys on the bridge But whereas
the money boys were shot in mid-range at wide angle Dabin is shot from
below with a zoom lens that makes him appear more distant as if he is high
up on a pulpit or a cross
Somewhat unexpectedly Dabin takes seriously ill and dies His death
recalls that of Jesus of course dying for othersrsquo sins but there is a distinct
ambiguity in Dabinrsquos death Does he die for othersrsquo sins or has he suffered
under his own illusions Is his the work of a savior or do normalized people
with judgments of others suffer because of their judgmental values Thefilm never resolves this ambiguity
On his deathbed Dabin pleads with his girlfriend to take over his work
to preach the gospel and save male prostitutes She promises to do so and
indeed in the next scene we see her standing on the same bridge holding
up the same Bible intoning monotonously ldquoDonrsquot sell anymorerdquo In the end
the girlfriend also ends up exhausted and sick in bed having similarly sacri-
ficed herself to a hopeless cause
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3134
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3334
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 432
Scene One
It was a spring evening in 983089983097983097983096 Ah Zhuang had agreed to introduce meto someone he said was a money boy19 I had first met Ah Zhuang through
other foreign lesbians and gay men living in Beijing Then in his early for-
ties Ah Zhuang was a radiologist Ah Zhuang considered himself to be
someone who had always known he was gay He had never married as have
so many other gay men but lived at home taking care of his mother He
also considered himself to be part of a long-lost line of aristocratic Mongo-
lians through his fatherrsquos ancestors Ah Zhuang had embraced the newlyemergent gay scene with unabashed enthusiasm Though many older men
who have sex with other men shunned that scene and given their histori-
cal experiences of harassment feared exposure Ah Zhuang in contrast
worked on the gay hotline attended all the salon discussions met with psy-
chiatrists to argue with them about the normality of homosexuality and
established himself as an ldquoelderrdquo among what were mostly young gay men
in their twenties He loved dispensing advice Ah Zhuang felt it was critical
for all people who have a homoerotic orientation to identify themselves as
gay and embrace that identity His experience of having been arrested in the
983089983097983096983088s for approaching another man for sex in the public bathrooms made
him all the more adamant that normalizing a gay identity would put an
end to the police harassment to which he had been subjected20 On the other
hand he felt equally vehement about the need to not expose onersquos family to
social condemnation and thus he felt it important to be discreet
Ah Zhuang had decided ideas about what constitutes a proper gay iden-
tity These ideas were made most apparent to me on the evening in question
That night Ah Zhuang arrived at my room with a young man named Ah
Pei Ah Zhuang introduced him as his former boyfriend I was immediately
confused I thought he had said he would introduce me to a money boy
And if this person was his former boyfriend was he telling me he had beeninvolved with a money boy As the conversation developed things turned
out to be more complex For Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang argued during the
entire evening about whether Ah Pei was indeed a money boy at all Ah
Zhuang stayed for the whole conversation in part because Ah Pei has a very
thick Beijing working-class accent and I sometimes found it hard to follow
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 433
him Ah Zhuang helpfully repeated some of Ah Peirsquos statements to make
sure I understood But Ah Zhuang also kept inserting his own views inter-
rupting Ah Pei at every turn
We began the conversation in a desultory manner with my questions
about Ah Peirsquos background He explained that his parents both had had a
hard life when they were young before the 983089983097983092983097 revolution His father was
from the Northeast and had always had to move around looking for work
But fortunately he had ended up in Beijing working in a factory under
the Central Television Bureau constructing television reception towers Hismother worked in a radio factory When his father fell ill with cancer Ah
Pei had taken over his factory position At the time of course job inheri-
tance in state-run factories was seen as a privilege Then Ah Peirsquos second
brother and sister-in-law also came to work there By the time of our con-
versation Ah Pei had taken what was then the risky step of abandoning his
secure position in the factory Perhaps he had the foresight to realize that
factory workersrsquo living conditions were declining under economic reformIndeed by the time of our conversation half the factory had been let go and
were on unemployment Ah Pei had become a taxi driver He was then in
his mid-thirties
Perhaps I was moving too slowly toward the ostensible topic of the eve-
ning Or perhaps he had his own agenda In any case Ah Zhuang suddenly
interjected with a question that abruptly changed the direction of our con-
versation ldquoWhat are your feelings when you are with womenrdquo Ah Pei pro-ceeded to tell a story about his factory ldquoAll the women I have encountered
have been from our factoryrdquo He then described how at the age of 983089983097 he had
his first sexual relationship with an older married woman after another
woman he was apprenticed to introduced them to each other She too was
an apprentice According to Ah Pei she had seduced him Prior to that he
had no interest in sex with women at least not women his age They carried
on their affair for over a year The womanrsquos husband never knew he worked
in another factory The main point that Ah Pei stressed in telling this story
was that with an older person he finally felt secure Since then he added
he has always wanted to be with older people
When he first made this assertion I did not pick up on its larger implica-
tion in relation to the issue of money boys Only later when Ah Zhuang was
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 434
arguing with him did I realize that since that first affair with a woman
Ah Pei had been mainly with older men who took care of him mdash including
Ah Zhuang In talking about his first affair Ah Pei thus traced his inter-
est in older men to an emotional and sexual history of feeling comfortable
with older people Ah Zhuang as we will see reduced Ah Peirsquos story to
one of opportunism For at this point Ah Zhuang sarcastically interjected
a counterpoint to Ah Peirsquos insistence that this older woman had taken the
initiative ldquoMaybe the first time but then what about the second and third
ones Because yoursquove told me that there were quite a few including the topleader of the factory And even the managerrsquos wife Didnrsquot you take some
of the initiative in these later encounters I would really like to know what
exactly is your psychological attitude when you are with older peoplerdquo Ah
Pei ignored the first part of Ah Zhuangrsquos question answering that with
older people he feels particularly able to relax and let go
Here we find the first point of contention between Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang
over whether Ah Pei fits into the category of money boy Ah Pei tried to tellme a story of his psychological and emotional history He feels that older
people take the initiative with him which puts him at ease Ah Zhuang on
the other hand tried to turn Ah Peirsquos actions into self-seeking advantage Ah
Zhuang was not objecting so much to a seeming bisexuality that might make
a gay identity more ambiguous as to what in his view was naked opportun-
ism that did not distinguish between genders Ah Zhuang elaborated on his
view when I asked Ah Pei how he felt starting an affair with this womanAh Pei responded about the sex saying that looking back on it he could
see that he didnrsquot feel entirely comfortable because she did everything he
didnrsquot have to budge She helped him with everything Ah Zhuang then
interjected ldquoChina has a way of saying this this woman served ( cihou) him
Thatrsquos a clearer way to put it Chinarsquos traditional view is that the man should
take care of ( cihou) the woman and make her feel comfortable In his case
he made the woman do it so that he could feel comfortablerdquo This situation
in Ah Zhuangrsquos view was evidently one clear marker of a money boy Other-
wise why would a man not act like the man that he should be Why would
a man let himself be treated like a woman Ah Zhuangrsquos decided views on
appropriate gender attributes reproduce the dominant mode of delineating
the boundary between normative and nonnormative desire through gen-
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 435
der His interpretation is testimony to a contradictory antinomy between a
fluidity of desire which is supposed to change continuously in line with a
free trade cosmopolitan market economy and a renaturalization of a binary
gender in its ldquorecoveryrdquo from Maoist suppression
Ah Zhuangrsquos views also echo a longer history of gender and sexuality
in China in which as Keith MacMahon has argued one of the main signs
of male privilege is the polygamous ability to have and manage multiple
sexual partners21 Ah Zhuang as a medical doctor is undoubtedly famil-
iar with traditional medical prescriptions for male potency and the needto retain male energy Moreover as Judith Farquhar has argued these tra-
ditional medical texts have been recovered and popularized in post-Mao
China through a discourse on excess and deficiency that is simultaneously
an allegory about Chinarsquos past and future22 Ah Zhuangrsquos critique of Ah Pei
reflects an understanding that to ldquotake care ofrdquo a woman sexually means
that the male is in charge of managing pleasure because he needs to control
the depletion of his own energies Clearly in Ah Zhuangrsquos view Ah Pei hasnot followed the proper prescriptions and therefore is not contributing to the
proper development of social life in China
Ah Pei then proceeded to tell a story of the factory as a site of sexual excess
Rather than paint a conventional portrait of a large state-run factory as a
place of hard work alternating with boredom Ah Pei offered a tale in which
it seemed a matter of course for people to develop their sexual proclivities in
such an oppressive situation Ah Pei explained for example how he startedsleeping with one woman Her husband had been arrested and thrown into
prison for sleeping around with the younger women in the factory His wife
the woman Ah Pei had an affair with brought the women home for him The
husband was arrested however not owing to the moral probity of other fac-
tory leaders but according to Ah Pei because another factory leader wanted
to have sex with one of the young women and was jealous of this man and
so reported him to the public security bureau When this manrsquos wife invitedhim over to her home he figured he wouldnrsquot get into any trouble having an
affair with her By implication Ah Pei was explaining how he had come to
have such a free and easy approach to sex But Ah Zhuang used this story to
conclude that Ah Pei had a profound lack of ethical sense when establishing
relationships with people particularly men
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 436
Ah Zhuang then goaded Ah Pei into explaining his theory about lack of
father love Ah Pei told me about his violent father who drank too much and
hit his children Then one day when Ah Pei was a teenager he stood up to
his father But he always felt the keen loss of having a fatherrsquos love Thatrsquos
why he thinks he feels particularly comfortable with older men Ah Zhuang
promptly disagreed ldquoI donrsquot agree with this that a gay is someone who lacks
father love so they go in search of father love or someone older23 If his
view is correct then I am suspicious of whether he is really a gayrdquo Ah Pei
responded indirectly by saying that he knows for sure he will never get mar-
ried that even though no one living near him knows he is gay and thinks he
goes around with women he feels most comfortable with men Ah Zhuang
has a decided view of the correct way to be gay one that contains a normal-
izing pressure to present only positive or ldquonaturalrdquo reasons why one would
turn out to be gay This naturalization of gay identity parallels the natu-
ralization of the ability to be a desiring subject in post-Mao China Both
naturalizations create hierarchies of inclusion and exclusion that articulatewith the neoliberal naturalization of social inequality In contrast Ah Pei
implied that there are varied ways of having homoerotic encounters and
involvements His story highlights contingency history and experience The
inequalities in his story are class- and gender-based
Ah Pei then launched into a story of how he started to get involved with
men He had come into Tiananmen Square one evening and met some-
one there Ah Zhuang interrupted and said that Ah Pei had still been withwomen after that But Ah Pei responded that though he had been with
women after his first man he nonetheless preferred men He continued his
story ldquoI walked by Zhongshan Park and went to the [public] toilet I saw a
lot of men who went in but didnrsquot come out I just stood there didnrsquot dare
to go in and piss What were they doing in there Curiosity got the better of
me I went in and found two men playing around After that I went there
every day Thatrsquos how I met a guy Thatrsquos how I started I was just a littleover twenty years oldrdquo He began to meet a lot of men through that public
toilet finally meeting his first real lover Lao Chen (Old Chen) With Lao
Chen ldquoI finally started a new life I had a homerdquo
Ah Pei explained about the suffering that he had endured in order to be
with men One evening he was nabbed by the police He lied and said he
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 437
didnrsquot understand what the other man wanted from him The police officer
made him do hard labor for a couple of hours but let him go after he saw
Ah Pei crying The police thought he looked very young Here Ah Zhuang
interjected that he too had thought Ah Pei looked much younger than his
years when he first met him ldquoWhen he meets up with other peoplerdquo Ah
Zhuang concluded ldquohe uses his brains Hersquos good at performingrdquo In other
words Ah Zhuang implied that At Pei had perfected the art of deception
When Ah Pei described his relationship with his first long-term male
lover Lao Chen he and Ah Zhuang began to argue in earnest Ah Zhuangset out the terms by stating that Lao Chen basically ldquokeptrdquo ( yang) Ah Pei
that he took care of him in every way24 He asserted his privileged access to
the truth of the situation by telling me that Lao Chen was a dear friend of
his and it was actually through Lao Chen that he had met Ah Pei He also
set up Lao Chenrsquos class background from a wealthy family in Shanghai Lao
Chen was privileged to lead the life of a playboy However according to Ah
Zhuang Lao Chen was also a deep thinker he had graduated from FuDanUniversity (the most prestigious university in Shanghai) and Ah Zhuang
had spent many pleasurable evenings talking to him about politics Thus
before Ah Pei had a chance to get very far into his version Ah Zhuang had
already established a clear class division between himself and Lao Chen on
the one side and Ah Pei on the other This division Ah Zhuang implied
should also reflect whose version of this social and biographical history was
reliableAgainst this weighty class backdrop Ah Pei struggled to put forth his
perspective Lao Chen had raised him true but he had given Lao Chen
great sexual satisfaction taking the initiative to do so He had also paid his
price by doing a lot of things for him such as taking care of Lao Chenrsquos
wife and other friends when they visited from Shanghai ldquoThat was money
I spent out of my own pocket I feel I treated his family well Hersquos older
than me and has a lot of money I admit thatrdquo In Ah Peirsquos view Lao Chenand he had a fair exchange Lao Chen had the money to buy things for Ah
Pei who in turn gave Lao Chen a satisfying sexual and emotional life In
Ah Peirsquos view it was through Lao Chenrsquos lavish expenditures on him that he
began to have true feelings of love for Lao Chen This issue of true feelings
was critical in Ah Peirsquos view in distinguishing himself from a money boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 438
Ah Pei further asserted that unlike money boys he never stuck out his hand
and asked for money People have always offered to buy things for him he
said but he never asked for anything ldquoI have always relied on myselfrdquo
Ah Zhuang quickly jumped in at this point ldquoIf I consider him to be a
money boy itrsquos because hersquos extremely intelligent in this regard Thatrsquos why
I think todayrsquos conversation is especially interesting We could talk about it
for a long time Lao Chen shed a lot of tears over him So he is a little dif-
ferent than the money boys at Half and Half [the gay bar] Do they have
these kind of money boys in the United States Sometimes he really did payfor things himself and their relationship was real I see it this way Hersquos a
little different than those others He still has a little feeling involvedrdquo David
Eng (this volume) astutely evaluates the difficulties in neoliberal modernity
of distinguishing between what he calls tokens of affection and tokens of
exchange
After Ah Zhuangrsquos explication Ah Pei did not directly address the com-
parison of himself with money boys Instead he inarticulately reasserted hisview that he had never stuck out his hand asking for money and had always
relied on himself Given Ah Zhuangrsquos blunt assertion I wanted Ah Pei to
respond I asked whether he saw himself as like those men in any way He
was direct ldquoI am absolutely not like themrdquo Ah Zhuang laughed furiously
ldquoI never stuck out my hand with Ah Zhuang eitherrdquo he replied to the laugh
ldquoLet Ah Zhuang tell you himself Do you admit it Ah Zhuang liked me so
he bought me things My old man [his current lover] is like this too Irsquom notvery smart Irsquom actually stupid my level is low but Lao Chen told him I was
clever Where am I cleverrdquo
I then bluntly asked him if he only sought out lovers who had money ldquoAh
Zhuang is a clear examplerdquo he replied ldquoAh Zhuang has nowhere near the
money of these other men but I still tell him I learned a lot from him I
used to have a foul mouth I still thank him for these past four years Thatrsquos
why I still keep a relationship with him no matter with gay friends or notI always introduce himrdquo
Ah Zhuang directed Ah Pei to explain how his relationship with Lao
Chen ended Ah Pei told a story of how Lao Chen began to see someone
else and did not want Ah Pei to come home anymore Ah Pei was furious
and refused to let him go He did all sorts of things to stop the relationship
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 439
from ending including threatening to expose Lao Chen at work Lao Chen
would certainly have lost his job not only because of homophobia but as
Ah Pei explained because he was already in hot water with the Party due
to his outspoken criticisms Ah Zhuang jumped in to point out how Ah
Peirsquos behavior with Lao Chen provided yet one more set of money boy sig-
nifiers ldquoIrsquoll explainrdquo insisted Ah Zhuang after Ah Pei had presented his
perspective ldquoFrom his point of view he wanted to occupy a position This
position was incredibly important to him Only with this position could he
have money Now it was very possible that this position could be taken overby someone else So thatrsquos why he wanted to take revenge Lao Chen came
looking for me to ask me what he should do lsquoServes you rightrsquo I said He
asked lsquoMaybe if I give him some money then he would be willing to leave
me alonersquo He asked me how much I said lsquoI donrsquot knowrsquo How could I
know how much money he should give him At the time I told him lsquoYou
can end things but you have to think of a way to do itrsquo rdquo Ah Pei diffidently
responded that he hadnrsquot wanted to let go of Lao Chen because yes he leda comfortable life with him and also he had feelings for him For Ah Pei
the fact that his life was comfortable with Lao Chen was quite distinct from
a money boyrsquos desire to be paid for sex But Ah Zhuang saw them as one
and the same Finally Lao Chen left for Canada promising to bring Ah Pei
with him after he had arrived there ldquoI was naiverdquo Ah Pei said because he
had believed him
Surprisingly Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang never explained to me much oftheir own relationship Perhaps in the end they sought to preserve some of
the fragments of their friendship They ended their conversation with me by
briefly mentioning Ah Peirsquos latest relationship with an older man someone
from France whom he had met in a bar one evening Ah Pei doesnrsquot speak
any French and this man doesnrsquot speak any Chinese Ah Zhuang translated
for them when necessary This man who worked for the French airlines
was planning to bring Ah Pei to France with him They had already appliedfor his visa In subsequent conversations Ah Zhuang derided Ah Peirsquos plans
How would Ah Pei make a living in France What could he do He would
have a hard time learning the language et cetera It was as if to say Ah Pei
did not deserve the special privilege of living in a Western country
One could dismiss this whole conversation as the obvious denouement of
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positions 182 Fall 2010 440
a relationship that had ended bitterly Indeed Ah Zhuang had thrown Ah
Pei out of his house But Ah Zhuangrsquos insistence that Ah Pei was a money
boy reflected more than mere bitterness By rejecting Ah Peirsquos claims that
he too could place himself in the category of ldquogay manrdquo Ah Zhuang was
attempting to establish a hegemonic definition of respectable gayness For
Ah Zhuang this respectability adhered in appropriate gender sensibilities
class embodiment the proper balance between dependency and equality
a strict separation of money and love and a worldliness that only those of
a certain class stature should aspire to display Ah Zhuang was trying to
establish what Lisa Duggan has called the ldquonew homonormativityrdquo Dug-
gan argues that this new homonormativity is the equivalent of neoliberal
politics in the sexual realm25 These sexual politics uphold rather than con-
test dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions and promise
a depoliticized gay culture While Duggan concerns herself only with the
United States and does not consider transnational queer politics we can still
consider how her argument illuminates the sexual politics of someone likeAh Zhuang Ah Zhuang hopes to make gay identity respectable within
the terms of postsocialist neoliberalism The fact that neoliberalism has
made desire the central realm for producing proper citizen-subjects made
Ah Zhuangrsquos discourse all the more fraught with anxiety Ah Peirsquos own
intimacy with a well-to-do foreign gay man further goaded Ah Zhuang to
condemn Ah Peirsquos actions as inappropriate in terms of sexual gendered and
culturalnational identity For Ah Pei was going abroad to live in a Westerncountry long before Ah Zhuang would have the opportunity to do so
While Ah Peirsquos views do not simply reverse this moral equation nor do
they exemplify resistance to homonormativity in any straightforward sense
they provide an incipient means of gaining insight into the techniques of neo-
liberal normalizations as well as their instabilities Ah Zhuangrsquos condemna-
tion of Ah Peirsquos plans to move to France with his lover reveals the extent to
which the transnationalism that made Ah Peirsquos current relationship possiblechanges how ldquoinappropriaterdquo desires manifest themselves in the postsocialist
era It was after all only after the transformations in the last few decades
that a person from France would come to live and work again in China and
that an ldquoinappropriaterdquo desire could now also be a transnational desire The
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 441
fact that they do not speak each otherrsquos language exemplifies how neoliberal-
ism has allowed for new possibilities in the manner in which people desire
each other not just which kinds of desires are legitimate but which kinds of
desires are sustainable through which kinds of technological aids and socio-
economic conditions and across which kinds of borders Yet in Ah Zhuangrsquos
view someone of Ah Peirsquos class background could only succeed in such an
achievement by entangling the desires for money sex and love rather than
keeping them separate However the separations between entrepreneurialism
and intimacy that Ah Zhuang wants to establish for respectable gayness are
difficult to maintain26 Neoliberal cosmopolitanism appears to be all about
entrepreneurial savvy Yet there is more than one way to be an entrepreneur
And there is more than one way to be a nonnormalized or even antinormal-
ized gay subject27
Scene 2
Two young men are squatting at the edge of a bridge passing the time by
blowing up condoms ldquoThis way it looks like a dick It changes into breasts
when it gets bigger The breast changes into a dick and the dick into a
breastrdquo one of them says and laughs As they continue to play with their
condom-balloons the other one asks ldquoDo you like the feeling of being pen-
etrated or the feeling when you stick it inrdquo ldquoBothrdquo comes the answer
This scene opens Feeding Boys Ayaya ( Aiyaya Qu Buru) a queer filmabout male hustlers or money boys by the well-known experimental film-
maker Cui Zirsquoen28 This first scene immediately cuts to a contrasting scene
Two men are in a small closed room filled with computer and filmmaking
equipment The older one is in the background sitting in front of his com-
puter The other much younger is in the forefront of the screen The per-
son manipulating the computer equipment says ldquoZaizai [characterrsquos name]
this theme is for you It might not completely match your character in thefilm The distance makes it more precise Do you have any objectionsrdquo The
young man standing in the forefront of the screen has a somber look on his
face He refuses to speak The camera angle is an extreme close-up enlarg-
ing his face to fill the screen and nearly blocking out a view of the film-
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positions 182 Fall 2010 442
maker The effect is of a split screen We hear the filmmaker from behind
urging him several times ldquoSay somethingrdquo But the other refuses to speak
The quick juxtaposition of these two scenes and their contrasting mise-
en-scene prefigure the major motifs in Feeding Boys Ayaya The opposition
is established visually in the lighting camera angles locations and position-
ing of the characters The first scene presents characters who we will later
come to realize are money boys though at this point their identities are
unclear The scene mixes irony and pathos freedom and marginalization
The ironic and lighthearted humor of the dialogue contrasts with the curi-
ous positioning of the two young men They are at the edge of a deserted
bridge in the very early morning sunlight The camera places both of them
in the center of the screen in a medium close-up thus highlighting rela-
tionality but also distance or alienation The bantering friendship of the
two young men is visually contrasted with their distance from the rest of
the population and from the normative workday Yet this alienation is also
a liberation from the very same mdash the freedom to play at any hour the lackof confinement in space This scene represents what Judith Halberstam has
called ldquoqueer time and spacerdquo Halberstam argues that queer time and space
are ldquowillfully eccentric modes of beingrdquo that challenge heteronormativity by
providing alternative relations to time and space29
The very next scene reminds us that what we have just seen and what we
will view in the rest of the film is a set of representations The question of
how to represent money boys and who can and should speak in their nameis highlighted in this film The filmmaker character in the second scene
is choosing the theme music not the young man The dark closed room
and the split screen raise the question of whether and how the young man
can escape the framing of his life by the other The silence of the young
man mdash another money boy mdash recalls Gayatri Spivakrsquos famous dictum that
the subaltern cannot speak by which she meant that only traces of their
own interpretations of their lives remains in the texts written about them bycolonial elites30
Feeding Boys is a continual juxtaposition of these two types of images mdash
one of money boys displaying a queer sociality and the other of someone mdash
whether the filmmaker character a Christian missionary out to save money
boys his girlfriend who takes over his work or the parents of an aspir-
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 443
ing money boy mdash speaking for or about them Although the film does not
romanticize their lives the money boy characters not only exceed but also
challenge these representations of them both their content and their mode
of representation They continually frustrate attempts to represent capture
or change them Zaizai for example later demands to choose his own theme
music an insistence that frustrates the filmmaker who claims it will ruin
his film Their queerness emerges in these challenges
With Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen enters the larger debates that have central-
ized the question of desire in postsocialist China Cui Zirsquoen uses experimen-
tal visual logics that blur documentary and fiction and that refuse narrative
linearity or closure to challenge not only the specific judgments about money
boys among gay men but the entire apparatus of normalization in China
that tries to delimit desire Cui Zirsquoen addresses the specificity of neoliberal-
ism in China by challenging the hegemonic articulations between Chinese
culture and proper desire on the one hand and labor money and desire on
the other The film has a carnivalesque quality reinforced by the hand-heldcamera techniques which is at once somber and playful It subverts bour-
geois heterosexuality as that which subtends Chinese culture by robbing it of
its glory The film represents money boys as people with an integral human-
ity who take the full measure of their lives while the people who judge
them in the name of neoliberal desires Chinese morality or Christianity
appear damaged filled with contradictory desires themselves or just plain
boring The film thus further subverts postsocialist normalizing desires bydirecting our gaze away from what many think is perverse or rather by
making the normal perverse and the perverse normal The people to be
pitied in this film are the heterosexuals who condemn the hustlersrsquo profes-
sion They are the ones who wither and die Hustlers in contrast have time
to play and enjoy life Yet Cui Zirsquoen does not indulge in a simple decon-
structive reversal Hustlers suffer too but mainly from the condemnation
and exploitation they experience as a result of the hypocritical desires of theheteronormative world
Although Feeding Boys seems to establish a debate between heterosexu-
als and gay male hustlers the themes raised in the film rehearse anxieties
similar to those I presented in my first scene that occur among gay men
Are hustlers respectable or do they sully the good name of other gay men
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positions 182 Fall 2010 444
Do they deserve sympathy or condemnation Are they gay or just exploit-
ing vulnerable gay men Are their desires to be celebrated or condemned
Are they appropriate for Chinarsquos postsocialist neoliberal future or do they
represent the degradation of that future Feeding Boys refuses these dichoto-
mous terms Rather than simply reverse their valence the film addresses
other queer questions that displace these normalizing ones How should
we engage our desires How can this engagement lead to nonnormative
lives How does class inflect desire How can nonnormative desires chal-
lenge class-based temporalities What is the relationship between money
and sex Finally what is the role of religion
Feeding Boys loosely revolves around the elusive search of a Christian het-
erosexual brother Dabin for his younger brother Xiao Bao who has dis-
appeared into the money boy life During his search he discovers that one
of his younger ldquoChristian brothersrdquo Xiao Jian has also decided to become
a money boy to practice Christian love Juxtaposing money boysrsquo serious
banter with the normalizing judgments of others Feeding Boys weaves inand out of several recurrent image-themes the everyday life of hustlers
Xiao Jianrsquos exploration of how to become a hustler the missionizing zeal of
Dabin to dissuade hustlers from continuing in their profession and finally
the desire to represent and normalize the lives of hustlers Throughout
Feeding Boys jumps between these image-themes thus putting them in
dialogue with one another The experimental filmrsquos refusal to present a
linear narrative mirrors the refusal by the money boy characters to accedeto the normalizing judgments of others Thus the form to echo Hayden
White is also the content31 Cui Zirsquoenrsquos filmmaking techniques warn us
that endeavors to normalize create severe dislocations and damage And
not merely to money boys
Image-Theme 1 The Mundanity of Money Boy Life
Feeding Boys strikingly refuses to display any images of money boys actually
engaged in sex or hustling for customers This lack of sex scenes contrasts
with Cui Zirsquoenrsquos other films which generally go out of their way to show sex
between men The only way we even know that these young men are money
boys is through the dialogue More specifically we hear the arguments that
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 445
straight people who disapprove of them engender Indeed the film is quite
chaste The one scene in which we see two people showing erotic affection
is between the older heterosexual brother of one of the money boys (XiaoBao) whose missionary goal is to convert hustlers and his girlfriend Feed-
ing Boys thus refuses to indulge viewersrsquo scopophilic desires Cui Zirsquoen teases
the viewer from the first scene Watching two men blowing up condoms
and briefly chatting about sex hints at more erotic scenes to come But they
never materialize A condom-balloon is all we ever get By thus tapping into
a gaze desirous for the perverse and then frustrating that desire Cui Zirsquoen
confronts the viewer with the need to think about representation and the
role of representation in normalizing desire mdash both in public discourse and
in his film
In place of the erotic the viewer is offered the stuff of everyday life One
recurrent image as in the first scene is of money boys on a bridge early in
the morning In one scene they playfully engage in ballet-like dance ges-
tures In another one of them displays his acrobatic skills doing severalback flips Later we see these same young men practicing taiji quan (a mar-
tial arts exercise) again early in the morning on the bridge These images
immediately bring to mind the ldquonormalrdquo populace in Chinarsquos cities who go
out each morning to do precisely these group exercises This idea is rein-
forced by the camera angle in these scenes which is a medium wide-angle
shot taking in both the bridge and the surrounding metropolis But the
bridge is also symptomatic of a moment of suspension between directionsin life or between worlds A bridge represents a gap as well as an attempt to
overcome a fissure in the landscape In one telling scene near the end of the
film a money boy begs for money on the bridge pleading with passersby
that he has given up his dissolute life and reformed himself Yet immediately
after we see him with another friend arguing with the Christian mission-
aryrsquos girlfriend stating unequivocally that even though they treated begging
as a ldquorealrdquo job no one wanted to give them money and that in todayrsquos worldpeople respect a prostitute more than a poor person The bridge thus repre-
sents two intertwined passages mdash from a socialist world of time and space
in which citizens had the leisure to do morning exercises and their lives
were not measured by money to a neoliberal world in which wealth is the
only measure of human dignity and no one mdash except those on the outside
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positions 182 Fall 2010 446
of bourgeois respectability mdash has time to spend exercising on a bridge This
passage is intertwined then with a passage from heteronormative relations
of time and space to queer time and space mdash the refusal of the relationshipbetween time work money and desire that neoliberalism has established
Another recurrent scene is of several young men playing in the park
They walk through the park in a desultory manner enjoying the day One
of them has his dog on a leash The dog is obviously well groomed and
well fed Only recently have Beijing residents been allowed to keep pets in
the city Dogs quickly became a key signifier of bourgeois cosmopolitan
accomplishment Why shouldnrsquot money boys be allowed to have them too
In the film the pet belies the idea that money boys lead an unstable dirty
and unreliable life as many believe Moreover it forces open the cluster of
oppositions between respectable and degraded desires in which bourgeois
heterosexual family life goes together with accoutrements like pets while
prostitution is supposed to represent nothing but lack
Other scenes reinforce the sense that money boys are like everyone else inthe way they go about the stuff of everyday life We see them singing in a
karaoke bar playing with a young boy on a playground and having a meal
with their families These young men are portrayed as neither angels nor
demons They are neither ecstatic nor suicidal But the film makes clear that
they live on the margins and have only one another for support
In only a few scenes do these money boys talk about their work But even
here their conversations resemble those of anyone who has ever grumbledabout his or her workplace At one point in the bar for example one of
the money boys tells the other Xiao Bao that his brother (the missionary)
has been looking for him Xiao Bao shakes his head and complains that a
customer has just ripped him off by refusing to pay In another scene in the
park during the daytime one of the money boys complains to the other that
he canrsquot seem to save any money because he always has to buy expensive
clothes to look nice for his customers The other responds that he should besmarter and get the customers to buy the clothes for him He proudly reveals
that he has saved quite a bit of money with which he plans to buy a house
for his mother
The film also playfully satirizes normalized work lives In one scene one
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 447
of the money boys says ldquoWe need structure We have to become profes-
sionalsrdquo Pointing to a gay bar behind him he says ldquoThis is our interna-
tional head officerdquo Another money boy repeats virtually the same wordsbut this time points to a twenty-story high rise building The film shifts to
an eerie scene of colorful masks then quickly to what looks to be a confer-
ence meeting in a bar Someone presumably their boss is taking roll call
They all stand to attention some of them wearing name tags as if at an aca-
demic meeting In this manner Cui Zirsquoen calls into question the relationship
between sex work and desire in China He highlights the instabilities in
how neoliberalism in China has produced social inequalities through trans-
national structures of differentially valued labors But he further demon-
strates the inextricability of sexuality bodies desire and labor To labor for
wealth is supposed to be the foremost desire in a neoliberal world Thus
normalization techniques reduce and embed desire in a structured world
of intensive labor extraction one that produces a capitalist-inflected heter-
onormativity (even as it has a nondeterministic relationship to that heter-onormativity) In other words Cui Zirsquoen deconstructs how the whole person
becomes a commodity in a neoliberal world and how that world while it
fosters desires also robs people of their desires for a full humanity Through
this humorous filmic meditation on desire Cui Zirsquoen thus provides biting
queer commentary on the reduction and devaluation of necessary labor in
postsocialist China
This commentary is most explicit in a scene near the end of the filmwhen the missionaryrsquos girlfriend pleadingly asks several money boys why
they do this work One of them responds with ten reasons ldquoOne you donrsquot
have to be president Two you donrsquot have to be a soldier Three you donrsquot
have to be a farmer and work the land Four you donrsquot have to wash dishes
Five you donrsquot have to marry and have kids Six you donrsquot have to become a
movie star Seven you donrsquot have to be a movie director Eight you donrsquot get
fat Nine you are exploited by others but donrsquot exploit others And ten youdonrsquot die because we use our bodies to satisfy both good and bad peoplersquos
desiresrdquo Through arguments with and about money boys the film thus
creates commentary on how neoliberalism in China appropriates not just
labor-power but the laborer as a desiring subject32 The queer commentary
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positions 182 Fall 2010 448
of Feeding Boys demonstrates how nonnormative alternatives lie outside of
those temporal and spatial markers of respectable Chinese experience mdash
namely marriage reproduction kinship and death The film thus chal-lenges the oppositions of respectability and shame
Image-Theme 2 How to Become a Money Boy
The thread of this image-theme most explicitly mocks normalizing judg-
ments about desire work class and sex Through this image-theme the
film represents gay male hustling as a profession as honorable as becom-
ing a lawyer or computer scientist In perhaps the most iconic scene in this
regard Feeding Boys stages an argument between Xiao Jian and his parents
that crafts a mimicry of family gatherings to decide the childrenrsquos future33
His parents appear to be respectable middle-class intellectuals The mise-
en-scene is a plushly decorated apartment in which the family lives together
The family is all seated there The father states unequivocally that this kindof work leads nowhere They bemoan the fact that they raised their son for
so many years and gave him the opportunity to do many things with his life
They insist they just want the best for him The parents are oddly calm and
though disgusted do not throw him out of the house Indeed in the next
scene he arrives early in the morning to the apartment stating boldly to his
parents that they arrived home from work earlier than him His mother
asks if he isnrsquot supposed to work the night shift and he responds that he willwork any shift The mother turns to the father and makes the pithy com-
ment ldquoSo we failed to discourage him from this line of workrdquo
In another scene in which Xiao Jian defends to Dabin his reasons for
wanting to become a money boy Cui Zirsquoen crafts a doubled-edged mock-
ery of socialist ideals as well by invoking the old socialist honor of learn-
ing from and serving the masses His satire in this regard cuts in multiple
directions It recalls not just the marginalization but the condemnationand punishment under socialism of those with inappropriate desires But
it also uses those socialist ideals to critique the neoliberal normalization of
the appropriate relationship between labor and desire Xiao Jian initiates an
argument with Dabin when he announces that he too wants to become
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 449
a money boy Xiao Jian is insistent ldquoI want to sell my body like Xiao Bao
[Dabinrsquos brother]rdquo He then explains that when Xiao Bao disappeared he
went to check out the male prostitution business ldquoMost of these youngstersare from villages and from very poor family backgrounds I was born into
a happy family I want to join the hustlers and change their social statusrdquo
Dabin retorts ldquoCan you make those people happy Itrsquos all about making
millionaires officials and rich guys happyrdquo ldquoYou told me that we have to
serve the humble Now I want to become one of themrdquo replies Xiao Jian
ldquoI want to become the lowest of the low together with robbers hooligans
petty thieves ex-convicts homosexuals and hustlers I want to stay at the
bottomrdquo Dabin then launches into classical Chinese metaphors ldquoWater
flows downward but man soars heavenwardrdquo Xiao Jian has an answer to
that as well insisting that man is also part of nature and is also capable of
running downhill ldquoItrsquos only natural and makes things more equalrdquo
The visual logics of this scene provide the ironic counter-commentary
During the entire scene Xiao Jian is fully dressed while we watch Dabin halfnaked as he dresses after a shower The viewer becomes engaged in the erot-
ics of watching Dabin slowly lather lotion over his entire body then pull on
tight-fitting underwear The camera lingers on his well built body By the end
of the scene Dabin is still half naked The erotics of the scene are heightened
by the effect of a mirror that stages Xiao Jian in reverse That is Xiao Jian is
seated to the left of Dabin but we only view him through the mirror where
he appears on Dabinrsquos right while Dabin occupies center stage as the half- naked figure of erotic righteousness The mirror clues us in to a split between
the dialogue and the visual logics This split reflects back to the spectator the
hypocritical contradictions in postsocialist enticements of desire
Image-Theme 3 The Trials and Tribulations of Missionary Work
Early in the film we see someone driving through Beijing in a nice carHe is a good looking serious young man It turns out to be Dabin search-
ing for Xiao Bao his younger brother Dabin walks into a bar looking for
him without success He proceeds to follow one of the money boys into the
bathroom and argues with him saying that he doesnrsquot understand why his
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positions 182 Fall 2010 450
job is so attractive ldquoHow could it attract you How can you enjoy it without
getting tiredrdquo The money boy calmly responds ldquoThe job has three advan-
tages First you earn money Second freedom Third you can fool aroundwith different peoplerdquo When Dabin aggressively asks if there are any dis-
advantages the money boy responds ldquoFirst you get sick easily Second itrsquos
a waste of condoms and KY jelly Third you donrsquot get enough sleeprdquo Dabin
cries ldquoIf you keep doing this you will get AIDSrdquo Thus opens the third
image-theme the heterosexual Christian evangelist who attempts to convert
money boys
Dabinrsquos idea of conversion conflates normative sexual desire and Chris-
tianity Thus in the next major scene in which he appears he argues with
two money boys telling them that birds in the sky donrsquot sell their bodies
but they have food to eat that lotus flowers donrsquot sell their bodies but they
are beautiful that dogs and earthworms donrsquot sell their bodies but they live
vigorous lives so why should they sell their bodies He then offers to give
them the Bible Cui Zirsquoen was raised as a Catholic in the northeast city of
Dalian In his previous films he took a Derek Jarman approach and made
symbolic Jesus figures suffer the slings and arrows of heterosexual rage He
tried to reconcile homoerotic desire with what he viewed as the true essence
of Catholicism In Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen has taken a distinctive approach
Here he asserts that those who use Christianity to suppress nonnormative
desires have a hopeless case on their hands Moreover the true essence of
Christianity is ambiguous Perhaps it really is a source of oppression ratherthan as in his previous films a potential guide for love
This ambiguity is underscored in the next major scene in which Dabin
attempts to win converts among money boys He is reading the Bible together
with his younger ldquoChristian brotherrdquo Xiao Jian who has also chosen to be a
money boy Xiao Jian appears earnest He asks ldquoDo you think Jesus would
like that I mean would he like the fact that men and women and men and
men and women and women have sexrdquo Dabin responds ldquoMen and menand women and men have sexual relationships That means that God gave
them their sexual desires and afterwards even gave them the ability to have
sex So who gave men and women the ability to have sex God did The
fact that God gave us this ability proves that he allows us to do itrdquo But the
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 451
young man persists ldquoYou said men and women do it for procreation If men
have sex with men they canrsquot procreate How do you explain thisrdquo Dabin
is stumped ldquoI have to turn to the Bible again for this questionrdquoThe moral inconclusiveness of the Bible and the ability to glean multiple
interpretations of desire from it leads the viewer to understand that there is
a distinction between heteronormativity and the normalization of desire
Strikingly Dabin does not condemn these young men for having sex with
other men He does not in other words condemn sexual desire tout court
or even homoerotic desire What he condemns is the exchange of sex for
money
Dabin is passionate in his missionary work In one scene we see him
standing on the bridge where money boys gather Christian Bible held up
high intoning his plea to them ldquoThe end of the world is near and you still
sell your bodiesrdquo No one speaks to him his travails seem fruitless Dabin on
the bridge recalls by contrast the money boys on the bridge But whereas
the money boys were shot in mid-range at wide angle Dabin is shot from
below with a zoom lens that makes him appear more distant as if he is high
up on a pulpit or a cross
Somewhat unexpectedly Dabin takes seriously ill and dies His death
recalls that of Jesus of course dying for othersrsquo sins but there is a distinct
ambiguity in Dabinrsquos death Does he die for othersrsquo sins or has he suffered
under his own illusions Is his the work of a savior or do normalized people
with judgments of others suffer because of their judgmental values Thefilm never resolves this ambiguity
On his deathbed Dabin pleads with his girlfriend to take over his work
to preach the gospel and save male prostitutes She promises to do so and
indeed in the next scene we see her standing on the same bridge holding
up the same Bible intoning monotonously ldquoDonrsquot sell anymorerdquo In the end
the girlfriend also ends up exhausted and sick in bed having similarly sacri-
ficed herself to a hopeless cause
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3334
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 433
him Ah Zhuang helpfully repeated some of Ah Peirsquos statements to make
sure I understood But Ah Zhuang also kept inserting his own views inter-
rupting Ah Pei at every turn
We began the conversation in a desultory manner with my questions
about Ah Peirsquos background He explained that his parents both had had a
hard life when they were young before the 983089983097983092983097 revolution His father was
from the Northeast and had always had to move around looking for work
But fortunately he had ended up in Beijing working in a factory under
the Central Television Bureau constructing television reception towers Hismother worked in a radio factory When his father fell ill with cancer Ah
Pei had taken over his factory position At the time of course job inheri-
tance in state-run factories was seen as a privilege Then Ah Peirsquos second
brother and sister-in-law also came to work there By the time of our con-
versation Ah Pei had taken what was then the risky step of abandoning his
secure position in the factory Perhaps he had the foresight to realize that
factory workersrsquo living conditions were declining under economic reformIndeed by the time of our conversation half the factory had been let go and
were on unemployment Ah Pei had become a taxi driver He was then in
his mid-thirties
Perhaps I was moving too slowly toward the ostensible topic of the eve-
ning Or perhaps he had his own agenda In any case Ah Zhuang suddenly
interjected with a question that abruptly changed the direction of our con-
versation ldquoWhat are your feelings when you are with womenrdquo Ah Pei pro-ceeded to tell a story about his factory ldquoAll the women I have encountered
have been from our factoryrdquo He then described how at the age of 983089983097 he had
his first sexual relationship with an older married woman after another
woman he was apprenticed to introduced them to each other She too was
an apprentice According to Ah Pei she had seduced him Prior to that he
had no interest in sex with women at least not women his age They carried
on their affair for over a year The womanrsquos husband never knew he worked
in another factory The main point that Ah Pei stressed in telling this story
was that with an older person he finally felt secure Since then he added
he has always wanted to be with older people
When he first made this assertion I did not pick up on its larger implica-
tion in relation to the issue of money boys Only later when Ah Zhuang was
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 434
arguing with him did I realize that since that first affair with a woman
Ah Pei had been mainly with older men who took care of him mdash including
Ah Zhuang In talking about his first affair Ah Pei thus traced his inter-
est in older men to an emotional and sexual history of feeling comfortable
with older people Ah Zhuang as we will see reduced Ah Peirsquos story to
one of opportunism For at this point Ah Zhuang sarcastically interjected
a counterpoint to Ah Peirsquos insistence that this older woman had taken the
initiative ldquoMaybe the first time but then what about the second and third
ones Because yoursquove told me that there were quite a few including the topleader of the factory And even the managerrsquos wife Didnrsquot you take some
of the initiative in these later encounters I would really like to know what
exactly is your psychological attitude when you are with older peoplerdquo Ah
Pei ignored the first part of Ah Zhuangrsquos question answering that with
older people he feels particularly able to relax and let go
Here we find the first point of contention between Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang
over whether Ah Pei fits into the category of money boy Ah Pei tried to tellme a story of his psychological and emotional history He feels that older
people take the initiative with him which puts him at ease Ah Zhuang on
the other hand tried to turn Ah Peirsquos actions into self-seeking advantage Ah
Zhuang was not objecting so much to a seeming bisexuality that might make
a gay identity more ambiguous as to what in his view was naked opportun-
ism that did not distinguish between genders Ah Zhuang elaborated on his
view when I asked Ah Pei how he felt starting an affair with this womanAh Pei responded about the sex saying that looking back on it he could
see that he didnrsquot feel entirely comfortable because she did everything he
didnrsquot have to budge She helped him with everything Ah Zhuang then
interjected ldquoChina has a way of saying this this woman served ( cihou) him
Thatrsquos a clearer way to put it Chinarsquos traditional view is that the man should
take care of ( cihou) the woman and make her feel comfortable In his case
he made the woman do it so that he could feel comfortablerdquo This situation
in Ah Zhuangrsquos view was evidently one clear marker of a money boy Other-
wise why would a man not act like the man that he should be Why would
a man let himself be treated like a woman Ah Zhuangrsquos decided views on
appropriate gender attributes reproduce the dominant mode of delineating
the boundary between normative and nonnormative desire through gen-
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 435
der His interpretation is testimony to a contradictory antinomy between a
fluidity of desire which is supposed to change continuously in line with a
free trade cosmopolitan market economy and a renaturalization of a binary
gender in its ldquorecoveryrdquo from Maoist suppression
Ah Zhuangrsquos views also echo a longer history of gender and sexuality
in China in which as Keith MacMahon has argued one of the main signs
of male privilege is the polygamous ability to have and manage multiple
sexual partners21 Ah Zhuang as a medical doctor is undoubtedly famil-
iar with traditional medical prescriptions for male potency and the needto retain male energy Moreover as Judith Farquhar has argued these tra-
ditional medical texts have been recovered and popularized in post-Mao
China through a discourse on excess and deficiency that is simultaneously
an allegory about Chinarsquos past and future22 Ah Zhuangrsquos critique of Ah Pei
reflects an understanding that to ldquotake care ofrdquo a woman sexually means
that the male is in charge of managing pleasure because he needs to control
the depletion of his own energies Clearly in Ah Zhuangrsquos view Ah Pei hasnot followed the proper prescriptions and therefore is not contributing to the
proper development of social life in China
Ah Pei then proceeded to tell a story of the factory as a site of sexual excess
Rather than paint a conventional portrait of a large state-run factory as a
place of hard work alternating with boredom Ah Pei offered a tale in which
it seemed a matter of course for people to develop their sexual proclivities in
such an oppressive situation Ah Pei explained for example how he startedsleeping with one woman Her husband had been arrested and thrown into
prison for sleeping around with the younger women in the factory His wife
the woman Ah Pei had an affair with brought the women home for him The
husband was arrested however not owing to the moral probity of other fac-
tory leaders but according to Ah Pei because another factory leader wanted
to have sex with one of the young women and was jealous of this man and
so reported him to the public security bureau When this manrsquos wife invitedhim over to her home he figured he wouldnrsquot get into any trouble having an
affair with her By implication Ah Pei was explaining how he had come to
have such a free and easy approach to sex But Ah Zhuang used this story to
conclude that Ah Pei had a profound lack of ethical sense when establishing
relationships with people particularly men
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 436
Ah Zhuang then goaded Ah Pei into explaining his theory about lack of
father love Ah Pei told me about his violent father who drank too much and
hit his children Then one day when Ah Pei was a teenager he stood up to
his father But he always felt the keen loss of having a fatherrsquos love Thatrsquos
why he thinks he feels particularly comfortable with older men Ah Zhuang
promptly disagreed ldquoI donrsquot agree with this that a gay is someone who lacks
father love so they go in search of father love or someone older23 If his
view is correct then I am suspicious of whether he is really a gayrdquo Ah Pei
responded indirectly by saying that he knows for sure he will never get mar-
ried that even though no one living near him knows he is gay and thinks he
goes around with women he feels most comfortable with men Ah Zhuang
has a decided view of the correct way to be gay one that contains a normal-
izing pressure to present only positive or ldquonaturalrdquo reasons why one would
turn out to be gay This naturalization of gay identity parallels the natu-
ralization of the ability to be a desiring subject in post-Mao China Both
naturalizations create hierarchies of inclusion and exclusion that articulatewith the neoliberal naturalization of social inequality In contrast Ah Pei
implied that there are varied ways of having homoerotic encounters and
involvements His story highlights contingency history and experience The
inequalities in his story are class- and gender-based
Ah Pei then launched into a story of how he started to get involved with
men He had come into Tiananmen Square one evening and met some-
one there Ah Zhuang interrupted and said that Ah Pei had still been withwomen after that But Ah Pei responded that though he had been with
women after his first man he nonetheless preferred men He continued his
story ldquoI walked by Zhongshan Park and went to the [public] toilet I saw a
lot of men who went in but didnrsquot come out I just stood there didnrsquot dare
to go in and piss What were they doing in there Curiosity got the better of
me I went in and found two men playing around After that I went there
every day Thatrsquos how I met a guy Thatrsquos how I started I was just a littleover twenty years oldrdquo He began to meet a lot of men through that public
toilet finally meeting his first real lover Lao Chen (Old Chen) With Lao
Chen ldquoI finally started a new life I had a homerdquo
Ah Pei explained about the suffering that he had endured in order to be
with men One evening he was nabbed by the police He lied and said he
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 437
didnrsquot understand what the other man wanted from him The police officer
made him do hard labor for a couple of hours but let him go after he saw
Ah Pei crying The police thought he looked very young Here Ah Zhuang
interjected that he too had thought Ah Pei looked much younger than his
years when he first met him ldquoWhen he meets up with other peoplerdquo Ah
Zhuang concluded ldquohe uses his brains Hersquos good at performingrdquo In other
words Ah Zhuang implied that At Pei had perfected the art of deception
When Ah Pei described his relationship with his first long-term male
lover Lao Chen he and Ah Zhuang began to argue in earnest Ah Zhuangset out the terms by stating that Lao Chen basically ldquokeptrdquo ( yang) Ah Pei
that he took care of him in every way24 He asserted his privileged access to
the truth of the situation by telling me that Lao Chen was a dear friend of
his and it was actually through Lao Chen that he had met Ah Pei He also
set up Lao Chenrsquos class background from a wealthy family in Shanghai Lao
Chen was privileged to lead the life of a playboy However according to Ah
Zhuang Lao Chen was also a deep thinker he had graduated from FuDanUniversity (the most prestigious university in Shanghai) and Ah Zhuang
had spent many pleasurable evenings talking to him about politics Thus
before Ah Pei had a chance to get very far into his version Ah Zhuang had
already established a clear class division between himself and Lao Chen on
the one side and Ah Pei on the other This division Ah Zhuang implied
should also reflect whose version of this social and biographical history was
reliableAgainst this weighty class backdrop Ah Pei struggled to put forth his
perspective Lao Chen had raised him true but he had given Lao Chen
great sexual satisfaction taking the initiative to do so He had also paid his
price by doing a lot of things for him such as taking care of Lao Chenrsquos
wife and other friends when they visited from Shanghai ldquoThat was money
I spent out of my own pocket I feel I treated his family well Hersquos older
than me and has a lot of money I admit thatrdquo In Ah Peirsquos view Lao Chenand he had a fair exchange Lao Chen had the money to buy things for Ah
Pei who in turn gave Lao Chen a satisfying sexual and emotional life In
Ah Peirsquos view it was through Lao Chenrsquos lavish expenditures on him that he
began to have true feelings of love for Lao Chen This issue of true feelings
was critical in Ah Peirsquos view in distinguishing himself from a money boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 438
Ah Pei further asserted that unlike money boys he never stuck out his hand
and asked for money People have always offered to buy things for him he
said but he never asked for anything ldquoI have always relied on myselfrdquo
Ah Zhuang quickly jumped in at this point ldquoIf I consider him to be a
money boy itrsquos because hersquos extremely intelligent in this regard Thatrsquos why
I think todayrsquos conversation is especially interesting We could talk about it
for a long time Lao Chen shed a lot of tears over him So he is a little dif-
ferent than the money boys at Half and Half [the gay bar] Do they have
these kind of money boys in the United States Sometimes he really did payfor things himself and their relationship was real I see it this way Hersquos a
little different than those others He still has a little feeling involvedrdquo David
Eng (this volume) astutely evaluates the difficulties in neoliberal modernity
of distinguishing between what he calls tokens of affection and tokens of
exchange
After Ah Zhuangrsquos explication Ah Pei did not directly address the com-
parison of himself with money boys Instead he inarticulately reasserted hisview that he had never stuck out his hand asking for money and had always
relied on himself Given Ah Zhuangrsquos blunt assertion I wanted Ah Pei to
respond I asked whether he saw himself as like those men in any way He
was direct ldquoI am absolutely not like themrdquo Ah Zhuang laughed furiously
ldquoI never stuck out my hand with Ah Zhuang eitherrdquo he replied to the laugh
ldquoLet Ah Zhuang tell you himself Do you admit it Ah Zhuang liked me so
he bought me things My old man [his current lover] is like this too Irsquom notvery smart Irsquom actually stupid my level is low but Lao Chen told him I was
clever Where am I cleverrdquo
I then bluntly asked him if he only sought out lovers who had money ldquoAh
Zhuang is a clear examplerdquo he replied ldquoAh Zhuang has nowhere near the
money of these other men but I still tell him I learned a lot from him I
used to have a foul mouth I still thank him for these past four years Thatrsquos
why I still keep a relationship with him no matter with gay friends or notI always introduce himrdquo
Ah Zhuang directed Ah Pei to explain how his relationship with Lao
Chen ended Ah Pei told a story of how Lao Chen began to see someone
else and did not want Ah Pei to come home anymore Ah Pei was furious
and refused to let him go He did all sorts of things to stop the relationship
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 439
from ending including threatening to expose Lao Chen at work Lao Chen
would certainly have lost his job not only because of homophobia but as
Ah Pei explained because he was already in hot water with the Party due
to his outspoken criticisms Ah Zhuang jumped in to point out how Ah
Peirsquos behavior with Lao Chen provided yet one more set of money boy sig-
nifiers ldquoIrsquoll explainrdquo insisted Ah Zhuang after Ah Pei had presented his
perspective ldquoFrom his point of view he wanted to occupy a position This
position was incredibly important to him Only with this position could he
have money Now it was very possible that this position could be taken overby someone else So thatrsquos why he wanted to take revenge Lao Chen came
looking for me to ask me what he should do lsquoServes you rightrsquo I said He
asked lsquoMaybe if I give him some money then he would be willing to leave
me alonersquo He asked me how much I said lsquoI donrsquot knowrsquo How could I
know how much money he should give him At the time I told him lsquoYou
can end things but you have to think of a way to do itrsquo rdquo Ah Pei diffidently
responded that he hadnrsquot wanted to let go of Lao Chen because yes he leda comfortable life with him and also he had feelings for him For Ah Pei
the fact that his life was comfortable with Lao Chen was quite distinct from
a money boyrsquos desire to be paid for sex But Ah Zhuang saw them as one
and the same Finally Lao Chen left for Canada promising to bring Ah Pei
with him after he had arrived there ldquoI was naiverdquo Ah Pei said because he
had believed him
Surprisingly Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang never explained to me much oftheir own relationship Perhaps in the end they sought to preserve some of
the fragments of their friendship They ended their conversation with me by
briefly mentioning Ah Peirsquos latest relationship with an older man someone
from France whom he had met in a bar one evening Ah Pei doesnrsquot speak
any French and this man doesnrsquot speak any Chinese Ah Zhuang translated
for them when necessary This man who worked for the French airlines
was planning to bring Ah Pei to France with him They had already appliedfor his visa In subsequent conversations Ah Zhuang derided Ah Peirsquos plans
How would Ah Pei make a living in France What could he do He would
have a hard time learning the language et cetera It was as if to say Ah Pei
did not deserve the special privilege of living in a Western country
One could dismiss this whole conversation as the obvious denouement of
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positions 182 Fall 2010 440
a relationship that had ended bitterly Indeed Ah Zhuang had thrown Ah
Pei out of his house But Ah Zhuangrsquos insistence that Ah Pei was a money
boy reflected more than mere bitterness By rejecting Ah Peirsquos claims that
he too could place himself in the category of ldquogay manrdquo Ah Zhuang was
attempting to establish a hegemonic definition of respectable gayness For
Ah Zhuang this respectability adhered in appropriate gender sensibilities
class embodiment the proper balance between dependency and equality
a strict separation of money and love and a worldliness that only those of
a certain class stature should aspire to display Ah Zhuang was trying to
establish what Lisa Duggan has called the ldquonew homonormativityrdquo Dug-
gan argues that this new homonormativity is the equivalent of neoliberal
politics in the sexual realm25 These sexual politics uphold rather than con-
test dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions and promise
a depoliticized gay culture While Duggan concerns herself only with the
United States and does not consider transnational queer politics we can still
consider how her argument illuminates the sexual politics of someone likeAh Zhuang Ah Zhuang hopes to make gay identity respectable within
the terms of postsocialist neoliberalism The fact that neoliberalism has
made desire the central realm for producing proper citizen-subjects made
Ah Zhuangrsquos discourse all the more fraught with anxiety Ah Peirsquos own
intimacy with a well-to-do foreign gay man further goaded Ah Zhuang to
condemn Ah Peirsquos actions as inappropriate in terms of sexual gendered and
culturalnational identity For Ah Pei was going abroad to live in a Westerncountry long before Ah Zhuang would have the opportunity to do so
While Ah Peirsquos views do not simply reverse this moral equation nor do
they exemplify resistance to homonormativity in any straightforward sense
they provide an incipient means of gaining insight into the techniques of neo-
liberal normalizations as well as their instabilities Ah Zhuangrsquos condemna-
tion of Ah Peirsquos plans to move to France with his lover reveals the extent to
which the transnationalism that made Ah Peirsquos current relationship possiblechanges how ldquoinappropriaterdquo desires manifest themselves in the postsocialist
era It was after all only after the transformations in the last few decades
that a person from France would come to live and work again in China and
that an ldquoinappropriaterdquo desire could now also be a transnational desire The
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 441
fact that they do not speak each otherrsquos language exemplifies how neoliberal-
ism has allowed for new possibilities in the manner in which people desire
each other not just which kinds of desires are legitimate but which kinds of
desires are sustainable through which kinds of technological aids and socio-
economic conditions and across which kinds of borders Yet in Ah Zhuangrsquos
view someone of Ah Peirsquos class background could only succeed in such an
achievement by entangling the desires for money sex and love rather than
keeping them separate However the separations between entrepreneurialism
and intimacy that Ah Zhuang wants to establish for respectable gayness are
difficult to maintain26 Neoliberal cosmopolitanism appears to be all about
entrepreneurial savvy Yet there is more than one way to be an entrepreneur
And there is more than one way to be a nonnormalized or even antinormal-
ized gay subject27
Scene 2
Two young men are squatting at the edge of a bridge passing the time by
blowing up condoms ldquoThis way it looks like a dick It changes into breasts
when it gets bigger The breast changes into a dick and the dick into a
breastrdquo one of them says and laughs As they continue to play with their
condom-balloons the other one asks ldquoDo you like the feeling of being pen-
etrated or the feeling when you stick it inrdquo ldquoBothrdquo comes the answer
This scene opens Feeding Boys Ayaya ( Aiyaya Qu Buru) a queer filmabout male hustlers or money boys by the well-known experimental film-
maker Cui Zirsquoen28 This first scene immediately cuts to a contrasting scene
Two men are in a small closed room filled with computer and filmmaking
equipment The older one is in the background sitting in front of his com-
puter The other much younger is in the forefront of the screen The per-
son manipulating the computer equipment says ldquoZaizai [characterrsquos name]
this theme is for you It might not completely match your character in thefilm The distance makes it more precise Do you have any objectionsrdquo The
young man standing in the forefront of the screen has a somber look on his
face He refuses to speak The camera angle is an extreme close-up enlarg-
ing his face to fill the screen and nearly blocking out a view of the film-
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positions 182 Fall 2010 442
maker The effect is of a split screen We hear the filmmaker from behind
urging him several times ldquoSay somethingrdquo But the other refuses to speak
The quick juxtaposition of these two scenes and their contrasting mise-
en-scene prefigure the major motifs in Feeding Boys Ayaya The opposition
is established visually in the lighting camera angles locations and position-
ing of the characters The first scene presents characters who we will later
come to realize are money boys though at this point their identities are
unclear The scene mixes irony and pathos freedom and marginalization
The ironic and lighthearted humor of the dialogue contrasts with the curi-
ous positioning of the two young men They are at the edge of a deserted
bridge in the very early morning sunlight The camera places both of them
in the center of the screen in a medium close-up thus highlighting rela-
tionality but also distance or alienation The bantering friendship of the
two young men is visually contrasted with their distance from the rest of
the population and from the normative workday Yet this alienation is also
a liberation from the very same mdash the freedom to play at any hour the lackof confinement in space This scene represents what Judith Halberstam has
called ldquoqueer time and spacerdquo Halberstam argues that queer time and space
are ldquowillfully eccentric modes of beingrdquo that challenge heteronormativity by
providing alternative relations to time and space29
The very next scene reminds us that what we have just seen and what we
will view in the rest of the film is a set of representations The question of
how to represent money boys and who can and should speak in their nameis highlighted in this film The filmmaker character in the second scene
is choosing the theme music not the young man The dark closed room
and the split screen raise the question of whether and how the young man
can escape the framing of his life by the other The silence of the young
man mdash another money boy mdash recalls Gayatri Spivakrsquos famous dictum that
the subaltern cannot speak by which she meant that only traces of their
own interpretations of their lives remains in the texts written about them bycolonial elites30
Feeding Boys is a continual juxtaposition of these two types of images mdash
one of money boys displaying a queer sociality and the other of someone mdash
whether the filmmaker character a Christian missionary out to save money
boys his girlfriend who takes over his work or the parents of an aspir-
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 443
ing money boy mdash speaking for or about them Although the film does not
romanticize their lives the money boy characters not only exceed but also
challenge these representations of them both their content and their mode
of representation They continually frustrate attempts to represent capture
or change them Zaizai for example later demands to choose his own theme
music an insistence that frustrates the filmmaker who claims it will ruin
his film Their queerness emerges in these challenges
With Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen enters the larger debates that have central-
ized the question of desire in postsocialist China Cui Zirsquoen uses experimen-
tal visual logics that blur documentary and fiction and that refuse narrative
linearity or closure to challenge not only the specific judgments about money
boys among gay men but the entire apparatus of normalization in China
that tries to delimit desire Cui Zirsquoen addresses the specificity of neoliberal-
ism in China by challenging the hegemonic articulations between Chinese
culture and proper desire on the one hand and labor money and desire on
the other The film has a carnivalesque quality reinforced by the hand-heldcamera techniques which is at once somber and playful It subverts bour-
geois heterosexuality as that which subtends Chinese culture by robbing it of
its glory The film represents money boys as people with an integral human-
ity who take the full measure of their lives while the people who judge
them in the name of neoliberal desires Chinese morality or Christianity
appear damaged filled with contradictory desires themselves or just plain
boring The film thus further subverts postsocialist normalizing desires bydirecting our gaze away from what many think is perverse or rather by
making the normal perverse and the perverse normal The people to be
pitied in this film are the heterosexuals who condemn the hustlersrsquo profes-
sion They are the ones who wither and die Hustlers in contrast have time
to play and enjoy life Yet Cui Zirsquoen does not indulge in a simple decon-
structive reversal Hustlers suffer too but mainly from the condemnation
and exploitation they experience as a result of the hypocritical desires of theheteronormative world
Although Feeding Boys seems to establish a debate between heterosexu-
als and gay male hustlers the themes raised in the film rehearse anxieties
similar to those I presented in my first scene that occur among gay men
Are hustlers respectable or do they sully the good name of other gay men
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positions 182 Fall 2010 444
Do they deserve sympathy or condemnation Are they gay or just exploit-
ing vulnerable gay men Are their desires to be celebrated or condemned
Are they appropriate for Chinarsquos postsocialist neoliberal future or do they
represent the degradation of that future Feeding Boys refuses these dichoto-
mous terms Rather than simply reverse their valence the film addresses
other queer questions that displace these normalizing ones How should
we engage our desires How can this engagement lead to nonnormative
lives How does class inflect desire How can nonnormative desires chal-
lenge class-based temporalities What is the relationship between money
and sex Finally what is the role of religion
Feeding Boys loosely revolves around the elusive search of a Christian het-
erosexual brother Dabin for his younger brother Xiao Bao who has dis-
appeared into the money boy life During his search he discovers that one
of his younger ldquoChristian brothersrdquo Xiao Jian has also decided to become
a money boy to practice Christian love Juxtaposing money boysrsquo serious
banter with the normalizing judgments of others Feeding Boys weaves inand out of several recurrent image-themes the everyday life of hustlers
Xiao Jianrsquos exploration of how to become a hustler the missionizing zeal of
Dabin to dissuade hustlers from continuing in their profession and finally
the desire to represent and normalize the lives of hustlers Throughout
Feeding Boys jumps between these image-themes thus putting them in
dialogue with one another The experimental filmrsquos refusal to present a
linear narrative mirrors the refusal by the money boy characters to accedeto the normalizing judgments of others Thus the form to echo Hayden
White is also the content31 Cui Zirsquoenrsquos filmmaking techniques warn us
that endeavors to normalize create severe dislocations and damage And
not merely to money boys
Image-Theme 1 The Mundanity of Money Boy Life
Feeding Boys strikingly refuses to display any images of money boys actually
engaged in sex or hustling for customers This lack of sex scenes contrasts
with Cui Zirsquoenrsquos other films which generally go out of their way to show sex
between men The only way we even know that these young men are money
boys is through the dialogue More specifically we hear the arguments that
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 445
straight people who disapprove of them engender Indeed the film is quite
chaste The one scene in which we see two people showing erotic affection
is between the older heterosexual brother of one of the money boys (XiaoBao) whose missionary goal is to convert hustlers and his girlfriend Feed-
ing Boys thus refuses to indulge viewersrsquo scopophilic desires Cui Zirsquoen teases
the viewer from the first scene Watching two men blowing up condoms
and briefly chatting about sex hints at more erotic scenes to come But they
never materialize A condom-balloon is all we ever get By thus tapping into
a gaze desirous for the perverse and then frustrating that desire Cui Zirsquoen
confronts the viewer with the need to think about representation and the
role of representation in normalizing desire mdash both in public discourse and
in his film
In place of the erotic the viewer is offered the stuff of everyday life One
recurrent image as in the first scene is of money boys on a bridge early in
the morning In one scene they playfully engage in ballet-like dance ges-
tures In another one of them displays his acrobatic skills doing severalback flips Later we see these same young men practicing taiji quan (a mar-
tial arts exercise) again early in the morning on the bridge These images
immediately bring to mind the ldquonormalrdquo populace in Chinarsquos cities who go
out each morning to do precisely these group exercises This idea is rein-
forced by the camera angle in these scenes which is a medium wide-angle
shot taking in both the bridge and the surrounding metropolis But the
bridge is also symptomatic of a moment of suspension between directionsin life or between worlds A bridge represents a gap as well as an attempt to
overcome a fissure in the landscape In one telling scene near the end of the
film a money boy begs for money on the bridge pleading with passersby
that he has given up his dissolute life and reformed himself Yet immediately
after we see him with another friend arguing with the Christian mission-
aryrsquos girlfriend stating unequivocally that even though they treated begging
as a ldquorealrdquo job no one wanted to give them money and that in todayrsquos worldpeople respect a prostitute more than a poor person The bridge thus repre-
sents two intertwined passages mdash from a socialist world of time and space
in which citizens had the leisure to do morning exercises and their lives
were not measured by money to a neoliberal world in which wealth is the
only measure of human dignity and no one mdash except those on the outside
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positions 182 Fall 2010 446
of bourgeois respectability mdash has time to spend exercising on a bridge This
passage is intertwined then with a passage from heteronormative relations
of time and space to queer time and space mdash the refusal of the relationshipbetween time work money and desire that neoliberalism has established
Another recurrent scene is of several young men playing in the park
They walk through the park in a desultory manner enjoying the day One
of them has his dog on a leash The dog is obviously well groomed and
well fed Only recently have Beijing residents been allowed to keep pets in
the city Dogs quickly became a key signifier of bourgeois cosmopolitan
accomplishment Why shouldnrsquot money boys be allowed to have them too
In the film the pet belies the idea that money boys lead an unstable dirty
and unreliable life as many believe Moreover it forces open the cluster of
oppositions between respectable and degraded desires in which bourgeois
heterosexual family life goes together with accoutrements like pets while
prostitution is supposed to represent nothing but lack
Other scenes reinforce the sense that money boys are like everyone else inthe way they go about the stuff of everyday life We see them singing in a
karaoke bar playing with a young boy on a playground and having a meal
with their families These young men are portrayed as neither angels nor
demons They are neither ecstatic nor suicidal But the film makes clear that
they live on the margins and have only one another for support
In only a few scenes do these money boys talk about their work But even
here their conversations resemble those of anyone who has ever grumbledabout his or her workplace At one point in the bar for example one of
the money boys tells the other Xiao Bao that his brother (the missionary)
has been looking for him Xiao Bao shakes his head and complains that a
customer has just ripped him off by refusing to pay In another scene in the
park during the daytime one of the money boys complains to the other that
he canrsquot seem to save any money because he always has to buy expensive
clothes to look nice for his customers The other responds that he should besmarter and get the customers to buy the clothes for him He proudly reveals
that he has saved quite a bit of money with which he plans to buy a house
for his mother
The film also playfully satirizes normalized work lives In one scene one
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 447
of the money boys says ldquoWe need structure We have to become profes-
sionalsrdquo Pointing to a gay bar behind him he says ldquoThis is our interna-
tional head officerdquo Another money boy repeats virtually the same wordsbut this time points to a twenty-story high rise building The film shifts to
an eerie scene of colorful masks then quickly to what looks to be a confer-
ence meeting in a bar Someone presumably their boss is taking roll call
They all stand to attention some of them wearing name tags as if at an aca-
demic meeting In this manner Cui Zirsquoen calls into question the relationship
between sex work and desire in China He highlights the instabilities in
how neoliberalism in China has produced social inequalities through trans-
national structures of differentially valued labors But he further demon-
strates the inextricability of sexuality bodies desire and labor To labor for
wealth is supposed to be the foremost desire in a neoliberal world Thus
normalization techniques reduce and embed desire in a structured world
of intensive labor extraction one that produces a capitalist-inflected heter-
onormativity (even as it has a nondeterministic relationship to that heter-onormativity) In other words Cui Zirsquoen deconstructs how the whole person
becomes a commodity in a neoliberal world and how that world while it
fosters desires also robs people of their desires for a full humanity Through
this humorous filmic meditation on desire Cui Zirsquoen thus provides biting
queer commentary on the reduction and devaluation of necessary labor in
postsocialist China
This commentary is most explicit in a scene near the end of the filmwhen the missionaryrsquos girlfriend pleadingly asks several money boys why
they do this work One of them responds with ten reasons ldquoOne you donrsquot
have to be president Two you donrsquot have to be a soldier Three you donrsquot
have to be a farmer and work the land Four you donrsquot have to wash dishes
Five you donrsquot have to marry and have kids Six you donrsquot have to become a
movie star Seven you donrsquot have to be a movie director Eight you donrsquot get
fat Nine you are exploited by others but donrsquot exploit others And ten youdonrsquot die because we use our bodies to satisfy both good and bad peoplersquos
desiresrdquo Through arguments with and about money boys the film thus
creates commentary on how neoliberalism in China appropriates not just
labor-power but the laborer as a desiring subject32 The queer commentary
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positions 182 Fall 2010 448
of Feeding Boys demonstrates how nonnormative alternatives lie outside of
those temporal and spatial markers of respectable Chinese experience mdash
namely marriage reproduction kinship and death The film thus chal-lenges the oppositions of respectability and shame
Image-Theme 2 How to Become a Money Boy
The thread of this image-theme most explicitly mocks normalizing judg-
ments about desire work class and sex Through this image-theme the
film represents gay male hustling as a profession as honorable as becom-
ing a lawyer or computer scientist In perhaps the most iconic scene in this
regard Feeding Boys stages an argument between Xiao Jian and his parents
that crafts a mimicry of family gatherings to decide the childrenrsquos future33
His parents appear to be respectable middle-class intellectuals The mise-
en-scene is a plushly decorated apartment in which the family lives together
The family is all seated there The father states unequivocally that this kindof work leads nowhere They bemoan the fact that they raised their son for
so many years and gave him the opportunity to do many things with his life
They insist they just want the best for him The parents are oddly calm and
though disgusted do not throw him out of the house Indeed in the next
scene he arrives early in the morning to the apartment stating boldly to his
parents that they arrived home from work earlier than him His mother
asks if he isnrsquot supposed to work the night shift and he responds that he willwork any shift The mother turns to the father and makes the pithy com-
ment ldquoSo we failed to discourage him from this line of workrdquo
In another scene in which Xiao Jian defends to Dabin his reasons for
wanting to become a money boy Cui Zirsquoen crafts a doubled-edged mock-
ery of socialist ideals as well by invoking the old socialist honor of learn-
ing from and serving the masses His satire in this regard cuts in multiple
directions It recalls not just the marginalization but the condemnationand punishment under socialism of those with inappropriate desires But
it also uses those socialist ideals to critique the neoliberal normalization of
the appropriate relationship between labor and desire Xiao Jian initiates an
argument with Dabin when he announces that he too wants to become
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 449
a money boy Xiao Jian is insistent ldquoI want to sell my body like Xiao Bao
[Dabinrsquos brother]rdquo He then explains that when Xiao Bao disappeared he
went to check out the male prostitution business ldquoMost of these youngstersare from villages and from very poor family backgrounds I was born into
a happy family I want to join the hustlers and change their social statusrdquo
Dabin retorts ldquoCan you make those people happy Itrsquos all about making
millionaires officials and rich guys happyrdquo ldquoYou told me that we have to
serve the humble Now I want to become one of themrdquo replies Xiao Jian
ldquoI want to become the lowest of the low together with robbers hooligans
petty thieves ex-convicts homosexuals and hustlers I want to stay at the
bottomrdquo Dabin then launches into classical Chinese metaphors ldquoWater
flows downward but man soars heavenwardrdquo Xiao Jian has an answer to
that as well insisting that man is also part of nature and is also capable of
running downhill ldquoItrsquos only natural and makes things more equalrdquo
The visual logics of this scene provide the ironic counter-commentary
During the entire scene Xiao Jian is fully dressed while we watch Dabin halfnaked as he dresses after a shower The viewer becomes engaged in the erot-
ics of watching Dabin slowly lather lotion over his entire body then pull on
tight-fitting underwear The camera lingers on his well built body By the end
of the scene Dabin is still half naked The erotics of the scene are heightened
by the effect of a mirror that stages Xiao Jian in reverse That is Xiao Jian is
seated to the left of Dabin but we only view him through the mirror where
he appears on Dabinrsquos right while Dabin occupies center stage as the half- naked figure of erotic righteousness The mirror clues us in to a split between
the dialogue and the visual logics This split reflects back to the spectator the
hypocritical contradictions in postsocialist enticements of desire
Image-Theme 3 The Trials and Tribulations of Missionary Work
Early in the film we see someone driving through Beijing in a nice carHe is a good looking serious young man It turns out to be Dabin search-
ing for Xiao Bao his younger brother Dabin walks into a bar looking for
him without success He proceeds to follow one of the money boys into the
bathroom and argues with him saying that he doesnrsquot understand why his
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positions 182 Fall 2010 450
job is so attractive ldquoHow could it attract you How can you enjoy it without
getting tiredrdquo The money boy calmly responds ldquoThe job has three advan-
tages First you earn money Second freedom Third you can fool aroundwith different peoplerdquo When Dabin aggressively asks if there are any dis-
advantages the money boy responds ldquoFirst you get sick easily Second itrsquos
a waste of condoms and KY jelly Third you donrsquot get enough sleeprdquo Dabin
cries ldquoIf you keep doing this you will get AIDSrdquo Thus opens the third
image-theme the heterosexual Christian evangelist who attempts to convert
money boys
Dabinrsquos idea of conversion conflates normative sexual desire and Chris-
tianity Thus in the next major scene in which he appears he argues with
two money boys telling them that birds in the sky donrsquot sell their bodies
but they have food to eat that lotus flowers donrsquot sell their bodies but they
are beautiful that dogs and earthworms donrsquot sell their bodies but they live
vigorous lives so why should they sell their bodies He then offers to give
them the Bible Cui Zirsquoen was raised as a Catholic in the northeast city of
Dalian In his previous films he took a Derek Jarman approach and made
symbolic Jesus figures suffer the slings and arrows of heterosexual rage He
tried to reconcile homoerotic desire with what he viewed as the true essence
of Catholicism In Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen has taken a distinctive approach
Here he asserts that those who use Christianity to suppress nonnormative
desires have a hopeless case on their hands Moreover the true essence of
Christianity is ambiguous Perhaps it really is a source of oppression ratherthan as in his previous films a potential guide for love
This ambiguity is underscored in the next major scene in which Dabin
attempts to win converts among money boys He is reading the Bible together
with his younger ldquoChristian brotherrdquo Xiao Jian who has also chosen to be a
money boy Xiao Jian appears earnest He asks ldquoDo you think Jesus would
like that I mean would he like the fact that men and women and men and
men and women and women have sexrdquo Dabin responds ldquoMen and menand women and men have sexual relationships That means that God gave
them their sexual desires and afterwards even gave them the ability to have
sex So who gave men and women the ability to have sex God did The
fact that God gave us this ability proves that he allows us to do itrdquo But the
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 451
young man persists ldquoYou said men and women do it for procreation If men
have sex with men they canrsquot procreate How do you explain thisrdquo Dabin
is stumped ldquoI have to turn to the Bible again for this questionrdquoThe moral inconclusiveness of the Bible and the ability to glean multiple
interpretations of desire from it leads the viewer to understand that there is
a distinction between heteronormativity and the normalization of desire
Strikingly Dabin does not condemn these young men for having sex with
other men He does not in other words condemn sexual desire tout court
or even homoerotic desire What he condemns is the exchange of sex for
money
Dabin is passionate in his missionary work In one scene we see him
standing on the bridge where money boys gather Christian Bible held up
high intoning his plea to them ldquoThe end of the world is near and you still
sell your bodiesrdquo No one speaks to him his travails seem fruitless Dabin on
the bridge recalls by contrast the money boys on the bridge But whereas
the money boys were shot in mid-range at wide angle Dabin is shot from
below with a zoom lens that makes him appear more distant as if he is high
up on a pulpit or a cross
Somewhat unexpectedly Dabin takes seriously ill and dies His death
recalls that of Jesus of course dying for othersrsquo sins but there is a distinct
ambiguity in Dabinrsquos death Does he die for othersrsquo sins or has he suffered
under his own illusions Is his the work of a savior or do normalized people
with judgments of others suffer because of their judgmental values Thefilm never resolves this ambiguity
On his deathbed Dabin pleads with his girlfriend to take over his work
to preach the gospel and save male prostitutes She promises to do so and
indeed in the next scene we see her standing on the same bridge holding
up the same Bible intoning monotonously ldquoDonrsquot sell anymorerdquo In the end
the girlfriend also ends up exhausted and sick in bed having similarly sacri-
ficed herself to a hopeless cause
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3334
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 434
arguing with him did I realize that since that first affair with a woman
Ah Pei had been mainly with older men who took care of him mdash including
Ah Zhuang In talking about his first affair Ah Pei thus traced his inter-
est in older men to an emotional and sexual history of feeling comfortable
with older people Ah Zhuang as we will see reduced Ah Peirsquos story to
one of opportunism For at this point Ah Zhuang sarcastically interjected
a counterpoint to Ah Peirsquos insistence that this older woman had taken the
initiative ldquoMaybe the first time but then what about the second and third
ones Because yoursquove told me that there were quite a few including the topleader of the factory And even the managerrsquos wife Didnrsquot you take some
of the initiative in these later encounters I would really like to know what
exactly is your psychological attitude when you are with older peoplerdquo Ah
Pei ignored the first part of Ah Zhuangrsquos question answering that with
older people he feels particularly able to relax and let go
Here we find the first point of contention between Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang
over whether Ah Pei fits into the category of money boy Ah Pei tried to tellme a story of his psychological and emotional history He feels that older
people take the initiative with him which puts him at ease Ah Zhuang on
the other hand tried to turn Ah Peirsquos actions into self-seeking advantage Ah
Zhuang was not objecting so much to a seeming bisexuality that might make
a gay identity more ambiguous as to what in his view was naked opportun-
ism that did not distinguish between genders Ah Zhuang elaborated on his
view when I asked Ah Pei how he felt starting an affair with this womanAh Pei responded about the sex saying that looking back on it he could
see that he didnrsquot feel entirely comfortable because she did everything he
didnrsquot have to budge She helped him with everything Ah Zhuang then
interjected ldquoChina has a way of saying this this woman served ( cihou) him
Thatrsquos a clearer way to put it Chinarsquos traditional view is that the man should
take care of ( cihou) the woman and make her feel comfortable In his case
he made the woman do it so that he could feel comfortablerdquo This situation
in Ah Zhuangrsquos view was evidently one clear marker of a money boy Other-
wise why would a man not act like the man that he should be Why would
a man let himself be treated like a woman Ah Zhuangrsquos decided views on
appropriate gender attributes reproduce the dominant mode of delineating
the boundary between normative and nonnormative desire through gen-
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 435
der His interpretation is testimony to a contradictory antinomy between a
fluidity of desire which is supposed to change continuously in line with a
free trade cosmopolitan market economy and a renaturalization of a binary
gender in its ldquorecoveryrdquo from Maoist suppression
Ah Zhuangrsquos views also echo a longer history of gender and sexuality
in China in which as Keith MacMahon has argued one of the main signs
of male privilege is the polygamous ability to have and manage multiple
sexual partners21 Ah Zhuang as a medical doctor is undoubtedly famil-
iar with traditional medical prescriptions for male potency and the needto retain male energy Moreover as Judith Farquhar has argued these tra-
ditional medical texts have been recovered and popularized in post-Mao
China through a discourse on excess and deficiency that is simultaneously
an allegory about Chinarsquos past and future22 Ah Zhuangrsquos critique of Ah Pei
reflects an understanding that to ldquotake care ofrdquo a woman sexually means
that the male is in charge of managing pleasure because he needs to control
the depletion of his own energies Clearly in Ah Zhuangrsquos view Ah Pei hasnot followed the proper prescriptions and therefore is not contributing to the
proper development of social life in China
Ah Pei then proceeded to tell a story of the factory as a site of sexual excess
Rather than paint a conventional portrait of a large state-run factory as a
place of hard work alternating with boredom Ah Pei offered a tale in which
it seemed a matter of course for people to develop their sexual proclivities in
such an oppressive situation Ah Pei explained for example how he startedsleeping with one woman Her husband had been arrested and thrown into
prison for sleeping around with the younger women in the factory His wife
the woman Ah Pei had an affair with brought the women home for him The
husband was arrested however not owing to the moral probity of other fac-
tory leaders but according to Ah Pei because another factory leader wanted
to have sex with one of the young women and was jealous of this man and
so reported him to the public security bureau When this manrsquos wife invitedhim over to her home he figured he wouldnrsquot get into any trouble having an
affair with her By implication Ah Pei was explaining how he had come to
have such a free and easy approach to sex But Ah Zhuang used this story to
conclude that Ah Pei had a profound lack of ethical sense when establishing
relationships with people particularly men
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 436
Ah Zhuang then goaded Ah Pei into explaining his theory about lack of
father love Ah Pei told me about his violent father who drank too much and
hit his children Then one day when Ah Pei was a teenager he stood up to
his father But he always felt the keen loss of having a fatherrsquos love Thatrsquos
why he thinks he feels particularly comfortable with older men Ah Zhuang
promptly disagreed ldquoI donrsquot agree with this that a gay is someone who lacks
father love so they go in search of father love or someone older23 If his
view is correct then I am suspicious of whether he is really a gayrdquo Ah Pei
responded indirectly by saying that he knows for sure he will never get mar-
ried that even though no one living near him knows he is gay and thinks he
goes around with women he feels most comfortable with men Ah Zhuang
has a decided view of the correct way to be gay one that contains a normal-
izing pressure to present only positive or ldquonaturalrdquo reasons why one would
turn out to be gay This naturalization of gay identity parallels the natu-
ralization of the ability to be a desiring subject in post-Mao China Both
naturalizations create hierarchies of inclusion and exclusion that articulatewith the neoliberal naturalization of social inequality In contrast Ah Pei
implied that there are varied ways of having homoerotic encounters and
involvements His story highlights contingency history and experience The
inequalities in his story are class- and gender-based
Ah Pei then launched into a story of how he started to get involved with
men He had come into Tiananmen Square one evening and met some-
one there Ah Zhuang interrupted and said that Ah Pei had still been withwomen after that But Ah Pei responded that though he had been with
women after his first man he nonetheless preferred men He continued his
story ldquoI walked by Zhongshan Park and went to the [public] toilet I saw a
lot of men who went in but didnrsquot come out I just stood there didnrsquot dare
to go in and piss What were they doing in there Curiosity got the better of
me I went in and found two men playing around After that I went there
every day Thatrsquos how I met a guy Thatrsquos how I started I was just a littleover twenty years oldrdquo He began to meet a lot of men through that public
toilet finally meeting his first real lover Lao Chen (Old Chen) With Lao
Chen ldquoI finally started a new life I had a homerdquo
Ah Pei explained about the suffering that he had endured in order to be
with men One evening he was nabbed by the police He lied and said he
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 437
didnrsquot understand what the other man wanted from him The police officer
made him do hard labor for a couple of hours but let him go after he saw
Ah Pei crying The police thought he looked very young Here Ah Zhuang
interjected that he too had thought Ah Pei looked much younger than his
years when he first met him ldquoWhen he meets up with other peoplerdquo Ah
Zhuang concluded ldquohe uses his brains Hersquos good at performingrdquo In other
words Ah Zhuang implied that At Pei had perfected the art of deception
When Ah Pei described his relationship with his first long-term male
lover Lao Chen he and Ah Zhuang began to argue in earnest Ah Zhuangset out the terms by stating that Lao Chen basically ldquokeptrdquo ( yang) Ah Pei
that he took care of him in every way24 He asserted his privileged access to
the truth of the situation by telling me that Lao Chen was a dear friend of
his and it was actually through Lao Chen that he had met Ah Pei He also
set up Lao Chenrsquos class background from a wealthy family in Shanghai Lao
Chen was privileged to lead the life of a playboy However according to Ah
Zhuang Lao Chen was also a deep thinker he had graduated from FuDanUniversity (the most prestigious university in Shanghai) and Ah Zhuang
had spent many pleasurable evenings talking to him about politics Thus
before Ah Pei had a chance to get very far into his version Ah Zhuang had
already established a clear class division between himself and Lao Chen on
the one side and Ah Pei on the other This division Ah Zhuang implied
should also reflect whose version of this social and biographical history was
reliableAgainst this weighty class backdrop Ah Pei struggled to put forth his
perspective Lao Chen had raised him true but he had given Lao Chen
great sexual satisfaction taking the initiative to do so He had also paid his
price by doing a lot of things for him such as taking care of Lao Chenrsquos
wife and other friends when they visited from Shanghai ldquoThat was money
I spent out of my own pocket I feel I treated his family well Hersquos older
than me and has a lot of money I admit thatrdquo In Ah Peirsquos view Lao Chenand he had a fair exchange Lao Chen had the money to buy things for Ah
Pei who in turn gave Lao Chen a satisfying sexual and emotional life In
Ah Peirsquos view it was through Lao Chenrsquos lavish expenditures on him that he
began to have true feelings of love for Lao Chen This issue of true feelings
was critical in Ah Peirsquos view in distinguishing himself from a money boy
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 438
Ah Pei further asserted that unlike money boys he never stuck out his hand
and asked for money People have always offered to buy things for him he
said but he never asked for anything ldquoI have always relied on myselfrdquo
Ah Zhuang quickly jumped in at this point ldquoIf I consider him to be a
money boy itrsquos because hersquos extremely intelligent in this regard Thatrsquos why
I think todayrsquos conversation is especially interesting We could talk about it
for a long time Lao Chen shed a lot of tears over him So he is a little dif-
ferent than the money boys at Half and Half [the gay bar] Do they have
these kind of money boys in the United States Sometimes he really did payfor things himself and their relationship was real I see it this way Hersquos a
little different than those others He still has a little feeling involvedrdquo David
Eng (this volume) astutely evaluates the difficulties in neoliberal modernity
of distinguishing between what he calls tokens of affection and tokens of
exchange
After Ah Zhuangrsquos explication Ah Pei did not directly address the com-
parison of himself with money boys Instead he inarticulately reasserted hisview that he had never stuck out his hand asking for money and had always
relied on himself Given Ah Zhuangrsquos blunt assertion I wanted Ah Pei to
respond I asked whether he saw himself as like those men in any way He
was direct ldquoI am absolutely not like themrdquo Ah Zhuang laughed furiously
ldquoI never stuck out my hand with Ah Zhuang eitherrdquo he replied to the laugh
ldquoLet Ah Zhuang tell you himself Do you admit it Ah Zhuang liked me so
he bought me things My old man [his current lover] is like this too Irsquom notvery smart Irsquom actually stupid my level is low but Lao Chen told him I was
clever Where am I cleverrdquo
I then bluntly asked him if he only sought out lovers who had money ldquoAh
Zhuang is a clear examplerdquo he replied ldquoAh Zhuang has nowhere near the
money of these other men but I still tell him I learned a lot from him I
used to have a foul mouth I still thank him for these past four years Thatrsquos
why I still keep a relationship with him no matter with gay friends or notI always introduce himrdquo
Ah Zhuang directed Ah Pei to explain how his relationship with Lao
Chen ended Ah Pei told a story of how Lao Chen began to see someone
else and did not want Ah Pei to come home anymore Ah Pei was furious
and refused to let him go He did all sorts of things to stop the relationship
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 439
from ending including threatening to expose Lao Chen at work Lao Chen
would certainly have lost his job not only because of homophobia but as
Ah Pei explained because he was already in hot water with the Party due
to his outspoken criticisms Ah Zhuang jumped in to point out how Ah
Peirsquos behavior with Lao Chen provided yet one more set of money boy sig-
nifiers ldquoIrsquoll explainrdquo insisted Ah Zhuang after Ah Pei had presented his
perspective ldquoFrom his point of view he wanted to occupy a position This
position was incredibly important to him Only with this position could he
have money Now it was very possible that this position could be taken overby someone else So thatrsquos why he wanted to take revenge Lao Chen came
looking for me to ask me what he should do lsquoServes you rightrsquo I said He
asked lsquoMaybe if I give him some money then he would be willing to leave
me alonersquo He asked me how much I said lsquoI donrsquot knowrsquo How could I
know how much money he should give him At the time I told him lsquoYou
can end things but you have to think of a way to do itrsquo rdquo Ah Pei diffidently
responded that he hadnrsquot wanted to let go of Lao Chen because yes he leda comfortable life with him and also he had feelings for him For Ah Pei
the fact that his life was comfortable with Lao Chen was quite distinct from
a money boyrsquos desire to be paid for sex But Ah Zhuang saw them as one
and the same Finally Lao Chen left for Canada promising to bring Ah Pei
with him after he had arrived there ldquoI was naiverdquo Ah Pei said because he
had believed him
Surprisingly Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang never explained to me much oftheir own relationship Perhaps in the end they sought to preserve some of
the fragments of their friendship They ended their conversation with me by
briefly mentioning Ah Peirsquos latest relationship with an older man someone
from France whom he had met in a bar one evening Ah Pei doesnrsquot speak
any French and this man doesnrsquot speak any Chinese Ah Zhuang translated
for them when necessary This man who worked for the French airlines
was planning to bring Ah Pei to France with him They had already appliedfor his visa In subsequent conversations Ah Zhuang derided Ah Peirsquos plans
How would Ah Pei make a living in France What could he do He would
have a hard time learning the language et cetera It was as if to say Ah Pei
did not deserve the special privilege of living in a Western country
One could dismiss this whole conversation as the obvious denouement of
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a relationship that had ended bitterly Indeed Ah Zhuang had thrown Ah
Pei out of his house But Ah Zhuangrsquos insistence that Ah Pei was a money
boy reflected more than mere bitterness By rejecting Ah Peirsquos claims that
he too could place himself in the category of ldquogay manrdquo Ah Zhuang was
attempting to establish a hegemonic definition of respectable gayness For
Ah Zhuang this respectability adhered in appropriate gender sensibilities
class embodiment the proper balance between dependency and equality
a strict separation of money and love and a worldliness that only those of
a certain class stature should aspire to display Ah Zhuang was trying to
establish what Lisa Duggan has called the ldquonew homonormativityrdquo Dug-
gan argues that this new homonormativity is the equivalent of neoliberal
politics in the sexual realm25 These sexual politics uphold rather than con-
test dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions and promise
a depoliticized gay culture While Duggan concerns herself only with the
United States and does not consider transnational queer politics we can still
consider how her argument illuminates the sexual politics of someone likeAh Zhuang Ah Zhuang hopes to make gay identity respectable within
the terms of postsocialist neoliberalism The fact that neoliberalism has
made desire the central realm for producing proper citizen-subjects made
Ah Zhuangrsquos discourse all the more fraught with anxiety Ah Peirsquos own
intimacy with a well-to-do foreign gay man further goaded Ah Zhuang to
condemn Ah Peirsquos actions as inappropriate in terms of sexual gendered and
culturalnational identity For Ah Pei was going abroad to live in a Westerncountry long before Ah Zhuang would have the opportunity to do so
While Ah Peirsquos views do not simply reverse this moral equation nor do
they exemplify resistance to homonormativity in any straightforward sense
they provide an incipient means of gaining insight into the techniques of neo-
liberal normalizations as well as their instabilities Ah Zhuangrsquos condemna-
tion of Ah Peirsquos plans to move to France with his lover reveals the extent to
which the transnationalism that made Ah Peirsquos current relationship possiblechanges how ldquoinappropriaterdquo desires manifest themselves in the postsocialist
era It was after all only after the transformations in the last few decades
that a person from France would come to live and work again in China and
that an ldquoinappropriaterdquo desire could now also be a transnational desire The
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 441
fact that they do not speak each otherrsquos language exemplifies how neoliberal-
ism has allowed for new possibilities in the manner in which people desire
each other not just which kinds of desires are legitimate but which kinds of
desires are sustainable through which kinds of technological aids and socio-
economic conditions and across which kinds of borders Yet in Ah Zhuangrsquos
view someone of Ah Peirsquos class background could only succeed in such an
achievement by entangling the desires for money sex and love rather than
keeping them separate However the separations between entrepreneurialism
and intimacy that Ah Zhuang wants to establish for respectable gayness are
difficult to maintain26 Neoliberal cosmopolitanism appears to be all about
entrepreneurial savvy Yet there is more than one way to be an entrepreneur
And there is more than one way to be a nonnormalized or even antinormal-
ized gay subject27
Scene 2
Two young men are squatting at the edge of a bridge passing the time by
blowing up condoms ldquoThis way it looks like a dick It changes into breasts
when it gets bigger The breast changes into a dick and the dick into a
breastrdquo one of them says and laughs As they continue to play with their
condom-balloons the other one asks ldquoDo you like the feeling of being pen-
etrated or the feeling when you stick it inrdquo ldquoBothrdquo comes the answer
This scene opens Feeding Boys Ayaya ( Aiyaya Qu Buru) a queer filmabout male hustlers or money boys by the well-known experimental film-
maker Cui Zirsquoen28 This first scene immediately cuts to a contrasting scene
Two men are in a small closed room filled with computer and filmmaking
equipment The older one is in the background sitting in front of his com-
puter The other much younger is in the forefront of the screen The per-
son manipulating the computer equipment says ldquoZaizai [characterrsquos name]
this theme is for you It might not completely match your character in thefilm The distance makes it more precise Do you have any objectionsrdquo The
young man standing in the forefront of the screen has a somber look on his
face He refuses to speak The camera angle is an extreme close-up enlarg-
ing his face to fill the screen and nearly blocking out a view of the film-
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positions 182 Fall 2010 442
maker The effect is of a split screen We hear the filmmaker from behind
urging him several times ldquoSay somethingrdquo But the other refuses to speak
The quick juxtaposition of these two scenes and their contrasting mise-
en-scene prefigure the major motifs in Feeding Boys Ayaya The opposition
is established visually in the lighting camera angles locations and position-
ing of the characters The first scene presents characters who we will later
come to realize are money boys though at this point their identities are
unclear The scene mixes irony and pathos freedom and marginalization
The ironic and lighthearted humor of the dialogue contrasts with the curi-
ous positioning of the two young men They are at the edge of a deserted
bridge in the very early morning sunlight The camera places both of them
in the center of the screen in a medium close-up thus highlighting rela-
tionality but also distance or alienation The bantering friendship of the
two young men is visually contrasted with their distance from the rest of
the population and from the normative workday Yet this alienation is also
a liberation from the very same mdash the freedom to play at any hour the lackof confinement in space This scene represents what Judith Halberstam has
called ldquoqueer time and spacerdquo Halberstam argues that queer time and space
are ldquowillfully eccentric modes of beingrdquo that challenge heteronormativity by
providing alternative relations to time and space29
The very next scene reminds us that what we have just seen and what we
will view in the rest of the film is a set of representations The question of
how to represent money boys and who can and should speak in their nameis highlighted in this film The filmmaker character in the second scene
is choosing the theme music not the young man The dark closed room
and the split screen raise the question of whether and how the young man
can escape the framing of his life by the other The silence of the young
man mdash another money boy mdash recalls Gayatri Spivakrsquos famous dictum that
the subaltern cannot speak by which she meant that only traces of their
own interpretations of their lives remains in the texts written about them bycolonial elites30
Feeding Boys is a continual juxtaposition of these two types of images mdash
one of money boys displaying a queer sociality and the other of someone mdash
whether the filmmaker character a Christian missionary out to save money
boys his girlfriend who takes over his work or the parents of an aspir-
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 443
ing money boy mdash speaking for or about them Although the film does not
romanticize their lives the money boy characters not only exceed but also
challenge these representations of them both their content and their mode
of representation They continually frustrate attempts to represent capture
or change them Zaizai for example later demands to choose his own theme
music an insistence that frustrates the filmmaker who claims it will ruin
his film Their queerness emerges in these challenges
With Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen enters the larger debates that have central-
ized the question of desire in postsocialist China Cui Zirsquoen uses experimen-
tal visual logics that blur documentary and fiction and that refuse narrative
linearity or closure to challenge not only the specific judgments about money
boys among gay men but the entire apparatus of normalization in China
that tries to delimit desire Cui Zirsquoen addresses the specificity of neoliberal-
ism in China by challenging the hegemonic articulations between Chinese
culture and proper desire on the one hand and labor money and desire on
the other The film has a carnivalesque quality reinforced by the hand-heldcamera techniques which is at once somber and playful It subverts bour-
geois heterosexuality as that which subtends Chinese culture by robbing it of
its glory The film represents money boys as people with an integral human-
ity who take the full measure of their lives while the people who judge
them in the name of neoliberal desires Chinese morality or Christianity
appear damaged filled with contradictory desires themselves or just plain
boring The film thus further subverts postsocialist normalizing desires bydirecting our gaze away from what many think is perverse or rather by
making the normal perverse and the perverse normal The people to be
pitied in this film are the heterosexuals who condemn the hustlersrsquo profes-
sion They are the ones who wither and die Hustlers in contrast have time
to play and enjoy life Yet Cui Zirsquoen does not indulge in a simple decon-
structive reversal Hustlers suffer too but mainly from the condemnation
and exploitation they experience as a result of the hypocritical desires of theheteronormative world
Although Feeding Boys seems to establish a debate between heterosexu-
als and gay male hustlers the themes raised in the film rehearse anxieties
similar to those I presented in my first scene that occur among gay men
Are hustlers respectable or do they sully the good name of other gay men
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positions 182 Fall 2010 444
Do they deserve sympathy or condemnation Are they gay or just exploit-
ing vulnerable gay men Are their desires to be celebrated or condemned
Are they appropriate for Chinarsquos postsocialist neoliberal future or do they
represent the degradation of that future Feeding Boys refuses these dichoto-
mous terms Rather than simply reverse their valence the film addresses
other queer questions that displace these normalizing ones How should
we engage our desires How can this engagement lead to nonnormative
lives How does class inflect desire How can nonnormative desires chal-
lenge class-based temporalities What is the relationship between money
and sex Finally what is the role of religion
Feeding Boys loosely revolves around the elusive search of a Christian het-
erosexual brother Dabin for his younger brother Xiao Bao who has dis-
appeared into the money boy life During his search he discovers that one
of his younger ldquoChristian brothersrdquo Xiao Jian has also decided to become
a money boy to practice Christian love Juxtaposing money boysrsquo serious
banter with the normalizing judgments of others Feeding Boys weaves inand out of several recurrent image-themes the everyday life of hustlers
Xiao Jianrsquos exploration of how to become a hustler the missionizing zeal of
Dabin to dissuade hustlers from continuing in their profession and finally
the desire to represent and normalize the lives of hustlers Throughout
Feeding Boys jumps between these image-themes thus putting them in
dialogue with one another The experimental filmrsquos refusal to present a
linear narrative mirrors the refusal by the money boy characters to accedeto the normalizing judgments of others Thus the form to echo Hayden
White is also the content31 Cui Zirsquoenrsquos filmmaking techniques warn us
that endeavors to normalize create severe dislocations and damage And
not merely to money boys
Image-Theme 1 The Mundanity of Money Boy Life
Feeding Boys strikingly refuses to display any images of money boys actually
engaged in sex or hustling for customers This lack of sex scenes contrasts
with Cui Zirsquoenrsquos other films which generally go out of their way to show sex
between men The only way we even know that these young men are money
boys is through the dialogue More specifically we hear the arguments that
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 445
straight people who disapprove of them engender Indeed the film is quite
chaste The one scene in which we see two people showing erotic affection
is between the older heterosexual brother of one of the money boys (XiaoBao) whose missionary goal is to convert hustlers and his girlfriend Feed-
ing Boys thus refuses to indulge viewersrsquo scopophilic desires Cui Zirsquoen teases
the viewer from the first scene Watching two men blowing up condoms
and briefly chatting about sex hints at more erotic scenes to come But they
never materialize A condom-balloon is all we ever get By thus tapping into
a gaze desirous for the perverse and then frustrating that desire Cui Zirsquoen
confronts the viewer with the need to think about representation and the
role of representation in normalizing desire mdash both in public discourse and
in his film
In place of the erotic the viewer is offered the stuff of everyday life One
recurrent image as in the first scene is of money boys on a bridge early in
the morning In one scene they playfully engage in ballet-like dance ges-
tures In another one of them displays his acrobatic skills doing severalback flips Later we see these same young men practicing taiji quan (a mar-
tial arts exercise) again early in the morning on the bridge These images
immediately bring to mind the ldquonormalrdquo populace in Chinarsquos cities who go
out each morning to do precisely these group exercises This idea is rein-
forced by the camera angle in these scenes which is a medium wide-angle
shot taking in both the bridge and the surrounding metropolis But the
bridge is also symptomatic of a moment of suspension between directionsin life or between worlds A bridge represents a gap as well as an attempt to
overcome a fissure in the landscape In one telling scene near the end of the
film a money boy begs for money on the bridge pleading with passersby
that he has given up his dissolute life and reformed himself Yet immediately
after we see him with another friend arguing with the Christian mission-
aryrsquos girlfriend stating unequivocally that even though they treated begging
as a ldquorealrdquo job no one wanted to give them money and that in todayrsquos worldpeople respect a prostitute more than a poor person The bridge thus repre-
sents two intertwined passages mdash from a socialist world of time and space
in which citizens had the leisure to do morning exercises and their lives
were not measured by money to a neoliberal world in which wealth is the
only measure of human dignity and no one mdash except those on the outside
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positions 182 Fall 2010 446
of bourgeois respectability mdash has time to spend exercising on a bridge This
passage is intertwined then with a passage from heteronormative relations
of time and space to queer time and space mdash the refusal of the relationshipbetween time work money and desire that neoliberalism has established
Another recurrent scene is of several young men playing in the park
They walk through the park in a desultory manner enjoying the day One
of them has his dog on a leash The dog is obviously well groomed and
well fed Only recently have Beijing residents been allowed to keep pets in
the city Dogs quickly became a key signifier of bourgeois cosmopolitan
accomplishment Why shouldnrsquot money boys be allowed to have them too
In the film the pet belies the idea that money boys lead an unstable dirty
and unreliable life as many believe Moreover it forces open the cluster of
oppositions between respectable and degraded desires in which bourgeois
heterosexual family life goes together with accoutrements like pets while
prostitution is supposed to represent nothing but lack
Other scenes reinforce the sense that money boys are like everyone else inthe way they go about the stuff of everyday life We see them singing in a
karaoke bar playing with a young boy on a playground and having a meal
with their families These young men are portrayed as neither angels nor
demons They are neither ecstatic nor suicidal But the film makes clear that
they live on the margins and have only one another for support
In only a few scenes do these money boys talk about their work But even
here their conversations resemble those of anyone who has ever grumbledabout his or her workplace At one point in the bar for example one of
the money boys tells the other Xiao Bao that his brother (the missionary)
has been looking for him Xiao Bao shakes his head and complains that a
customer has just ripped him off by refusing to pay In another scene in the
park during the daytime one of the money boys complains to the other that
he canrsquot seem to save any money because he always has to buy expensive
clothes to look nice for his customers The other responds that he should besmarter and get the customers to buy the clothes for him He proudly reveals
that he has saved quite a bit of money with which he plans to buy a house
for his mother
The film also playfully satirizes normalized work lives In one scene one
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 447
of the money boys says ldquoWe need structure We have to become profes-
sionalsrdquo Pointing to a gay bar behind him he says ldquoThis is our interna-
tional head officerdquo Another money boy repeats virtually the same wordsbut this time points to a twenty-story high rise building The film shifts to
an eerie scene of colorful masks then quickly to what looks to be a confer-
ence meeting in a bar Someone presumably their boss is taking roll call
They all stand to attention some of them wearing name tags as if at an aca-
demic meeting In this manner Cui Zirsquoen calls into question the relationship
between sex work and desire in China He highlights the instabilities in
how neoliberalism in China has produced social inequalities through trans-
national structures of differentially valued labors But he further demon-
strates the inextricability of sexuality bodies desire and labor To labor for
wealth is supposed to be the foremost desire in a neoliberal world Thus
normalization techniques reduce and embed desire in a structured world
of intensive labor extraction one that produces a capitalist-inflected heter-
onormativity (even as it has a nondeterministic relationship to that heter-onormativity) In other words Cui Zirsquoen deconstructs how the whole person
becomes a commodity in a neoliberal world and how that world while it
fosters desires also robs people of their desires for a full humanity Through
this humorous filmic meditation on desire Cui Zirsquoen thus provides biting
queer commentary on the reduction and devaluation of necessary labor in
postsocialist China
This commentary is most explicit in a scene near the end of the filmwhen the missionaryrsquos girlfriend pleadingly asks several money boys why
they do this work One of them responds with ten reasons ldquoOne you donrsquot
have to be president Two you donrsquot have to be a soldier Three you donrsquot
have to be a farmer and work the land Four you donrsquot have to wash dishes
Five you donrsquot have to marry and have kids Six you donrsquot have to become a
movie star Seven you donrsquot have to be a movie director Eight you donrsquot get
fat Nine you are exploited by others but donrsquot exploit others And ten youdonrsquot die because we use our bodies to satisfy both good and bad peoplersquos
desiresrdquo Through arguments with and about money boys the film thus
creates commentary on how neoliberalism in China appropriates not just
labor-power but the laborer as a desiring subject32 The queer commentary
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positions 182 Fall 2010 448
of Feeding Boys demonstrates how nonnormative alternatives lie outside of
those temporal and spatial markers of respectable Chinese experience mdash
namely marriage reproduction kinship and death The film thus chal-lenges the oppositions of respectability and shame
Image-Theme 2 How to Become a Money Boy
The thread of this image-theme most explicitly mocks normalizing judg-
ments about desire work class and sex Through this image-theme the
film represents gay male hustling as a profession as honorable as becom-
ing a lawyer or computer scientist In perhaps the most iconic scene in this
regard Feeding Boys stages an argument between Xiao Jian and his parents
that crafts a mimicry of family gatherings to decide the childrenrsquos future33
His parents appear to be respectable middle-class intellectuals The mise-
en-scene is a plushly decorated apartment in which the family lives together
The family is all seated there The father states unequivocally that this kindof work leads nowhere They bemoan the fact that they raised their son for
so many years and gave him the opportunity to do many things with his life
They insist they just want the best for him The parents are oddly calm and
though disgusted do not throw him out of the house Indeed in the next
scene he arrives early in the morning to the apartment stating boldly to his
parents that they arrived home from work earlier than him His mother
asks if he isnrsquot supposed to work the night shift and he responds that he willwork any shift The mother turns to the father and makes the pithy com-
ment ldquoSo we failed to discourage him from this line of workrdquo
In another scene in which Xiao Jian defends to Dabin his reasons for
wanting to become a money boy Cui Zirsquoen crafts a doubled-edged mock-
ery of socialist ideals as well by invoking the old socialist honor of learn-
ing from and serving the masses His satire in this regard cuts in multiple
directions It recalls not just the marginalization but the condemnationand punishment under socialism of those with inappropriate desires But
it also uses those socialist ideals to critique the neoliberal normalization of
the appropriate relationship between labor and desire Xiao Jian initiates an
argument with Dabin when he announces that he too wants to become
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 449
a money boy Xiao Jian is insistent ldquoI want to sell my body like Xiao Bao
[Dabinrsquos brother]rdquo He then explains that when Xiao Bao disappeared he
went to check out the male prostitution business ldquoMost of these youngstersare from villages and from very poor family backgrounds I was born into
a happy family I want to join the hustlers and change their social statusrdquo
Dabin retorts ldquoCan you make those people happy Itrsquos all about making
millionaires officials and rich guys happyrdquo ldquoYou told me that we have to
serve the humble Now I want to become one of themrdquo replies Xiao Jian
ldquoI want to become the lowest of the low together with robbers hooligans
petty thieves ex-convicts homosexuals and hustlers I want to stay at the
bottomrdquo Dabin then launches into classical Chinese metaphors ldquoWater
flows downward but man soars heavenwardrdquo Xiao Jian has an answer to
that as well insisting that man is also part of nature and is also capable of
running downhill ldquoItrsquos only natural and makes things more equalrdquo
The visual logics of this scene provide the ironic counter-commentary
During the entire scene Xiao Jian is fully dressed while we watch Dabin halfnaked as he dresses after a shower The viewer becomes engaged in the erot-
ics of watching Dabin slowly lather lotion over his entire body then pull on
tight-fitting underwear The camera lingers on his well built body By the end
of the scene Dabin is still half naked The erotics of the scene are heightened
by the effect of a mirror that stages Xiao Jian in reverse That is Xiao Jian is
seated to the left of Dabin but we only view him through the mirror where
he appears on Dabinrsquos right while Dabin occupies center stage as the half- naked figure of erotic righteousness The mirror clues us in to a split between
the dialogue and the visual logics This split reflects back to the spectator the
hypocritical contradictions in postsocialist enticements of desire
Image-Theme 3 The Trials and Tribulations of Missionary Work
Early in the film we see someone driving through Beijing in a nice carHe is a good looking serious young man It turns out to be Dabin search-
ing for Xiao Bao his younger brother Dabin walks into a bar looking for
him without success He proceeds to follow one of the money boys into the
bathroom and argues with him saying that he doesnrsquot understand why his
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positions 182 Fall 2010 450
job is so attractive ldquoHow could it attract you How can you enjoy it without
getting tiredrdquo The money boy calmly responds ldquoThe job has three advan-
tages First you earn money Second freedom Third you can fool aroundwith different peoplerdquo When Dabin aggressively asks if there are any dis-
advantages the money boy responds ldquoFirst you get sick easily Second itrsquos
a waste of condoms and KY jelly Third you donrsquot get enough sleeprdquo Dabin
cries ldquoIf you keep doing this you will get AIDSrdquo Thus opens the third
image-theme the heterosexual Christian evangelist who attempts to convert
money boys
Dabinrsquos idea of conversion conflates normative sexual desire and Chris-
tianity Thus in the next major scene in which he appears he argues with
two money boys telling them that birds in the sky donrsquot sell their bodies
but they have food to eat that lotus flowers donrsquot sell their bodies but they
are beautiful that dogs and earthworms donrsquot sell their bodies but they live
vigorous lives so why should they sell their bodies He then offers to give
them the Bible Cui Zirsquoen was raised as a Catholic in the northeast city of
Dalian In his previous films he took a Derek Jarman approach and made
symbolic Jesus figures suffer the slings and arrows of heterosexual rage He
tried to reconcile homoerotic desire with what he viewed as the true essence
of Catholicism In Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen has taken a distinctive approach
Here he asserts that those who use Christianity to suppress nonnormative
desires have a hopeless case on their hands Moreover the true essence of
Christianity is ambiguous Perhaps it really is a source of oppression ratherthan as in his previous films a potential guide for love
This ambiguity is underscored in the next major scene in which Dabin
attempts to win converts among money boys He is reading the Bible together
with his younger ldquoChristian brotherrdquo Xiao Jian who has also chosen to be a
money boy Xiao Jian appears earnest He asks ldquoDo you think Jesus would
like that I mean would he like the fact that men and women and men and
men and women and women have sexrdquo Dabin responds ldquoMen and menand women and men have sexual relationships That means that God gave
them their sexual desires and afterwards even gave them the ability to have
sex So who gave men and women the ability to have sex God did The
fact that God gave us this ability proves that he allows us to do itrdquo But the
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 451
young man persists ldquoYou said men and women do it for procreation If men
have sex with men they canrsquot procreate How do you explain thisrdquo Dabin
is stumped ldquoI have to turn to the Bible again for this questionrdquoThe moral inconclusiveness of the Bible and the ability to glean multiple
interpretations of desire from it leads the viewer to understand that there is
a distinction between heteronormativity and the normalization of desire
Strikingly Dabin does not condemn these young men for having sex with
other men He does not in other words condemn sexual desire tout court
or even homoerotic desire What he condemns is the exchange of sex for
money
Dabin is passionate in his missionary work In one scene we see him
standing on the bridge where money boys gather Christian Bible held up
high intoning his plea to them ldquoThe end of the world is near and you still
sell your bodiesrdquo No one speaks to him his travails seem fruitless Dabin on
the bridge recalls by contrast the money boys on the bridge But whereas
the money boys were shot in mid-range at wide angle Dabin is shot from
below with a zoom lens that makes him appear more distant as if he is high
up on a pulpit or a cross
Somewhat unexpectedly Dabin takes seriously ill and dies His death
recalls that of Jesus of course dying for othersrsquo sins but there is a distinct
ambiguity in Dabinrsquos death Does he die for othersrsquo sins or has he suffered
under his own illusions Is his the work of a savior or do normalized people
with judgments of others suffer because of their judgmental values Thefilm never resolves this ambiguity
On his deathbed Dabin pleads with his girlfriend to take over his work
to preach the gospel and save male prostitutes She promises to do so and
indeed in the next scene we see her standing on the same bridge holding
up the same Bible intoning monotonously ldquoDonrsquot sell anymorerdquo In the end
the girlfriend also ends up exhausted and sick in bed having similarly sacri-
ficed herself to a hopeless cause
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3334
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 1134
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 435
der His interpretation is testimony to a contradictory antinomy between a
fluidity of desire which is supposed to change continuously in line with a
free trade cosmopolitan market economy and a renaturalization of a binary
gender in its ldquorecoveryrdquo from Maoist suppression
Ah Zhuangrsquos views also echo a longer history of gender and sexuality
in China in which as Keith MacMahon has argued one of the main signs
of male privilege is the polygamous ability to have and manage multiple
sexual partners21 Ah Zhuang as a medical doctor is undoubtedly famil-
iar with traditional medical prescriptions for male potency and the needto retain male energy Moreover as Judith Farquhar has argued these tra-
ditional medical texts have been recovered and popularized in post-Mao
China through a discourse on excess and deficiency that is simultaneously
an allegory about Chinarsquos past and future22 Ah Zhuangrsquos critique of Ah Pei
reflects an understanding that to ldquotake care ofrdquo a woman sexually means
that the male is in charge of managing pleasure because he needs to control
the depletion of his own energies Clearly in Ah Zhuangrsquos view Ah Pei hasnot followed the proper prescriptions and therefore is not contributing to the
proper development of social life in China
Ah Pei then proceeded to tell a story of the factory as a site of sexual excess
Rather than paint a conventional portrait of a large state-run factory as a
place of hard work alternating with boredom Ah Pei offered a tale in which
it seemed a matter of course for people to develop their sexual proclivities in
such an oppressive situation Ah Pei explained for example how he startedsleeping with one woman Her husband had been arrested and thrown into
prison for sleeping around with the younger women in the factory His wife
the woman Ah Pei had an affair with brought the women home for him The
husband was arrested however not owing to the moral probity of other fac-
tory leaders but according to Ah Pei because another factory leader wanted
to have sex with one of the young women and was jealous of this man and
so reported him to the public security bureau When this manrsquos wife invitedhim over to her home he figured he wouldnrsquot get into any trouble having an
affair with her By implication Ah Pei was explaining how he had come to
have such a free and easy approach to sex But Ah Zhuang used this story to
conclude that Ah Pei had a profound lack of ethical sense when establishing
relationships with people particularly men
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 436
Ah Zhuang then goaded Ah Pei into explaining his theory about lack of
father love Ah Pei told me about his violent father who drank too much and
hit his children Then one day when Ah Pei was a teenager he stood up to
his father But he always felt the keen loss of having a fatherrsquos love Thatrsquos
why he thinks he feels particularly comfortable with older men Ah Zhuang
promptly disagreed ldquoI donrsquot agree with this that a gay is someone who lacks
father love so they go in search of father love or someone older23 If his
view is correct then I am suspicious of whether he is really a gayrdquo Ah Pei
responded indirectly by saying that he knows for sure he will never get mar-
ried that even though no one living near him knows he is gay and thinks he
goes around with women he feels most comfortable with men Ah Zhuang
has a decided view of the correct way to be gay one that contains a normal-
izing pressure to present only positive or ldquonaturalrdquo reasons why one would
turn out to be gay This naturalization of gay identity parallels the natu-
ralization of the ability to be a desiring subject in post-Mao China Both
naturalizations create hierarchies of inclusion and exclusion that articulatewith the neoliberal naturalization of social inequality In contrast Ah Pei
implied that there are varied ways of having homoerotic encounters and
involvements His story highlights contingency history and experience The
inequalities in his story are class- and gender-based
Ah Pei then launched into a story of how he started to get involved with
men He had come into Tiananmen Square one evening and met some-
one there Ah Zhuang interrupted and said that Ah Pei had still been withwomen after that But Ah Pei responded that though he had been with
women after his first man he nonetheless preferred men He continued his
story ldquoI walked by Zhongshan Park and went to the [public] toilet I saw a
lot of men who went in but didnrsquot come out I just stood there didnrsquot dare
to go in and piss What were they doing in there Curiosity got the better of
me I went in and found two men playing around After that I went there
every day Thatrsquos how I met a guy Thatrsquos how I started I was just a littleover twenty years oldrdquo He began to meet a lot of men through that public
toilet finally meeting his first real lover Lao Chen (Old Chen) With Lao
Chen ldquoI finally started a new life I had a homerdquo
Ah Pei explained about the suffering that he had endured in order to be
with men One evening he was nabbed by the police He lied and said he
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 437
didnrsquot understand what the other man wanted from him The police officer
made him do hard labor for a couple of hours but let him go after he saw
Ah Pei crying The police thought he looked very young Here Ah Zhuang
interjected that he too had thought Ah Pei looked much younger than his
years when he first met him ldquoWhen he meets up with other peoplerdquo Ah
Zhuang concluded ldquohe uses his brains Hersquos good at performingrdquo In other
words Ah Zhuang implied that At Pei had perfected the art of deception
When Ah Pei described his relationship with his first long-term male
lover Lao Chen he and Ah Zhuang began to argue in earnest Ah Zhuangset out the terms by stating that Lao Chen basically ldquokeptrdquo ( yang) Ah Pei
that he took care of him in every way24 He asserted his privileged access to
the truth of the situation by telling me that Lao Chen was a dear friend of
his and it was actually through Lao Chen that he had met Ah Pei He also
set up Lao Chenrsquos class background from a wealthy family in Shanghai Lao
Chen was privileged to lead the life of a playboy However according to Ah
Zhuang Lao Chen was also a deep thinker he had graduated from FuDanUniversity (the most prestigious university in Shanghai) and Ah Zhuang
had spent many pleasurable evenings talking to him about politics Thus
before Ah Pei had a chance to get very far into his version Ah Zhuang had
already established a clear class division between himself and Lao Chen on
the one side and Ah Pei on the other This division Ah Zhuang implied
should also reflect whose version of this social and biographical history was
reliableAgainst this weighty class backdrop Ah Pei struggled to put forth his
perspective Lao Chen had raised him true but he had given Lao Chen
great sexual satisfaction taking the initiative to do so He had also paid his
price by doing a lot of things for him such as taking care of Lao Chenrsquos
wife and other friends when they visited from Shanghai ldquoThat was money
I spent out of my own pocket I feel I treated his family well Hersquos older
than me and has a lot of money I admit thatrdquo In Ah Peirsquos view Lao Chenand he had a fair exchange Lao Chen had the money to buy things for Ah
Pei who in turn gave Lao Chen a satisfying sexual and emotional life In
Ah Peirsquos view it was through Lao Chenrsquos lavish expenditures on him that he
began to have true feelings of love for Lao Chen This issue of true feelings
was critical in Ah Peirsquos view in distinguishing himself from a money boy
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 438
Ah Pei further asserted that unlike money boys he never stuck out his hand
and asked for money People have always offered to buy things for him he
said but he never asked for anything ldquoI have always relied on myselfrdquo
Ah Zhuang quickly jumped in at this point ldquoIf I consider him to be a
money boy itrsquos because hersquos extremely intelligent in this regard Thatrsquos why
I think todayrsquos conversation is especially interesting We could talk about it
for a long time Lao Chen shed a lot of tears over him So he is a little dif-
ferent than the money boys at Half and Half [the gay bar] Do they have
these kind of money boys in the United States Sometimes he really did payfor things himself and their relationship was real I see it this way Hersquos a
little different than those others He still has a little feeling involvedrdquo David
Eng (this volume) astutely evaluates the difficulties in neoliberal modernity
of distinguishing between what he calls tokens of affection and tokens of
exchange
After Ah Zhuangrsquos explication Ah Pei did not directly address the com-
parison of himself with money boys Instead he inarticulately reasserted hisview that he had never stuck out his hand asking for money and had always
relied on himself Given Ah Zhuangrsquos blunt assertion I wanted Ah Pei to
respond I asked whether he saw himself as like those men in any way He
was direct ldquoI am absolutely not like themrdquo Ah Zhuang laughed furiously
ldquoI never stuck out my hand with Ah Zhuang eitherrdquo he replied to the laugh
ldquoLet Ah Zhuang tell you himself Do you admit it Ah Zhuang liked me so
he bought me things My old man [his current lover] is like this too Irsquom notvery smart Irsquom actually stupid my level is low but Lao Chen told him I was
clever Where am I cleverrdquo
I then bluntly asked him if he only sought out lovers who had money ldquoAh
Zhuang is a clear examplerdquo he replied ldquoAh Zhuang has nowhere near the
money of these other men but I still tell him I learned a lot from him I
used to have a foul mouth I still thank him for these past four years Thatrsquos
why I still keep a relationship with him no matter with gay friends or notI always introduce himrdquo
Ah Zhuang directed Ah Pei to explain how his relationship with Lao
Chen ended Ah Pei told a story of how Lao Chen began to see someone
else and did not want Ah Pei to come home anymore Ah Pei was furious
and refused to let him go He did all sorts of things to stop the relationship
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 439
from ending including threatening to expose Lao Chen at work Lao Chen
would certainly have lost his job not only because of homophobia but as
Ah Pei explained because he was already in hot water with the Party due
to his outspoken criticisms Ah Zhuang jumped in to point out how Ah
Peirsquos behavior with Lao Chen provided yet one more set of money boy sig-
nifiers ldquoIrsquoll explainrdquo insisted Ah Zhuang after Ah Pei had presented his
perspective ldquoFrom his point of view he wanted to occupy a position This
position was incredibly important to him Only with this position could he
have money Now it was very possible that this position could be taken overby someone else So thatrsquos why he wanted to take revenge Lao Chen came
looking for me to ask me what he should do lsquoServes you rightrsquo I said He
asked lsquoMaybe if I give him some money then he would be willing to leave
me alonersquo He asked me how much I said lsquoI donrsquot knowrsquo How could I
know how much money he should give him At the time I told him lsquoYou
can end things but you have to think of a way to do itrsquo rdquo Ah Pei diffidently
responded that he hadnrsquot wanted to let go of Lao Chen because yes he leda comfortable life with him and also he had feelings for him For Ah Pei
the fact that his life was comfortable with Lao Chen was quite distinct from
a money boyrsquos desire to be paid for sex But Ah Zhuang saw them as one
and the same Finally Lao Chen left for Canada promising to bring Ah Pei
with him after he had arrived there ldquoI was naiverdquo Ah Pei said because he
had believed him
Surprisingly Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang never explained to me much oftheir own relationship Perhaps in the end they sought to preserve some of
the fragments of their friendship They ended their conversation with me by
briefly mentioning Ah Peirsquos latest relationship with an older man someone
from France whom he had met in a bar one evening Ah Pei doesnrsquot speak
any French and this man doesnrsquot speak any Chinese Ah Zhuang translated
for them when necessary This man who worked for the French airlines
was planning to bring Ah Pei to France with him They had already appliedfor his visa In subsequent conversations Ah Zhuang derided Ah Peirsquos plans
How would Ah Pei make a living in France What could he do He would
have a hard time learning the language et cetera It was as if to say Ah Pei
did not deserve the special privilege of living in a Western country
One could dismiss this whole conversation as the obvious denouement of
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 440
a relationship that had ended bitterly Indeed Ah Zhuang had thrown Ah
Pei out of his house But Ah Zhuangrsquos insistence that Ah Pei was a money
boy reflected more than mere bitterness By rejecting Ah Peirsquos claims that
he too could place himself in the category of ldquogay manrdquo Ah Zhuang was
attempting to establish a hegemonic definition of respectable gayness For
Ah Zhuang this respectability adhered in appropriate gender sensibilities
class embodiment the proper balance between dependency and equality
a strict separation of money and love and a worldliness that only those of
a certain class stature should aspire to display Ah Zhuang was trying to
establish what Lisa Duggan has called the ldquonew homonormativityrdquo Dug-
gan argues that this new homonormativity is the equivalent of neoliberal
politics in the sexual realm25 These sexual politics uphold rather than con-
test dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions and promise
a depoliticized gay culture While Duggan concerns herself only with the
United States and does not consider transnational queer politics we can still
consider how her argument illuminates the sexual politics of someone likeAh Zhuang Ah Zhuang hopes to make gay identity respectable within
the terms of postsocialist neoliberalism The fact that neoliberalism has
made desire the central realm for producing proper citizen-subjects made
Ah Zhuangrsquos discourse all the more fraught with anxiety Ah Peirsquos own
intimacy with a well-to-do foreign gay man further goaded Ah Zhuang to
condemn Ah Peirsquos actions as inappropriate in terms of sexual gendered and
culturalnational identity For Ah Pei was going abroad to live in a Westerncountry long before Ah Zhuang would have the opportunity to do so
While Ah Peirsquos views do not simply reverse this moral equation nor do
they exemplify resistance to homonormativity in any straightforward sense
they provide an incipient means of gaining insight into the techniques of neo-
liberal normalizations as well as their instabilities Ah Zhuangrsquos condemna-
tion of Ah Peirsquos plans to move to France with his lover reveals the extent to
which the transnationalism that made Ah Peirsquos current relationship possiblechanges how ldquoinappropriaterdquo desires manifest themselves in the postsocialist
era It was after all only after the transformations in the last few decades
that a person from France would come to live and work again in China and
that an ldquoinappropriaterdquo desire could now also be a transnational desire The
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 441
fact that they do not speak each otherrsquos language exemplifies how neoliberal-
ism has allowed for new possibilities in the manner in which people desire
each other not just which kinds of desires are legitimate but which kinds of
desires are sustainable through which kinds of technological aids and socio-
economic conditions and across which kinds of borders Yet in Ah Zhuangrsquos
view someone of Ah Peirsquos class background could only succeed in such an
achievement by entangling the desires for money sex and love rather than
keeping them separate However the separations between entrepreneurialism
and intimacy that Ah Zhuang wants to establish for respectable gayness are
difficult to maintain26 Neoliberal cosmopolitanism appears to be all about
entrepreneurial savvy Yet there is more than one way to be an entrepreneur
And there is more than one way to be a nonnormalized or even antinormal-
ized gay subject27
Scene 2
Two young men are squatting at the edge of a bridge passing the time by
blowing up condoms ldquoThis way it looks like a dick It changes into breasts
when it gets bigger The breast changes into a dick and the dick into a
breastrdquo one of them says and laughs As they continue to play with their
condom-balloons the other one asks ldquoDo you like the feeling of being pen-
etrated or the feeling when you stick it inrdquo ldquoBothrdquo comes the answer
This scene opens Feeding Boys Ayaya ( Aiyaya Qu Buru) a queer filmabout male hustlers or money boys by the well-known experimental film-
maker Cui Zirsquoen28 This first scene immediately cuts to a contrasting scene
Two men are in a small closed room filled with computer and filmmaking
equipment The older one is in the background sitting in front of his com-
puter The other much younger is in the forefront of the screen The per-
son manipulating the computer equipment says ldquoZaizai [characterrsquos name]
this theme is for you It might not completely match your character in thefilm The distance makes it more precise Do you have any objectionsrdquo The
young man standing in the forefront of the screen has a somber look on his
face He refuses to speak The camera angle is an extreme close-up enlarg-
ing his face to fill the screen and nearly blocking out a view of the film-
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positions 182 Fall 2010 442
maker The effect is of a split screen We hear the filmmaker from behind
urging him several times ldquoSay somethingrdquo But the other refuses to speak
The quick juxtaposition of these two scenes and their contrasting mise-
en-scene prefigure the major motifs in Feeding Boys Ayaya The opposition
is established visually in the lighting camera angles locations and position-
ing of the characters The first scene presents characters who we will later
come to realize are money boys though at this point their identities are
unclear The scene mixes irony and pathos freedom and marginalization
The ironic and lighthearted humor of the dialogue contrasts with the curi-
ous positioning of the two young men They are at the edge of a deserted
bridge in the very early morning sunlight The camera places both of them
in the center of the screen in a medium close-up thus highlighting rela-
tionality but also distance or alienation The bantering friendship of the
two young men is visually contrasted with their distance from the rest of
the population and from the normative workday Yet this alienation is also
a liberation from the very same mdash the freedom to play at any hour the lackof confinement in space This scene represents what Judith Halberstam has
called ldquoqueer time and spacerdquo Halberstam argues that queer time and space
are ldquowillfully eccentric modes of beingrdquo that challenge heteronormativity by
providing alternative relations to time and space29
The very next scene reminds us that what we have just seen and what we
will view in the rest of the film is a set of representations The question of
how to represent money boys and who can and should speak in their nameis highlighted in this film The filmmaker character in the second scene
is choosing the theme music not the young man The dark closed room
and the split screen raise the question of whether and how the young man
can escape the framing of his life by the other The silence of the young
man mdash another money boy mdash recalls Gayatri Spivakrsquos famous dictum that
the subaltern cannot speak by which she meant that only traces of their
own interpretations of their lives remains in the texts written about them bycolonial elites30
Feeding Boys is a continual juxtaposition of these two types of images mdash
one of money boys displaying a queer sociality and the other of someone mdash
whether the filmmaker character a Christian missionary out to save money
boys his girlfriend who takes over his work or the parents of an aspir-
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 443
ing money boy mdash speaking for or about them Although the film does not
romanticize their lives the money boy characters not only exceed but also
challenge these representations of them both their content and their mode
of representation They continually frustrate attempts to represent capture
or change them Zaizai for example later demands to choose his own theme
music an insistence that frustrates the filmmaker who claims it will ruin
his film Their queerness emerges in these challenges
With Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen enters the larger debates that have central-
ized the question of desire in postsocialist China Cui Zirsquoen uses experimen-
tal visual logics that blur documentary and fiction and that refuse narrative
linearity or closure to challenge not only the specific judgments about money
boys among gay men but the entire apparatus of normalization in China
that tries to delimit desire Cui Zirsquoen addresses the specificity of neoliberal-
ism in China by challenging the hegemonic articulations between Chinese
culture and proper desire on the one hand and labor money and desire on
the other The film has a carnivalesque quality reinforced by the hand-heldcamera techniques which is at once somber and playful It subverts bour-
geois heterosexuality as that which subtends Chinese culture by robbing it of
its glory The film represents money boys as people with an integral human-
ity who take the full measure of their lives while the people who judge
them in the name of neoliberal desires Chinese morality or Christianity
appear damaged filled with contradictory desires themselves or just plain
boring The film thus further subverts postsocialist normalizing desires bydirecting our gaze away from what many think is perverse or rather by
making the normal perverse and the perverse normal The people to be
pitied in this film are the heterosexuals who condemn the hustlersrsquo profes-
sion They are the ones who wither and die Hustlers in contrast have time
to play and enjoy life Yet Cui Zirsquoen does not indulge in a simple decon-
structive reversal Hustlers suffer too but mainly from the condemnation
and exploitation they experience as a result of the hypocritical desires of theheteronormative world
Although Feeding Boys seems to establish a debate between heterosexu-
als and gay male hustlers the themes raised in the film rehearse anxieties
similar to those I presented in my first scene that occur among gay men
Are hustlers respectable or do they sully the good name of other gay men
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positions 182 Fall 2010 444
Do they deserve sympathy or condemnation Are they gay or just exploit-
ing vulnerable gay men Are their desires to be celebrated or condemned
Are they appropriate for Chinarsquos postsocialist neoliberal future or do they
represent the degradation of that future Feeding Boys refuses these dichoto-
mous terms Rather than simply reverse their valence the film addresses
other queer questions that displace these normalizing ones How should
we engage our desires How can this engagement lead to nonnormative
lives How does class inflect desire How can nonnormative desires chal-
lenge class-based temporalities What is the relationship between money
and sex Finally what is the role of religion
Feeding Boys loosely revolves around the elusive search of a Christian het-
erosexual brother Dabin for his younger brother Xiao Bao who has dis-
appeared into the money boy life During his search he discovers that one
of his younger ldquoChristian brothersrdquo Xiao Jian has also decided to become
a money boy to practice Christian love Juxtaposing money boysrsquo serious
banter with the normalizing judgments of others Feeding Boys weaves inand out of several recurrent image-themes the everyday life of hustlers
Xiao Jianrsquos exploration of how to become a hustler the missionizing zeal of
Dabin to dissuade hustlers from continuing in their profession and finally
the desire to represent and normalize the lives of hustlers Throughout
Feeding Boys jumps between these image-themes thus putting them in
dialogue with one another The experimental filmrsquos refusal to present a
linear narrative mirrors the refusal by the money boy characters to accedeto the normalizing judgments of others Thus the form to echo Hayden
White is also the content31 Cui Zirsquoenrsquos filmmaking techniques warn us
that endeavors to normalize create severe dislocations and damage And
not merely to money boys
Image-Theme 1 The Mundanity of Money Boy Life
Feeding Boys strikingly refuses to display any images of money boys actually
engaged in sex or hustling for customers This lack of sex scenes contrasts
with Cui Zirsquoenrsquos other films which generally go out of their way to show sex
between men The only way we even know that these young men are money
boys is through the dialogue More specifically we hear the arguments that
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 445
straight people who disapprove of them engender Indeed the film is quite
chaste The one scene in which we see two people showing erotic affection
is between the older heterosexual brother of one of the money boys (XiaoBao) whose missionary goal is to convert hustlers and his girlfriend Feed-
ing Boys thus refuses to indulge viewersrsquo scopophilic desires Cui Zirsquoen teases
the viewer from the first scene Watching two men blowing up condoms
and briefly chatting about sex hints at more erotic scenes to come But they
never materialize A condom-balloon is all we ever get By thus tapping into
a gaze desirous for the perverse and then frustrating that desire Cui Zirsquoen
confronts the viewer with the need to think about representation and the
role of representation in normalizing desire mdash both in public discourse and
in his film
In place of the erotic the viewer is offered the stuff of everyday life One
recurrent image as in the first scene is of money boys on a bridge early in
the morning In one scene they playfully engage in ballet-like dance ges-
tures In another one of them displays his acrobatic skills doing severalback flips Later we see these same young men practicing taiji quan (a mar-
tial arts exercise) again early in the morning on the bridge These images
immediately bring to mind the ldquonormalrdquo populace in Chinarsquos cities who go
out each morning to do precisely these group exercises This idea is rein-
forced by the camera angle in these scenes which is a medium wide-angle
shot taking in both the bridge and the surrounding metropolis But the
bridge is also symptomatic of a moment of suspension between directionsin life or between worlds A bridge represents a gap as well as an attempt to
overcome a fissure in the landscape In one telling scene near the end of the
film a money boy begs for money on the bridge pleading with passersby
that he has given up his dissolute life and reformed himself Yet immediately
after we see him with another friend arguing with the Christian mission-
aryrsquos girlfriend stating unequivocally that even though they treated begging
as a ldquorealrdquo job no one wanted to give them money and that in todayrsquos worldpeople respect a prostitute more than a poor person The bridge thus repre-
sents two intertwined passages mdash from a socialist world of time and space
in which citizens had the leisure to do morning exercises and their lives
were not measured by money to a neoliberal world in which wealth is the
only measure of human dignity and no one mdash except those on the outside
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positions 182 Fall 2010 446
of bourgeois respectability mdash has time to spend exercising on a bridge This
passage is intertwined then with a passage from heteronormative relations
of time and space to queer time and space mdash the refusal of the relationshipbetween time work money and desire that neoliberalism has established
Another recurrent scene is of several young men playing in the park
They walk through the park in a desultory manner enjoying the day One
of them has his dog on a leash The dog is obviously well groomed and
well fed Only recently have Beijing residents been allowed to keep pets in
the city Dogs quickly became a key signifier of bourgeois cosmopolitan
accomplishment Why shouldnrsquot money boys be allowed to have them too
In the film the pet belies the idea that money boys lead an unstable dirty
and unreliable life as many believe Moreover it forces open the cluster of
oppositions between respectable and degraded desires in which bourgeois
heterosexual family life goes together with accoutrements like pets while
prostitution is supposed to represent nothing but lack
Other scenes reinforce the sense that money boys are like everyone else inthe way they go about the stuff of everyday life We see them singing in a
karaoke bar playing with a young boy on a playground and having a meal
with their families These young men are portrayed as neither angels nor
demons They are neither ecstatic nor suicidal But the film makes clear that
they live on the margins and have only one another for support
In only a few scenes do these money boys talk about their work But even
here their conversations resemble those of anyone who has ever grumbledabout his or her workplace At one point in the bar for example one of
the money boys tells the other Xiao Bao that his brother (the missionary)
has been looking for him Xiao Bao shakes his head and complains that a
customer has just ripped him off by refusing to pay In another scene in the
park during the daytime one of the money boys complains to the other that
he canrsquot seem to save any money because he always has to buy expensive
clothes to look nice for his customers The other responds that he should besmarter and get the customers to buy the clothes for him He proudly reveals
that he has saved quite a bit of money with which he plans to buy a house
for his mother
The film also playfully satirizes normalized work lives In one scene one
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 447
of the money boys says ldquoWe need structure We have to become profes-
sionalsrdquo Pointing to a gay bar behind him he says ldquoThis is our interna-
tional head officerdquo Another money boy repeats virtually the same wordsbut this time points to a twenty-story high rise building The film shifts to
an eerie scene of colorful masks then quickly to what looks to be a confer-
ence meeting in a bar Someone presumably their boss is taking roll call
They all stand to attention some of them wearing name tags as if at an aca-
demic meeting In this manner Cui Zirsquoen calls into question the relationship
between sex work and desire in China He highlights the instabilities in
how neoliberalism in China has produced social inequalities through trans-
national structures of differentially valued labors But he further demon-
strates the inextricability of sexuality bodies desire and labor To labor for
wealth is supposed to be the foremost desire in a neoliberal world Thus
normalization techniques reduce and embed desire in a structured world
of intensive labor extraction one that produces a capitalist-inflected heter-
onormativity (even as it has a nondeterministic relationship to that heter-onormativity) In other words Cui Zirsquoen deconstructs how the whole person
becomes a commodity in a neoliberal world and how that world while it
fosters desires also robs people of their desires for a full humanity Through
this humorous filmic meditation on desire Cui Zirsquoen thus provides biting
queer commentary on the reduction and devaluation of necessary labor in
postsocialist China
This commentary is most explicit in a scene near the end of the filmwhen the missionaryrsquos girlfriend pleadingly asks several money boys why
they do this work One of them responds with ten reasons ldquoOne you donrsquot
have to be president Two you donrsquot have to be a soldier Three you donrsquot
have to be a farmer and work the land Four you donrsquot have to wash dishes
Five you donrsquot have to marry and have kids Six you donrsquot have to become a
movie star Seven you donrsquot have to be a movie director Eight you donrsquot get
fat Nine you are exploited by others but donrsquot exploit others And ten youdonrsquot die because we use our bodies to satisfy both good and bad peoplersquos
desiresrdquo Through arguments with and about money boys the film thus
creates commentary on how neoliberalism in China appropriates not just
labor-power but the laborer as a desiring subject32 The queer commentary
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positions 182 Fall 2010 448
of Feeding Boys demonstrates how nonnormative alternatives lie outside of
those temporal and spatial markers of respectable Chinese experience mdash
namely marriage reproduction kinship and death The film thus chal-lenges the oppositions of respectability and shame
Image-Theme 2 How to Become a Money Boy
The thread of this image-theme most explicitly mocks normalizing judg-
ments about desire work class and sex Through this image-theme the
film represents gay male hustling as a profession as honorable as becom-
ing a lawyer or computer scientist In perhaps the most iconic scene in this
regard Feeding Boys stages an argument between Xiao Jian and his parents
that crafts a mimicry of family gatherings to decide the childrenrsquos future33
His parents appear to be respectable middle-class intellectuals The mise-
en-scene is a plushly decorated apartment in which the family lives together
The family is all seated there The father states unequivocally that this kindof work leads nowhere They bemoan the fact that they raised their son for
so many years and gave him the opportunity to do many things with his life
They insist they just want the best for him The parents are oddly calm and
though disgusted do not throw him out of the house Indeed in the next
scene he arrives early in the morning to the apartment stating boldly to his
parents that they arrived home from work earlier than him His mother
asks if he isnrsquot supposed to work the night shift and he responds that he willwork any shift The mother turns to the father and makes the pithy com-
ment ldquoSo we failed to discourage him from this line of workrdquo
In another scene in which Xiao Jian defends to Dabin his reasons for
wanting to become a money boy Cui Zirsquoen crafts a doubled-edged mock-
ery of socialist ideals as well by invoking the old socialist honor of learn-
ing from and serving the masses His satire in this regard cuts in multiple
directions It recalls not just the marginalization but the condemnationand punishment under socialism of those with inappropriate desires But
it also uses those socialist ideals to critique the neoliberal normalization of
the appropriate relationship between labor and desire Xiao Jian initiates an
argument with Dabin when he announces that he too wants to become
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 449
a money boy Xiao Jian is insistent ldquoI want to sell my body like Xiao Bao
[Dabinrsquos brother]rdquo He then explains that when Xiao Bao disappeared he
went to check out the male prostitution business ldquoMost of these youngstersare from villages and from very poor family backgrounds I was born into
a happy family I want to join the hustlers and change their social statusrdquo
Dabin retorts ldquoCan you make those people happy Itrsquos all about making
millionaires officials and rich guys happyrdquo ldquoYou told me that we have to
serve the humble Now I want to become one of themrdquo replies Xiao Jian
ldquoI want to become the lowest of the low together with robbers hooligans
petty thieves ex-convicts homosexuals and hustlers I want to stay at the
bottomrdquo Dabin then launches into classical Chinese metaphors ldquoWater
flows downward but man soars heavenwardrdquo Xiao Jian has an answer to
that as well insisting that man is also part of nature and is also capable of
running downhill ldquoItrsquos only natural and makes things more equalrdquo
The visual logics of this scene provide the ironic counter-commentary
During the entire scene Xiao Jian is fully dressed while we watch Dabin halfnaked as he dresses after a shower The viewer becomes engaged in the erot-
ics of watching Dabin slowly lather lotion over his entire body then pull on
tight-fitting underwear The camera lingers on his well built body By the end
of the scene Dabin is still half naked The erotics of the scene are heightened
by the effect of a mirror that stages Xiao Jian in reverse That is Xiao Jian is
seated to the left of Dabin but we only view him through the mirror where
he appears on Dabinrsquos right while Dabin occupies center stage as the half- naked figure of erotic righteousness The mirror clues us in to a split between
the dialogue and the visual logics This split reflects back to the spectator the
hypocritical contradictions in postsocialist enticements of desire
Image-Theme 3 The Trials and Tribulations of Missionary Work
Early in the film we see someone driving through Beijing in a nice carHe is a good looking serious young man It turns out to be Dabin search-
ing for Xiao Bao his younger brother Dabin walks into a bar looking for
him without success He proceeds to follow one of the money boys into the
bathroom and argues with him saying that he doesnrsquot understand why his
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positions 182 Fall 2010 450
job is so attractive ldquoHow could it attract you How can you enjoy it without
getting tiredrdquo The money boy calmly responds ldquoThe job has three advan-
tages First you earn money Second freedom Third you can fool aroundwith different peoplerdquo When Dabin aggressively asks if there are any dis-
advantages the money boy responds ldquoFirst you get sick easily Second itrsquos
a waste of condoms and KY jelly Third you donrsquot get enough sleeprdquo Dabin
cries ldquoIf you keep doing this you will get AIDSrdquo Thus opens the third
image-theme the heterosexual Christian evangelist who attempts to convert
money boys
Dabinrsquos idea of conversion conflates normative sexual desire and Chris-
tianity Thus in the next major scene in which he appears he argues with
two money boys telling them that birds in the sky donrsquot sell their bodies
but they have food to eat that lotus flowers donrsquot sell their bodies but they
are beautiful that dogs and earthworms donrsquot sell their bodies but they live
vigorous lives so why should they sell their bodies He then offers to give
them the Bible Cui Zirsquoen was raised as a Catholic in the northeast city of
Dalian In his previous films he took a Derek Jarman approach and made
symbolic Jesus figures suffer the slings and arrows of heterosexual rage He
tried to reconcile homoerotic desire with what he viewed as the true essence
of Catholicism In Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen has taken a distinctive approach
Here he asserts that those who use Christianity to suppress nonnormative
desires have a hopeless case on their hands Moreover the true essence of
Christianity is ambiguous Perhaps it really is a source of oppression ratherthan as in his previous films a potential guide for love
This ambiguity is underscored in the next major scene in which Dabin
attempts to win converts among money boys He is reading the Bible together
with his younger ldquoChristian brotherrdquo Xiao Jian who has also chosen to be a
money boy Xiao Jian appears earnest He asks ldquoDo you think Jesus would
like that I mean would he like the fact that men and women and men and
men and women and women have sexrdquo Dabin responds ldquoMen and menand women and men have sexual relationships That means that God gave
them their sexual desires and afterwards even gave them the ability to have
sex So who gave men and women the ability to have sex God did The
fact that God gave us this ability proves that he allows us to do itrdquo But the
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 451
young man persists ldquoYou said men and women do it for procreation If men
have sex with men they canrsquot procreate How do you explain thisrdquo Dabin
is stumped ldquoI have to turn to the Bible again for this questionrdquoThe moral inconclusiveness of the Bible and the ability to glean multiple
interpretations of desire from it leads the viewer to understand that there is
a distinction between heteronormativity and the normalization of desire
Strikingly Dabin does not condemn these young men for having sex with
other men He does not in other words condemn sexual desire tout court
or even homoerotic desire What he condemns is the exchange of sex for
money
Dabin is passionate in his missionary work In one scene we see him
standing on the bridge where money boys gather Christian Bible held up
high intoning his plea to them ldquoThe end of the world is near and you still
sell your bodiesrdquo No one speaks to him his travails seem fruitless Dabin on
the bridge recalls by contrast the money boys on the bridge But whereas
the money boys were shot in mid-range at wide angle Dabin is shot from
below with a zoom lens that makes him appear more distant as if he is high
up on a pulpit or a cross
Somewhat unexpectedly Dabin takes seriously ill and dies His death
recalls that of Jesus of course dying for othersrsquo sins but there is a distinct
ambiguity in Dabinrsquos death Does he die for othersrsquo sins or has he suffered
under his own illusions Is his the work of a savior or do normalized people
with judgments of others suffer because of their judgmental values Thefilm never resolves this ambiguity
On his deathbed Dabin pleads with his girlfriend to take over his work
to preach the gospel and save male prostitutes She promises to do so and
indeed in the next scene we see her standing on the same bridge holding
up the same Bible intoning monotonously ldquoDonrsquot sell anymorerdquo In the end
the girlfriend also ends up exhausted and sick in bed having similarly sacri-
ficed herself to a hopeless cause
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positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3134
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3234
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3334
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 436
Ah Zhuang then goaded Ah Pei into explaining his theory about lack of
father love Ah Pei told me about his violent father who drank too much and
hit his children Then one day when Ah Pei was a teenager he stood up to
his father But he always felt the keen loss of having a fatherrsquos love Thatrsquos
why he thinks he feels particularly comfortable with older men Ah Zhuang
promptly disagreed ldquoI donrsquot agree with this that a gay is someone who lacks
father love so they go in search of father love or someone older23 If his
view is correct then I am suspicious of whether he is really a gayrdquo Ah Pei
responded indirectly by saying that he knows for sure he will never get mar-
ried that even though no one living near him knows he is gay and thinks he
goes around with women he feels most comfortable with men Ah Zhuang
has a decided view of the correct way to be gay one that contains a normal-
izing pressure to present only positive or ldquonaturalrdquo reasons why one would
turn out to be gay This naturalization of gay identity parallels the natu-
ralization of the ability to be a desiring subject in post-Mao China Both
naturalizations create hierarchies of inclusion and exclusion that articulatewith the neoliberal naturalization of social inequality In contrast Ah Pei
implied that there are varied ways of having homoerotic encounters and
involvements His story highlights contingency history and experience The
inequalities in his story are class- and gender-based
Ah Pei then launched into a story of how he started to get involved with
men He had come into Tiananmen Square one evening and met some-
one there Ah Zhuang interrupted and said that Ah Pei had still been withwomen after that But Ah Pei responded that though he had been with
women after his first man he nonetheless preferred men He continued his
story ldquoI walked by Zhongshan Park and went to the [public] toilet I saw a
lot of men who went in but didnrsquot come out I just stood there didnrsquot dare
to go in and piss What were they doing in there Curiosity got the better of
me I went in and found two men playing around After that I went there
every day Thatrsquos how I met a guy Thatrsquos how I started I was just a littleover twenty years oldrdquo He began to meet a lot of men through that public
toilet finally meeting his first real lover Lao Chen (Old Chen) With Lao
Chen ldquoI finally started a new life I had a homerdquo
Ah Pei explained about the suffering that he had endured in order to be
with men One evening he was nabbed by the police He lied and said he
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 437
didnrsquot understand what the other man wanted from him The police officer
made him do hard labor for a couple of hours but let him go after he saw
Ah Pei crying The police thought he looked very young Here Ah Zhuang
interjected that he too had thought Ah Pei looked much younger than his
years when he first met him ldquoWhen he meets up with other peoplerdquo Ah
Zhuang concluded ldquohe uses his brains Hersquos good at performingrdquo In other
words Ah Zhuang implied that At Pei had perfected the art of deception
When Ah Pei described his relationship with his first long-term male
lover Lao Chen he and Ah Zhuang began to argue in earnest Ah Zhuangset out the terms by stating that Lao Chen basically ldquokeptrdquo ( yang) Ah Pei
that he took care of him in every way24 He asserted his privileged access to
the truth of the situation by telling me that Lao Chen was a dear friend of
his and it was actually through Lao Chen that he had met Ah Pei He also
set up Lao Chenrsquos class background from a wealthy family in Shanghai Lao
Chen was privileged to lead the life of a playboy However according to Ah
Zhuang Lao Chen was also a deep thinker he had graduated from FuDanUniversity (the most prestigious university in Shanghai) and Ah Zhuang
had spent many pleasurable evenings talking to him about politics Thus
before Ah Pei had a chance to get very far into his version Ah Zhuang had
already established a clear class division between himself and Lao Chen on
the one side and Ah Pei on the other This division Ah Zhuang implied
should also reflect whose version of this social and biographical history was
reliableAgainst this weighty class backdrop Ah Pei struggled to put forth his
perspective Lao Chen had raised him true but he had given Lao Chen
great sexual satisfaction taking the initiative to do so He had also paid his
price by doing a lot of things for him such as taking care of Lao Chenrsquos
wife and other friends when they visited from Shanghai ldquoThat was money
I spent out of my own pocket I feel I treated his family well Hersquos older
than me and has a lot of money I admit thatrdquo In Ah Peirsquos view Lao Chenand he had a fair exchange Lao Chen had the money to buy things for Ah
Pei who in turn gave Lao Chen a satisfying sexual and emotional life In
Ah Peirsquos view it was through Lao Chenrsquos lavish expenditures on him that he
began to have true feelings of love for Lao Chen This issue of true feelings
was critical in Ah Peirsquos view in distinguishing himself from a money boy
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 438
Ah Pei further asserted that unlike money boys he never stuck out his hand
and asked for money People have always offered to buy things for him he
said but he never asked for anything ldquoI have always relied on myselfrdquo
Ah Zhuang quickly jumped in at this point ldquoIf I consider him to be a
money boy itrsquos because hersquos extremely intelligent in this regard Thatrsquos why
I think todayrsquos conversation is especially interesting We could talk about it
for a long time Lao Chen shed a lot of tears over him So he is a little dif-
ferent than the money boys at Half and Half [the gay bar] Do they have
these kind of money boys in the United States Sometimes he really did payfor things himself and their relationship was real I see it this way Hersquos a
little different than those others He still has a little feeling involvedrdquo David
Eng (this volume) astutely evaluates the difficulties in neoliberal modernity
of distinguishing between what he calls tokens of affection and tokens of
exchange
After Ah Zhuangrsquos explication Ah Pei did not directly address the com-
parison of himself with money boys Instead he inarticulately reasserted hisview that he had never stuck out his hand asking for money and had always
relied on himself Given Ah Zhuangrsquos blunt assertion I wanted Ah Pei to
respond I asked whether he saw himself as like those men in any way He
was direct ldquoI am absolutely not like themrdquo Ah Zhuang laughed furiously
ldquoI never stuck out my hand with Ah Zhuang eitherrdquo he replied to the laugh
ldquoLet Ah Zhuang tell you himself Do you admit it Ah Zhuang liked me so
he bought me things My old man [his current lover] is like this too Irsquom notvery smart Irsquom actually stupid my level is low but Lao Chen told him I was
clever Where am I cleverrdquo
I then bluntly asked him if he only sought out lovers who had money ldquoAh
Zhuang is a clear examplerdquo he replied ldquoAh Zhuang has nowhere near the
money of these other men but I still tell him I learned a lot from him I
used to have a foul mouth I still thank him for these past four years Thatrsquos
why I still keep a relationship with him no matter with gay friends or notI always introduce himrdquo
Ah Zhuang directed Ah Pei to explain how his relationship with Lao
Chen ended Ah Pei told a story of how Lao Chen began to see someone
else and did not want Ah Pei to come home anymore Ah Pei was furious
and refused to let him go He did all sorts of things to stop the relationship
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 439
from ending including threatening to expose Lao Chen at work Lao Chen
would certainly have lost his job not only because of homophobia but as
Ah Pei explained because he was already in hot water with the Party due
to his outspoken criticisms Ah Zhuang jumped in to point out how Ah
Peirsquos behavior with Lao Chen provided yet one more set of money boy sig-
nifiers ldquoIrsquoll explainrdquo insisted Ah Zhuang after Ah Pei had presented his
perspective ldquoFrom his point of view he wanted to occupy a position This
position was incredibly important to him Only with this position could he
have money Now it was very possible that this position could be taken overby someone else So thatrsquos why he wanted to take revenge Lao Chen came
looking for me to ask me what he should do lsquoServes you rightrsquo I said He
asked lsquoMaybe if I give him some money then he would be willing to leave
me alonersquo He asked me how much I said lsquoI donrsquot knowrsquo How could I
know how much money he should give him At the time I told him lsquoYou
can end things but you have to think of a way to do itrsquo rdquo Ah Pei diffidently
responded that he hadnrsquot wanted to let go of Lao Chen because yes he leda comfortable life with him and also he had feelings for him For Ah Pei
the fact that his life was comfortable with Lao Chen was quite distinct from
a money boyrsquos desire to be paid for sex But Ah Zhuang saw them as one
and the same Finally Lao Chen left for Canada promising to bring Ah Pei
with him after he had arrived there ldquoI was naiverdquo Ah Pei said because he
had believed him
Surprisingly Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang never explained to me much oftheir own relationship Perhaps in the end they sought to preserve some of
the fragments of their friendship They ended their conversation with me by
briefly mentioning Ah Peirsquos latest relationship with an older man someone
from France whom he had met in a bar one evening Ah Pei doesnrsquot speak
any French and this man doesnrsquot speak any Chinese Ah Zhuang translated
for them when necessary This man who worked for the French airlines
was planning to bring Ah Pei to France with him They had already appliedfor his visa In subsequent conversations Ah Zhuang derided Ah Peirsquos plans
How would Ah Pei make a living in France What could he do He would
have a hard time learning the language et cetera It was as if to say Ah Pei
did not deserve the special privilege of living in a Western country
One could dismiss this whole conversation as the obvious denouement of
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 440
a relationship that had ended bitterly Indeed Ah Zhuang had thrown Ah
Pei out of his house But Ah Zhuangrsquos insistence that Ah Pei was a money
boy reflected more than mere bitterness By rejecting Ah Peirsquos claims that
he too could place himself in the category of ldquogay manrdquo Ah Zhuang was
attempting to establish a hegemonic definition of respectable gayness For
Ah Zhuang this respectability adhered in appropriate gender sensibilities
class embodiment the proper balance between dependency and equality
a strict separation of money and love and a worldliness that only those of
a certain class stature should aspire to display Ah Zhuang was trying to
establish what Lisa Duggan has called the ldquonew homonormativityrdquo Dug-
gan argues that this new homonormativity is the equivalent of neoliberal
politics in the sexual realm25 These sexual politics uphold rather than con-
test dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions and promise
a depoliticized gay culture While Duggan concerns herself only with the
United States and does not consider transnational queer politics we can still
consider how her argument illuminates the sexual politics of someone likeAh Zhuang Ah Zhuang hopes to make gay identity respectable within
the terms of postsocialist neoliberalism The fact that neoliberalism has
made desire the central realm for producing proper citizen-subjects made
Ah Zhuangrsquos discourse all the more fraught with anxiety Ah Peirsquos own
intimacy with a well-to-do foreign gay man further goaded Ah Zhuang to
condemn Ah Peirsquos actions as inappropriate in terms of sexual gendered and
culturalnational identity For Ah Pei was going abroad to live in a Westerncountry long before Ah Zhuang would have the opportunity to do so
While Ah Peirsquos views do not simply reverse this moral equation nor do
they exemplify resistance to homonormativity in any straightforward sense
they provide an incipient means of gaining insight into the techniques of neo-
liberal normalizations as well as their instabilities Ah Zhuangrsquos condemna-
tion of Ah Peirsquos plans to move to France with his lover reveals the extent to
which the transnationalism that made Ah Peirsquos current relationship possiblechanges how ldquoinappropriaterdquo desires manifest themselves in the postsocialist
era It was after all only after the transformations in the last few decades
that a person from France would come to live and work again in China and
that an ldquoinappropriaterdquo desire could now also be a transnational desire The
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 441
fact that they do not speak each otherrsquos language exemplifies how neoliberal-
ism has allowed for new possibilities in the manner in which people desire
each other not just which kinds of desires are legitimate but which kinds of
desires are sustainable through which kinds of technological aids and socio-
economic conditions and across which kinds of borders Yet in Ah Zhuangrsquos
view someone of Ah Peirsquos class background could only succeed in such an
achievement by entangling the desires for money sex and love rather than
keeping them separate However the separations between entrepreneurialism
and intimacy that Ah Zhuang wants to establish for respectable gayness are
difficult to maintain26 Neoliberal cosmopolitanism appears to be all about
entrepreneurial savvy Yet there is more than one way to be an entrepreneur
And there is more than one way to be a nonnormalized or even antinormal-
ized gay subject27
Scene 2
Two young men are squatting at the edge of a bridge passing the time by
blowing up condoms ldquoThis way it looks like a dick It changes into breasts
when it gets bigger The breast changes into a dick and the dick into a
breastrdquo one of them says and laughs As they continue to play with their
condom-balloons the other one asks ldquoDo you like the feeling of being pen-
etrated or the feeling when you stick it inrdquo ldquoBothrdquo comes the answer
This scene opens Feeding Boys Ayaya ( Aiyaya Qu Buru) a queer filmabout male hustlers or money boys by the well-known experimental film-
maker Cui Zirsquoen28 This first scene immediately cuts to a contrasting scene
Two men are in a small closed room filled with computer and filmmaking
equipment The older one is in the background sitting in front of his com-
puter The other much younger is in the forefront of the screen The per-
son manipulating the computer equipment says ldquoZaizai [characterrsquos name]
this theme is for you It might not completely match your character in thefilm The distance makes it more precise Do you have any objectionsrdquo The
young man standing in the forefront of the screen has a somber look on his
face He refuses to speak The camera angle is an extreme close-up enlarg-
ing his face to fill the screen and nearly blocking out a view of the film-
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 442
maker The effect is of a split screen We hear the filmmaker from behind
urging him several times ldquoSay somethingrdquo But the other refuses to speak
The quick juxtaposition of these two scenes and their contrasting mise-
en-scene prefigure the major motifs in Feeding Boys Ayaya The opposition
is established visually in the lighting camera angles locations and position-
ing of the characters The first scene presents characters who we will later
come to realize are money boys though at this point their identities are
unclear The scene mixes irony and pathos freedom and marginalization
The ironic and lighthearted humor of the dialogue contrasts with the curi-
ous positioning of the two young men They are at the edge of a deserted
bridge in the very early morning sunlight The camera places both of them
in the center of the screen in a medium close-up thus highlighting rela-
tionality but also distance or alienation The bantering friendship of the
two young men is visually contrasted with their distance from the rest of
the population and from the normative workday Yet this alienation is also
a liberation from the very same mdash the freedom to play at any hour the lackof confinement in space This scene represents what Judith Halberstam has
called ldquoqueer time and spacerdquo Halberstam argues that queer time and space
are ldquowillfully eccentric modes of beingrdquo that challenge heteronormativity by
providing alternative relations to time and space29
The very next scene reminds us that what we have just seen and what we
will view in the rest of the film is a set of representations The question of
how to represent money boys and who can and should speak in their nameis highlighted in this film The filmmaker character in the second scene
is choosing the theme music not the young man The dark closed room
and the split screen raise the question of whether and how the young man
can escape the framing of his life by the other The silence of the young
man mdash another money boy mdash recalls Gayatri Spivakrsquos famous dictum that
the subaltern cannot speak by which she meant that only traces of their
own interpretations of their lives remains in the texts written about them bycolonial elites30
Feeding Boys is a continual juxtaposition of these two types of images mdash
one of money boys displaying a queer sociality and the other of someone mdash
whether the filmmaker character a Christian missionary out to save money
boys his girlfriend who takes over his work or the parents of an aspir-
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 443
ing money boy mdash speaking for or about them Although the film does not
romanticize their lives the money boy characters not only exceed but also
challenge these representations of them both their content and their mode
of representation They continually frustrate attempts to represent capture
or change them Zaizai for example later demands to choose his own theme
music an insistence that frustrates the filmmaker who claims it will ruin
his film Their queerness emerges in these challenges
With Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen enters the larger debates that have central-
ized the question of desire in postsocialist China Cui Zirsquoen uses experimen-
tal visual logics that blur documentary and fiction and that refuse narrative
linearity or closure to challenge not only the specific judgments about money
boys among gay men but the entire apparatus of normalization in China
that tries to delimit desire Cui Zirsquoen addresses the specificity of neoliberal-
ism in China by challenging the hegemonic articulations between Chinese
culture and proper desire on the one hand and labor money and desire on
the other The film has a carnivalesque quality reinforced by the hand-heldcamera techniques which is at once somber and playful It subverts bour-
geois heterosexuality as that which subtends Chinese culture by robbing it of
its glory The film represents money boys as people with an integral human-
ity who take the full measure of their lives while the people who judge
them in the name of neoliberal desires Chinese morality or Christianity
appear damaged filled with contradictory desires themselves or just plain
boring The film thus further subverts postsocialist normalizing desires bydirecting our gaze away from what many think is perverse or rather by
making the normal perverse and the perverse normal The people to be
pitied in this film are the heterosexuals who condemn the hustlersrsquo profes-
sion They are the ones who wither and die Hustlers in contrast have time
to play and enjoy life Yet Cui Zirsquoen does not indulge in a simple decon-
structive reversal Hustlers suffer too but mainly from the condemnation
and exploitation they experience as a result of the hypocritical desires of theheteronormative world
Although Feeding Boys seems to establish a debate between heterosexu-
als and gay male hustlers the themes raised in the film rehearse anxieties
similar to those I presented in my first scene that occur among gay men
Are hustlers respectable or do they sully the good name of other gay men
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positions 182 Fall 2010 444
Do they deserve sympathy or condemnation Are they gay or just exploit-
ing vulnerable gay men Are their desires to be celebrated or condemned
Are they appropriate for Chinarsquos postsocialist neoliberal future or do they
represent the degradation of that future Feeding Boys refuses these dichoto-
mous terms Rather than simply reverse their valence the film addresses
other queer questions that displace these normalizing ones How should
we engage our desires How can this engagement lead to nonnormative
lives How does class inflect desire How can nonnormative desires chal-
lenge class-based temporalities What is the relationship between money
and sex Finally what is the role of religion
Feeding Boys loosely revolves around the elusive search of a Christian het-
erosexual brother Dabin for his younger brother Xiao Bao who has dis-
appeared into the money boy life During his search he discovers that one
of his younger ldquoChristian brothersrdquo Xiao Jian has also decided to become
a money boy to practice Christian love Juxtaposing money boysrsquo serious
banter with the normalizing judgments of others Feeding Boys weaves inand out of several recurrent image-themes the everyday life of hustlers
Xiao Jianrsquos exploration of how to become a hustler the missionizing zeal of
Dabin to dissuade hustlers from continuing in their profession and finally
the desire to represent and normalize the lives of hustlers Throughout
Feeding Boys jumps between these image-themes thus putting them in
dialogue with one another The experimental filmrsquos refusal to present a
linear narrative mirrors the refusal by the money boy characters to accedeto the normalizing judgments of others Thus the form to echo Hayden
White is also the content31 Cui Zirsquoenrsquos filmmaking techniques warn us
that endeavors to normalize create severe dislocations and damage And
not merely to money boys
Image-Theme 1 The Mundanity of Money Boy Life
Feeding Boys strikingly refuses to display any images of money boys actually
engaged in sex or hustling for customers This lack of sex scenes contrasts
with Cui Zirsquoenrsquos other films which generally go out of their way to show sex
between men The only way we even know that these young men are money
boys is through the dialogue More specifically we hear the arguments that
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 445
straight people who disapprove of them engender Indeed the film is quite
chaste The one scene in which we see two people showing erotic affection
is between the older heterosexual brother of one of the money boys (XiaoBao) whose missionary goal is to convert hustlers and his girlfriend Feed-
ing Boys thus refuses to indulge viewersrsquo scopophilic desires Cui Zirsquoen teases
the viewer from the first scene Watching two men blowing up condoms
and briefly chatting about sex hints at more erotic scenes to come But they
never materialize A condom-balloon is all we ever get By thus tapping into
a gaze desirous for the perverse and then frustrating that desire Cui Zirsquoen
confronts the viewer with the need to think about representation and the
role of representation in normalizing desire mdash both in public discourse and
in his film
In place of the erotic the viewer is offered the stuff of everyday life One
recurrent image as in the first scene is of money boys on a bridge early in
the morning In one scene they playfully engage in ballet-like dance ges-
tures In another one of them displays his acrobatic skills doing severalback flips Later we see these same young men practicing taiji quan (a mar-
tial arts exercise) again early in the morning on the bridge These images
immediately bring to mind the ldquonormalrdquo populace in Chinarsquos cities who go
out each morning to do precisely these group exercises This idea is rein-
forced by the camera angle in these scenes which is a medium wide-angle
shot taking in both the bridge and the surrounding metropolis But the
bridge is also symptomatic of a moment of suspension between directionsin life or between worlds A bridge represents a gap as well as an attempt to
overcome a fissure in the landscape In one telling scene near the end of the
film a money boy begs for money on the bridge pleading with passersby
that he has given up his dissolute life and reformed himself Yet immediately
after we see him with another friend arguing with the Christian mission-
aryrsquos girlfriend stating unequivocally that even though they treated begging
as a ldquorealrdquo job no one wanted to give them money and that in todayrsquos worldpeople respect a prostitute more than a poor person The bridge thus repre-
sents two intertwined passages mdash from a socialist world of time and space
in which citizens had the leisure to do morning exercises and their lives
were not measured by money to a neoliberal world in which wealth is the
only measure of human dignity and no one mdash except those on the outside
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positions 182 Fall 2010 446
of bourgeois respectability mdash has time to spend exercising on a bridge This
passage is intertwined then with a passage from heteronormative relations
of time and space to queer time and space mdash the refusal of the relationshipbetween time work money and desire that neoliberalism has established
Another recurrent scene is of several young men playing in the park
They walk through the park in a desultory manner enjoying the day One
of them has his dog on a leash The dog is obviously well groomed and
well fed Only recently have Beijing residents been allowed to keep pets in
the city Dogs quickly became a key signifier of bourgeois cosmopolitan
accomplishment Why shouldnrsquot money boys be allowed to have them too
In the film the pet belies the idea that money boys lead an unstable dirty
and unreliable life as many believe Moreover it forces open the cluster of
oppositions between respectable and degraded desires in which bourgeois
heterosexual family life goes together with accoutrements like pets while
prostitution is supposed to represent nothing but lack
Other scenes reinforce the sense that money boys are like everyone else inthe way they go about the stuff of everyday life We see them singing in a
karaoke bar playing with a young boy on a playground and having a meal
with their families These young men are portrayed as neither angels nor
demons They are neither ecstatic nor suicidal But the film makes clear that
they live on the margins and have only one another for support
In only a few scenes do these money boys talk about their work But even
here their conversations resemble those of anyone who has ever grumbledabout his or her workplace At one point in the bar for example one of
the money boys tells the other Xiao Bao that his brother (the missionary)
has been looking for him Xiao Bao shakes his head and complains that a
customer has just ripped him off by refusing to pay In another scene in the
park during the daytime one of the money boys complains to the other that
he canrsquot seem to save any money because he always has to buy expensive
clothes to look nice for his customers The other responds that he should besmarter and get the customers to buy the clothes for him He proudly reveals
that he has saved quite a bit of money with which he plans to buy a house
for his mother
The film also playfully satirizes normalized work lives In one scene one
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 447
of the money boys says ldquoWe need structure We have to become profes-
sionalsrdquo Pointing to a gay bar behind him he says ldquoThis is our interna-
tional head officerdquo Another money boy repeats virtually the same wordsbut this time points to a twenty-story high rise building The film shifts to
an eerie scene of colorful masks then quickly to what looks to be a confer-
ence meeting in a bar Someone presumably their boss is taking roll call
They all stand to attention some of them wearing name tags as if at an aca-
demic meeting In this manner Cui Zirsquoen calls into question the relationship
between sex work and desire in China He highlights the instabilities in
how neoliberalism in China has produced social inequalities through trans-
national structures of differentially valued labors But he further demon-
strates the inextricability of sexuality bodies desire and labor To labor for
wealth is supposed to be the foremost desire in a neoliberal world Thus
normalization techniques reduce and embed desire in a structured world
of intensive labor extraction one that produces a capitalist-inflected heter-
onormativity (even as it has a nondeterministic relationship to that heter-onormativity) In other words Cui Zirsquoen deconstructs how the whole person
becomes a commodity in a neoliberal world and how that world while it
fosters desires also robs people of their desires for a full humanity Through
this humorous filmic meditation on desire Cui Zirsquoen thus provides biting
queer commentary on the reduction and devaluation of necessary labor in
postsocialist China
This commentary is most explicit in a scene near the end of the filmwhen the missionaryrsquos girlfriend pleadingly asks several money boys why
they do this work One of them responds with ten reasons ldquoOne you donrsquot
have to be president Two you donrsquot have to be a soldier Three you donrsquot
have to be a farmer and work the land Four you donrsquot have to wash dishes
Five you donrsquot have to marry and have kids Six you donrsquot have to become a
movie star Seven you donrsquot have to be a movie director Eight you donrsquot get
fat Nine you are exploited by others but donrsquot exploit others And ten youdonrsquot die because we use our bodies to satisfy both good and bad peoplersquos
desiresrdquo Through arguments with and about money boys the film thus
creates commentary on how neoliberalism in China appropriates not just
labor-power but the laborer as a desiring subject32 The queer commentary
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positions 182 Fall 2010 448
of Feeding Boys demonstrates how nonnormative alternatives lie outside of
those temporal and spatial markers of respectable Chinese experience mdash
namely marriage reproduction kinship and death The film thus chal-lenges the oppositions of respectability and shame
Image-Theme 2 How to Become a Money Boy
The thread of this image-theme most explicitly mocks normalizing judg-
ments about desire work class and sex Through this image-theme the
film represents gay male hustling as a profession as honorable as becom-
ing a lawyer or computer scientist In perhaps the most iconic scene in this
regard Feeding Boys stages an argument between Xiao Jian and his parents
that crafts a mimicry of family gatherings to decide the childrenrsquos future33
His parents appear to be respectable middle-class intellectuals The mise-
en-scene is a plushly decorated apartment in which the family lives together
The family is all seated there The father states unequivocally that this kindof work leads nowhere They bemoan the fact that they raised their son for
so many years and gave him the opportunity to do many things with his life
They insist they just want the best for him The parents are oddly calm and
though disgusted do not throw him out of the house Indeed in the next
scene he arrives early in the morning to the apartment stating boldly to his
parents that they arrived home from work earlier than him His mother
asks if he isnrsquot supposed to work the night shift and he responds that he willwork any shift The mother turns to the father and makes the pithy com-
ment ldquoSo we failed to discourage him from this line of workrdquo
In another scene in which Xiao Jian defends to Dabin his reasons for
wanting to become a money boy Cui Zirsquoen crafts a doubled-edged mock-
ery of socialist ideals as well by invoking the old socialist honor of learn-
ing from and serving the masses His satire in this regard cuts in multiple
directions It recalls not just the marginalization but the condemnationand punishment under socialism of those with inappropriate desires But
it also uses those socialist ideals to critique the neoliberal normalization of
the appropriate relationship between labor and desire Xiao Jian initiates an
argument with Dabin when he announces that he too wants to become
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 449
a money boy Xiao Jian is insistent ldquoI want to sell my body like Xiao Bao
[Dabinrsquos brother]rdquo He then explains that when Xiao Bao disappeared he
went to check out the male prostitution business ldquoMost of these youngstersare from villages and from very poor family backgrounds I was born into
a happy family I want to join the hustlers and change their social statusrdquo
Dabin retorts ldquoCan you make those people happy Itrsquos all about making
millionaires officials and rich guys happyrdquo ldquoYou told me that we have to
serve the humble Now I want to become one of themrdquo replies Xiao Jian
ldquoI want to become the lowest of the low together with robbers hooligans
petty thieves ex-convicts homosexuals and hustlers I want to stay at the
bottomrdquo Dabin then launches into classical Chinese metaphors ldquoWater
flows downward but man soars heavenwardrdquo Xiao Jian has an answer to
that as well insisting that man is also part of nature and is also capable of
running downhill ldquoItrsquos only natural and makes things more equalrdquo
The visual logics of this scene provide the ironic counter-commentary
During the entire scene Xiao Jian is fully dressed while we watch Dabin halfnaked as he dresses after a shower The viewer becomes engaged in the erot-
ics of watching Dabin slowly lather lotion over his entire body then pull on
tight-fitting underwear The camera lingers on his well built body By the end
of the scene Dabin is still half naked The erotics of the scene are heightened
by the effect of a mirror that stages Xiao Jian in reverse That is Xiao Jian is
seated to the left of Dabin but we only view him through the mirror where
he appears on Dabinrsquos right while Dabin occupies center stage as the half- naked figure of erotic righteousness The mirror clues us in to a split between
the dialogue and the visual logics This split reflects back to the spectator the
hypocritical contradictions in postsocialist enticements of desire
Image-Theme 3 The Trials and Tribulations of Missionary Work
Early in the film we see someone driving through Beijing in a nice carHe is a good looking serious young man It turns out to be Dabin search-
ing for Xiao Bao his younger brother Dabin walks into a bar looking for
him without success He proceeds to follow one of the money boys into the
bathroom and argues with him saying that he doesnrsquot understand why his
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positions 182 Fall 2010 450
job is so attractive ldquoHow could it attract you How can you enjoy it without
getting tiredrdquo The money boy calmly responds ldquoThe job has three advan-
tages First you earn money Second freedom Third you can fool aroundwith different peoplerdquo When Dabin aggressively asks if there are any dis-
advantages the money boy responds ldquoFirst you get sick easily Second itrsquos
a waste of condoms and KY jelly Third you donrsquot get enough sleeprdquo Dabin
cries ldquoIf you keep doing this you will get AIDSrdquo Thus opens the third
image-theme the heterosexual Christian evangelist who attempts to convert
money boys
Dabinrsquos idea of conversion conflates normative sexual desire and Chris-
tianity Thus in the next major scene in which he appears he argues with
two money boys telling them that birds in the sky donrsquot sell their bodies
but they have food to eat that lotus flowers donrsquot sell their bodies but they
are beautiful that dogs and earthworms donrsquot sell their bodies but they live
vigorous lives so why should they sell their bodies He then offers to give
them the Bible Cui Zirsquoen was raised as a Catholic in the northeast city of
Dalian In his previous films he took a Derek Jarman approach and made
symbolic Jesus figures suffer the slings and arrows of heterosexual rage He
tried to reconcile homoerotic desire with what he viewed as the true essence
of Catholicism In Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen has taken a distinctive approach
Here he asserts that those who use Christianity to suppress nonnormative
desires have a hopeless case on their hands Moreover the true essence of
Christianity is ambiguous Perhaps it really is a source of oppression ratherthan as in his previous films a potential guide for love
This ambiguity is underscored in the next major scene in which Dabin
attempts to win converts among money boys He is reading the Bible together
with his younger ldquoChristian brotherrdquo Xiao Jian who has also chosen to be a
money boy Xiao Jian appears earnest He asks ldquoDo you think Jesus would
like that I mean would he like the fact that men and women and men and
men and women and women have sexrdquo Dabin responds ldquoMen and menand women and men have sexual relationships That means that God gave
them their sexual desires and afterwards even gave them the ability to have
sex So who gave men and women the ability to have sex God did The
fact that God gave us this ability proves that he allows us to do itrdquo But the
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 451
young man persists ldquoYou said men and women do it for procreation If men
have sex with men they canrsquot procreate How do you explain thisrdquo Dabin
is stumped ldquoI have to turn to the Bible again for this questionrdquoThe moral inconclusiveness of the Bible and the ability to glean multiple
interpretations of desire from it leads the viewer to understand that there is
a distinction between heteronormativity and the normalization of desire
Strikingly Dabin does not condemn these young men for having sex with
other men He does not in other words condemn sexual desire tout court
or even homoerotic desire What he condemns is the exchange of sex for
money
Dabin is passionate in his missionary work In one scene we see him
standing on the bridge where money boys gather Christian Bible held up
high intoning his plea to them ldquoThe end of the world is near and you still
sell your bodiesrdquo No one speaks to him his travails seem fruitless Dabin on
the bridge recalls by contrast the money boys on the bridge But whereas
the money boys were shot in mid-range at wide angle Dabin is shot from
below with a zoom lens that makes him appear more distant as if he is high
up on a pulpit or a cross
Somewhat unexpectedly Dabin takes seriously ill and dies His death
recalls that of Jesus of course dying for othersrsquo sins but there is a distinct
ambiguity in Dabinrsquos death Does he die for othersrsquo sins or has he suffered
under his own illusions Is his the work of a savior or do normalized people
with judgments of others suffer because of their judgmental values Thefilm never resolves this ambiguity
On his deathbed Dabin pleads with his girlfriend to take over his work
to preach the gospel and save male prostitutes She promises to do so and
indeed in the next scene we see her standing on the same bridge holding
up the same Bible intoning monotonously ldquoDonrsquot sell anymorerdquo In the end
the girlfriend also ends up exhausted and sick in bed having similarly sacri-
ficed herself to a hopeless cause
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positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 437
didnrsquot understand what the other man wanted from him The police officer
made him do hard labor for a couple of hours but let him go after he saw
Ah Pei crying The police thought he looked very young Here Ah Zhuang
interjected that he too had thought Ah Pei looked much younger than his
years when he first met him ldquoWhen he meets up with other peoplerdquo Ah
Zhuang concluded ldquohe uses his brains Hersquos good at performingrdquo In other
words Ah Zhuang implied that At Pei had perfected the art of deception
When Ah Pei described his relationship with his first long-term male
lover Lao Chen he and Ah Zhuang began to argue in earnest Ah Zhuangset out the terms by stating that Lao Chen basically ldquokeptrdquo ( yang) Ah Pei
that he took care of him in every way24 He asserted his privileged access to
the truth of the situation by telling me that Lao Chen was a dear friend of
his and it was actually through Lao Chen that he had met Ah Pei He also
set up Lao Chenrsquos class background from a wealthy family in Shanghai Lao
Chen was privileged to lead the life of a playboy However according to Ah
Zhuang Lao Chen was also a deep thinker he had graduated from FuDanUniversity (the most prestigious university in Shanghai) and Ah Zhuang
had spent many pleasurable evenings talking to him about politics Thus
before Ah Pei had a chance to get very far into his version Ah Zhuang had
already established a clear class division between himself and Lao Chen on
the one side and Ah Pei on the other This division Ah Zhuang implied
should also reflect whose version of this social and biographical history was
reliableAgainst this weighty class backdrop Ah Pei struggled to put forth his
perspective Lao Chen had raised him true but he had given Lao Chen
great sexual satisfaction taking the initiative to do so He had also paid his
price by doing a lot of things for him such as taking care of Lao Chenrsquos
wife and other friends when they visited from Shanghai ldquoThat was money
I spent out of my own pocket I feel I treated his family well Hersquos older
than me and has a lot of money I admit thatrdquo In Ah Peirsquos view Lao Chenand he had a fair exchange Lao Chen had the money to buy things for Ah
Pei who in turn gave Lao Chen a satisfying sexual and emotional life In
Ah Peirsquos view it was through Lao Chenrsquos lavish expenditures on him that he
began to have true feelings of love for Lao Chen This issue of true feelings
was critical in Ah Peirsquos view in distinguishing himself from a money boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 438
Ah Pei further asserted that unlike money boys he never stuck out his hand
and asked for money People have always offered to buy things for him he
said but he never asked for anything ldquoI have always relied on myselfrdquo
Ah Zhuang quickly jumped in at this point ldquoIf I consider him to be a
money boy itrsquos because hersquos extremely intelligent in this regard Thatrsquos why
I think todayrsquos conversation is especially interesting We could talk about it
for a long time Lao Chen shed a lot of tears over him So he is a little dif-
ferent than the money boys at Half and Half [the gay bar] Do they have
these kind of money boys in the United States Sometimes he really did payfor things himself and their relationship was real I see it this way Hersquos a
little different than those others He still has a little feeling involvedrdquo David
Eng (this volume) astutely evaluates the difficulties in neoliberal modernity
of distinguishing between what he calls tokens of affection and tokens of
exchange
After Ah Zhuangrsquos explication Ah Pei did not directly address the com-
parison of himself with money boys Instead he inarticulately reasserted hisview that he had never stuck out his hand asking for money and had always
relied on himself Given Ah Zhuangrsquos blunt assertion I wanted Ah Pei to
respond I asked whether he saw himself as like those men in any way He
was direct ldquoI am absolutely not like themrdquo Ah Zhuang laughed furiously
ldquoI never stuck out my hand with Ah Zhuang eitherrdquo he replied to the laugh
ldquoLet Ah Zhuang tell you himself Do you admit it Ah Zhuang liked me so
he bought me things My old man [his current lover] is like this too Irsquom notvery smart Irsquom actually stupid my level is low but Lao Chen told him I was
clever Where am I cleverrdquo
I then bluntly asked him if he only sought out lovers who had money ldquoAh
Zhuang is a clear examplerdquo he replied ldquoAh Zhuang has nowhere near the
money of these other men but I still tell him I learned a lot from him I
used to have a foul mouth I still thank him for these past four years Thatrsquos
why I still keep a relationship with him no matter with gay friends or notI always introduce himrdquo
Ah Zhuang directed Ah Pei to explain how his relationship with Lao
Chen ended Ah Pei told a story of how Lao Chen began to see someone
else and did not want Ah Pei to come home anymore Ah Pei was furious
and refused to let him go He did all sorts of things to stop the relationship
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 439
from ending including threatening to expose Lao Chen at work Lao Chen
would certainly have lost his job not only because of homophobia but as
Ah Pei explained because he was already in hot water with the Party due
to his outspoken criticisms Ah Zhuang jumped in to point out how Ah
Peirsquos behavior with Lao Chen provided yet one more set of money boy sig-
nifiers ldquoIrsquoll explainrdquo insisted Ah Zhuang after Ah Pei had presented his
perspective ldquoFrom his point of view he wanted to occupy a position This
position was incredibly important to him Only with this position could he
have money Now it was very possible that this position could be taken overby someone else So thatrsquos why he wanted to take revenge Lao Chen came
looking for me to ask me what he should do lsquoServes you rightrsquo I said He
asked lsquoMaybe if I give him some money then he would be willing to leave
me alonersquo He asked me how much I said lsquoI donrsquot knowrsquo How could I
know how much money he should give him At the time I told him lsquoYou
can end things but you have to think of a way to do itrsquo rdquo Ah Pei diffidently
responded that he hadnrsquot wanted to let go of Lao Chen because yes he leda comfortable life with him and also he had feelings for him For Ah Pei
the fact that his life was comfortable with Lao Chen was quite distinct from
a money boyrsquos desire to be paid for sex But Ah Zhuang saw them as one
and the same Finally Lao Chen left for Canada promising to bring Ah Pei
with him after he had arrived there ldquoI was naiverdquo Ah Pei said because he
had believed him
Surprisingly Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang never explained to me much oftheir own relationship Perhaps in the end they sought to preserve some of
the fragments of their friendship They ended their conversation with me by
briefly mentioning Ah Peirsquos latest relationship with an older man someone
from France whom he had met in a bar one evening Ah Pei doesnrsquot speak
any French and this man doesnrsquot speak any Chinese Ah Zhuang translated
for them when necessary This man who worked for the French airlines
was planning to bring Ah Pei to France with him They had already appliedfor his visa In subsequent conversations Ah Zhuang derided Ah Peirsquos plans
How would Ah Pei make a living in France What could he do He would
have a hard time learning the language et cetera It was as if to say Ah Pei
did not deserve the special privilege of living in a Western country
One could dismiss this whole conversation as the obvious denouement of
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positions 182 Fall 2010 440
a relationship that had ended bitterly Indeed Ah Zhuang had thrown Ah
Pei out of his house But Ah Zhuangrsquos insistence that Ah Pei was a money
boy reflected more than mere bitterness By rejecting Ah Peirsquos claims that
he too could place himself in the category of ldquogay manrdquo Ah Zhuang was
attempting to establish a hegemonic definition of respectable gayness For
Ah Zhuang this respectability adhered in appropriate gender sensibilities
class embodiment the proper balance between dependency and equality
a strict separation of money and love and a worldliness that only those of
a certain class stature should aspire to display Ah Zhuang was trying to
establish what Lisa Duggan has called the ldquonew homonormativityrdquo Dug-
gan argues that this new homonormativity is the equivalent of neoliberal
politics in the sexual realm25 These sexual politics uphold rather than con-
test dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions and promise
a depoliticized gay culture While Duggan concerns herself only with the
United States and does not consider transnational queer politics we can still
consider how her argument illuminates the sexual politics of someone likeAh Zhuang Ah Zhuang hopes to make gay identity respectable within
the terms of postsocialist neoliberalism The fact that neoliberalism has
made desire the central realm for producing proper citizen-subjects made
Ah Zhuangrsquos discourse all the more fraught with anxiety Ah Peirsquos own
intimacy with a well-to-do foreign gay man further goaded Ah Zhuang to
condemn Ah Peirsquos actions as inappropriate in terms of sexual gendered and
culturalnational identity For Ah Pei was going abroad to live in a Westerncountry long before Ah Zhuang would have the opportunity to do so
While Ah Peirsquos views do not simply reverse this moral equation nor do
they exemplify resistance to homonormativity in any straightforward sense
they provide an incipient means of gaining insight into the techniques of neo-
liberal normalizations as well as their instabilities Ah Zhuangrsquos condemna-
tion of Ah Peirsquos plans to move to France with his lover reveals the extent to
which the transnationalism that made Ah Peirsquos current relationship possiblechanges how ldquoinappropriaterdquo desires manifest themselves in the postsocialist
era It was after all only after the transformations in the last few decades
that a person from France would come to live and work again in China and
that an ldquoinappropriaterdquo desire could now also be a transnational desire The
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 441
fact that they do not speak each otherrsquos language exemplifies how neoliberal-
ism has allowed for new possibilities in the manner in which people desire
each other not just which kinds of desires are legitimate but which kinds of
desires are sustainable through which kinds of technological aids and socio-
economic conditions and across which kinds of borders Yet in Ah Zhuangrsquos
view someone of Ah Peirsquos class background could only succeed in such an
achievement by entangling the desires for money sex and love rather than
keeping them separate However the separations between entrepreneurialism
and intimacy that Ah Zhuang wants to establish for respectable gayness are
difficult to maintain26 Neoliberal cosmopolitanism appears to be all about
entrepreneurial savvy Yet there is more than one way to be an entrepreneur
And there is more than one way to be a nonnormalized or even antinormal-
ized gay subject27
Scene 2
Two young men are squatting at the edge of a bridge passing the time by
blowing up condoms ldquoThis way it looks like a dick It changes into breasts
when it gets bigger The breast changes into a dick and the dick into a
breastrdquo one of them says and laughs As they continue to play with their
condom-balloons the other one asks ldquoDo you like the feeling of being pen-
etrated or the feeling when you stick it inrdquo ldquoBothrdquo comes the answer
This scene opens Feeding Boys Ayaya ( Aiyaya Qu Buru) a queer filmabout male hustlers or money boys by the well-known experimental film-
maker Cui Zirsquoen28 This first scene immediately cuts to a contrasting scene
Two men are in a small closed room filled with computer and filmmaking
equipment The older one is in the background sitting in front of his com-
puter The other much younger is in the forefront of the screen The per-
son manipulating the computer equipment says ldquoZaizai [characterrsquos name]
this theme is for you It might not completely match your character in thefilm The distance makes it more precise Do you have any objectionsrdquo The
young man standing in the forefront of the screen has a somber look on his
face He refuses to speak The camera angle is an extreme close-up enlarg-
ing his face to fill the screen and nearly blocking out a view of the film-
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 442
maker The effect is of a split screen We hear the filmmaker from behind
urging him several times ldquoSay somethingrdquo But the other refuses to speak
The quick juxtaposition of these two scenes and their contrasting mise-
en-scene prefigure the major motifs in Feeding Boys Ayaya The opposition
is established visually in the lighting camera angles locations and position-
ing of the characters The first scene presents characters who we will later
come to realize are money boys though at this point their identities are
unclear The scene mixes irony and pathos freedom and marginalization
The ironic and lighthearted humor of the dialogue contrasts with the curi-
ous positioning of the two young men They are at the edge of a deserted
bridge in the very early morning sunlight The camera places both of them
in the center of the screen in a medium close-up thus highlighting rela-
tionality but also distance or alienation The bantering friendship of the
two young men is visually contrasted with their distance from the rest of
the population and from the normative workday Yet this alienation is also
a liberation from the very same mdash the freedom to play at any hour the lackof confinement in space This scene represents what Judith Halberstam has
called ldquoqueer time and spacerdquo Halberstam argues that queer time and space
are ldquowillfully eccentric modes of beingrdquo that challenge heteronormativity by
providing alternative relations to time and space29
The very next scene reminds us that what we have just seen and what we
will view in the rest of the film is a set of representations The question of
how to represent money boys and who can and should speak in their nameis highlighted in this film The filmmaker character in the second scene
is choosing the theme music not the young man The dark closed room
and the split screen raise the question of whether and how the young man
can escape the framing of his life by the other The silence of the young
man mdash another money boy mdash recalls Gayatri Spivakrsquos famous dictum that
the subaltern cannot speak by which she meant that only traces of their
own interpretations of their lives remains in the texts written about them bycolonial elites30
Feeding Boys is a continual juxtaposition of these two types of images mdash
one of money boys displaying a queer sociality and the other of someone mdash
whether the filmmaker character a Christian missionary out to save money
boys his girlfriend who takes over his work or the parents of an aspir-
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 443
ing money boy mdash speaking for or about them Although the film does not
romanticize their lives the money boy characters not only exceed but also
challenge these representations of them both their content and their mode
of representation They continually frustrate attempts to represent capture
or change them Zaizai for example later demands to choose his own theme
music an insistence that frustrates the filmmaker who claims it will ruin
his film Their queerness emerges in these challenges
With Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen enters the larger debates that have central-
ized the question of desire in postsocialist China Cui Zirsquoen uses experimen-
tal visual logics that blur documentary and fiction and that refuse narrative
linearity or closure to challenge not only the specific judgments about money
boys among gay men but the entire apparatus of normalization in China
that tries to delimit desire Cui Zirsquoen addresses the specificity of neoliberal-
ism in China by challenging the hegemonic articulations between Chinese
culture and proper desire on the one hand and labor money and desire on
the other The film has a carnivalesque quality reinforced by the hand-heldcamera techniques which is at once somber and playful It subverts bour-
geois heterosexuality as that which subtends Chinese culture by robbing it of
its glory The film represents money boys as people with an integral human-
ity who take the full measure of their lives while the people who judge
them in the name of neoliberal desires Chinese morality or Christianity
appear damaged filled with contradictory desires themselves or just plain
boring The film thus further subverts postsocialist normalizing desires bydirecting our gaze away from what many think is perverse or rather by
making the normal perverse and the perverse normal The people to be
pitied in this film are the heterosexuals who condemn the hustlersrsquo profes-
sion They are the ones who wither and die Hustlers in contrast have time
to play and enjoy life Yet Cui Zirsquoen does not indulge in a simple decon-
structive reversal Hustlers suffer too but mainly from the condemnation
and exploitation they experience as a result of the hypocritical desires of theheteronormative world
Although Feeding Boys seems to establish a debate between heterosexu-
als and gay male hustlers the themes raised in the film rehearse anxieties
similar to those I presented in my first scene that occur among gay men
Are hustlers respectable or do they sully the good name of other gay men
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positions 182 Fall 2010 444
Do they deserve sympathy or condemnation Are they gay or just exploit-
ing vulnerable gay men Are their desires to be celebrated or condemned
Are they appropriate for Chinarsquos postsocialist neoliberal future or do they
represent the degradation of that future Feeding Boys refuses these dichoto-
mous terms Rather than simply reverse their valence the film addresses
other queer questions that displace these normalizing ones How should
we engage our desires How can this engagement lead to nonnormative
lives How does class inflect desire How can nonnormative desires chal-
lenge class-based temporalities What is the relationship between money
and sex Finally what is the role of religion
Feeding Boys loosely revolves around the elusive search of a Christian het-
erosexual brother Dabin for his younger brother Xiao Bao who has dis-
appeared into the money boy life During his search he discovers that one
of his younger ldquoChristian brothersrdquo Xiao Jian has also decided to become
a money boy to practice Christian love Juxtaposing money boysrsquo serious
banter with the normalizing judgments of others Feeding Boys weaves inand out of several recurrent image-themes the everyday life of hustlers
Xiao Jianrsquos exploration of how to become a hustler the missionizing zeal of
Dabin to dissuade hustlers from continuing in their profession and finally
the desire to represent and normalize the lives of hustlers Throughout
Feeding Boys jumps between these image-themes thus putting them in
dialogue with one another The experimental filmrsquos refusal to present a
linear narrative mirrors the refusal by the money boy characters to accedeto the normalizing judgments of others Thus the form to echo Hayden
White is also the content31 Cui Zirsquoenrsquos filmmaking techniques warn us
that endeavors to normalize create severe dislocations and damage And
not merely to money boys
Image-Theme 1 The Mundanity of Money Boy Life
Feeding Boys strikingly refuses to display any images of money boys actually
engaged in sex or hustling for customers This lack of sex scenes contrasts
with Cui Zirsquoenrsquos other films which generally go out of their way to show sex
between men The only way we even know that these young men are money
boys is through the dialogue More specifically we hear the arguments that
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 445
straight people who disapprove of them engender Indeed the film is quite
chaste The one scene in which we see two people showing erotic affection
is between the older heterosexual brother of one of the money boys (XiaoBao) whose missionary goal is to convert hustlers and his girlfriend Feed-
ing Boys thus refuses to indulge viewersrsquo scopophilic desires Cui Zirsquoen teases
the viewer from the first scene Watching two men blowing up condoms
and briefly chatting about sex hints at more erotic scenes to come But they
never materialize A condom-balloon is all we ever get By thus tapping into
a gaze desirous for the perverse and then frustrating that desire Cui Zirsquoen
confronts the viewer with the need to think about representation and the
role of representation in normalizing desire mdash both in public discourse and
in his film
In place of the erotic the viewer is offered the stuff of everyday life One
recurrent image as in the first scene is of money boys on a bridge early in
the morning In one scene they playfully engage in ballet-like dance ges-
tures In another one of them displays his acrobatic skills doing severalback flips Later we see these same young men practicing taiji quan (a mar-
tial arts exercise) again early in the morning on the bridge These images
immediately bring to mind the ldquonormalrdquo populace in Chinarsquos cities who go
out each morning to do precisely these group exercises This idea is rein-
forced by the camera angle in these scenes which is a medium wide-angle
shot taking in both the bridge and the surrounding metropolis But the
bridge is also symptomatic of a moment of suspension between directionsin life or between worlds A bridge represents a gap as well as an attempt to
overcome a fissure in the landscape In one telling scene near the end of the
film a money boy begs for money on the bridge pleading with passersby
that he has given up his dissolute life and reformed himself Yet immediately
after we see him with another friend arguing with the Christian mission-
aryrsquos girlfriend stating unequivocally that even though they treated begging
as a ldquorealrdquo job no one wanted to give them money and that in todayrsquos worldpeople respect a prostitute more than a poor person The bridge thus repre-
sents two intertwined passages mdash from a socialist world of time and space
in which citizens had the leisure to do morning exercises and their lives
were not measured by money to a neoliberal world in which wealth is the
only measure of human dignity and no one mdash except those on the outside
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 446
of bourgeois respectability mdash has time to spend exercising on a bridge This
passage is intertwined then with a passage from heteronormative relations
of time and space to queer time and space mdash the refusal of the relationshipbetween time work money and desire that neoliberalism has established
Another recurrent scene is of several young men playing in the park
They walk through the park in a desultory manner enjoying the day One
of them has his dog on a leash The dog is obviously well groomed and
well fed Only recently have Beijing residents been allowed to keep pets in
the city Dogs quickly became a key signifier of bourgeois cosmopolitan
accomplishment Why shouldnrsquot money boys be allowed to have them too
In the film the pet belies the idea that money boys lead an unstable dirty
and unreliable life as many believe Moreover it forces open the cluster of
oppositions between respectable and degraded desires in which bourgeois
heterosexual family life goes together with accoutrements like pets while
prostitution is supposed to represent nothing but lack
Other scenes reinforce the sense that money boys are like everyone else inthe way they go about the stuff of everyday life We see them singing in a
karaoke bar playing with a young boy on a playground and having a meal
with their families These young men are portrayed as neither angels nor
demons They are neither ecstatic nor suicidal But the film makes clear that
they live on the margins and have only one another for support
In only a few scenes do these money boys talk about their work But even
here their conversations resemble those of anyone who has ever grumbledabout his or her workplace At one point in the bar for example one of
the money boys tells the other Xiao Bao that his brother (the missionary)
has been looking for him Xiao Bao shakes his head and complains that a
customer has just ripped him off by refusing to pay In another scene in the
park during the daytime one of the money boys complains to the other that
he canrsquot seem to save any money because he always has to buy expensive
clothes to look nice for his customers The other responds that he should besmarter and get the customers to buy the clothes for him He proudly reveals
that he has saved quite a bit of money with which he plans to buy a house
for his mother
The film also playfully satirizes normalized work lives In one scene one
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 447
of the money boys says ldquoWe need structure We have to become profes-
sionalsrdquo Pointing to a gay bar behind him he says ldquoThis is our interna-
tional head officerdquo Another money boy repeats virtually the same wordsbut this time points to a twenty-story high rise building The film shifts to
an eerie scene of colorful masks then quickly to what looks to be a confer-
ence meeting in a bar Someone presumably their boss is taking roll call
They all stand to attention some of them wearing name tags as if at an aca-
demic meeting In this manner Cui Zirsquoen calls into question the relationship
between sex work and desire in China He highlights the instabilities in
how neoliberalism in China has produced social inequalities through trans-
national structures of differentially valued labors But he further demon-
strates the inextricability of sexuality bodies desire and labor To labor for
wealth is supposed to be the foremost desire in a neoliberal world Thus
normalization techniques reduce and embed desire in a structured world
of intensive labor extraction one that produces a capitalist-inflected heter-
onormativity (even as it has a nondeterministic relationship to that heter-onormativity) In other words Cui Zirsquoen deconstructs how the whole person
becomes a commodity in a neoliberal world and how that world while it
fosters desires also robs people of their desires for a full humanity Through
this humorous filmic meditation on desire Cui Zirsquoen thus provides biting
queer commentary on the reduction and devaluation of necessary labor in
postsocialist China
This commentary is most explicit in a scene near the end of the filmwhen the missionaryrsquos girlfriend pleadingly asks several money boys why
they do this work One of them responds with ten reasons ldquoOne you donrsquot
have to be president Two you donrsquot have to be a soldier Three you donrsquot
have to be a farmer and work the land Four you donrsquot have to wash dishes
Five you donrsquot have to marry and have kids Six you donrsquot have to become a
movie star Seven you donrsquot have to be a movie director Eight you donrsquot get
fat Nine you are exploited by others but donrsquot exploit others And ten youdonrsquot die because we use our bodies to satisfy both good and bad peoplersquos
desiresrdquo Through arguments with and about money boys the film thus
creates commentary on how neoliberalism in China appropriates not just
labor-power but the laborer as a desiring subject32 The queer commentary
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positions 182 Fall 2010 448
of Feeding Boys demonstrates how nonnormative alternatives lie outside of
those temporal and spatial markers of respectable Chinese experience mdash
namely marriage reproduction kinship and death The film thus chal-lenges the oppositions of respectability and shame
Image-Theme 2 How to Become a Money Boy
The thread of this image-theme most explicitly mocks normalizing judg-
ments about desire work class and sex Through this image-theme the
film represents gay male hustling as a profession as honorable as becom-
ing a lawyer or computer scientist In perhaps the most iconic scene in this
regard Feeding Boys stages an argument between Xiao Jian and his parents
that crafts a mimicry of family gatherings to decide the childrenrsquos future33
His parents appear to be respectable middle-class intellectuals The mise-
en-scene is a plushly decorated apartment in which the family lives together
The family is all seated there The father states unequivocally that this kindof work leads nowhere They bemoan the fact that they raised their son for
so many years and gave him the opportunity to do many things with his life
They insist they just want the best for him The parents are oddly calm and
though disgusted do not throw him out of the house Indeed in the next
scene he arrives early in the morning to the apartment stating boldly to his
parents that they arrived home from work earlier than him His mother
asks if he isnrsquot supposed to work the night shift and he responds that he willwork any shift The mother turns to the father and makes the pithy com-
ment ldquoSo we failed to discourage him from this line of workrdquo
In another scene in which Xiao Jian defends to Dabin his reasons for
wanting to become a money boy Cui Zirsquoen crafts a doubled-edged mock-
ery of socialist ideals as well by invoking the old socialist honor of learn-
ing from and serving the masses His satire in this regard cuts in multiple
directions It recalls not just the marginalization but the condemnationand punishment under socialism of those with inappropriate desires But
it also uses those socialist ideals to critique the neoliberal normalization of
the appropriate relationship between labor and desire Xiao Jian initiates an
argument with Dabin when he announces that he too wants to become
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 449
a money boy Xiao Jian is insistent ldquoI want to sell my body like Xiao Bao
[Dabinrsquos brother]rdquo He then explains that when Xiao Bao disappeared he
went to check out the male prostitution business ldquoMost of these youngstersare from villages and from very poor family backgrounds I was born into
a happy family I want to join the hustlers and change their social statusrdquo
Dabin retorts ldquoCan you make those people happy Itrsquos all about making
millionaires officials and rich guys happyrdquo ldquoYou told me that we have to
serve the humble Now I want to become one of themrdquo replies Xiao Jian
ldquoI want to become the lowest of the low together with robbers hooligans
petty thieves ex-convicts homosexuals and hustlers I want to stay at the
bottomrdquo Dabin then launches into classical Chinese metaphors ldquoWater
flows downward but man soars heavenwardrdquo Xiao Jian has an answer to
that as well insisting that man is also part of nature and is also capable of
running downhill ldquoItrsquos only natural and makes things more equalrdquo
The visual logics of this scene provide the ironic counter-commentary
During the entire scene Xiao Jian is fully dressed while we watch Dabin halfnaked as he dresses after a shower The viewer becomes engaged in the erot-
ics of watching Dabin slowly lather lotion over his entire body then pull on
tight-fitting underwear The camera lingers on his well built body By the end
of the scene Dabin is still half naked The erotics of the scene are heightened
by the effect of a mirror that stages Xiao Jian in reverse That is Xiao Jian is
seated to the left of Dabin but we only view him through the mirror where
he appears on Dabinrsquos right while Dabin occupies center stage as the half- naked figure of erotic righteousness The mirror clues us in to a split between
the dialogue and the visual logics This split reflects back to the spectator the
hypocritical contradictions in postsocialist enticements of desire
Image-Theme 3 The Trials and Tribulations of Missionary Work
Early in the film we see someone driving through Beijing in a nice carHe is a good looking serious young man It turns out to be Dabin search-
ing for Xiao Bao his younger brother Dabin walks into a bar looking for
him without success He proceeds to follow one of the money boys into the
bathroom and argues with him saying that he doesnrsquot understand why his
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positions 182 Fall 2010 450
job is so attractive ldquoHow could it attract you How can you enjoy it without
getting tiredrdquo The money boy calmly responds ldquoThe job has three advan-
tages First you earn money Second freedom Third you can fool aroundwith different peoplerdquo When Dabin aggressively asks if there are any dis-
advantages the money boy responds ldquoFirst you get sick easily Second itrsquos
a waste of condoms and KY jelly Third you donrsquot get enough sleeprdquo Dabin
cries ldquoIf you keep doing this you will get AIDSrdquo Thus opens the third
image-theme the heterosexual Christian evangelist who attempts to convert
money boys
Dabinrsquos idea of conversion conflates normative sexual desire and Chris-
tianity Thus in the next major scene in which he appears he argues with
two money boys telling them that birds in the sky donrsquot sell their bodies
but they have food to eat that lotus flowers donrsquot sell their bodies but they
are beautiful that dogs and earthworms donrsquot sell their bodies but they live
vigorous lives so why should they sell their bodies He then offers to give
them the Bible Cui Zirsquoen was raised as a Catholic in the northeast city of
Dalian In his previous films he took a Derek Jarman approach and made
symbolic Jesus figures suffer the slings and arrows of heterosexual rage He
tried to reconcile homoerotic desire with what he viewed as the true essence
of Catholicism In Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen has taken a distinctive approach
Here he asserts that those who use Christianity to suppress nonnormative
desires have a hopeless case on their hands Moreover the true essence of
Christianity is ambiguous Perhaps it really is a source of oppression ratherthan as in his previous films a potential guide for love
This ambiguity is underscored in the next major scene in which Dabin
attempts to win converts among money boys He is reading the Bible together
with his younger ldquoChristian brotherrdquo Xiao Jian who has also chosen to be a
money boy Xiao Jian appears earnest He asks ldquoDo you think Jesus would
like that I mean would he like the fact that men and women and men and
men and women and women have sexrdquo Dabin responds ldquoMen and menand women and men have sexual relationships That means that God gave
them their sexual desires and afterwards even gave them the ability to have
sex So who gave men and women the ability to have sex God did The
fact that God gave us this ability proves that he allows us to do itrdquo But the
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 451
young man persists ldquoYou said men and women do it for procreation If men
have sex with men they canrsquot procreate How do you explain thisrdquo Dabin
is stumped ldquoI have to turn to the Bible again for this questionrdquoThe moral inconclusiveness of the Bible and the ability to glean multiple
interpretations of desire from it leads the viewer to understand that there is
a distinction between heteronormativity and the normalization of desire
Strikingly Dabin does not condemn these young men for having sex with
other men He does not in other words condemn sexual desire tout court
or even homoerotic desire What he condemns is the exchange of sex for
money
Dabin is passionate in his missionary work In one scene we see him
standing on the bridge where money boys gather Christian Bible held up
high intoning his plea to them ldquoThe end of the world is near and you still
sell your bodiesrdquo No one speaks to him his travails seem fruitless Dabin on
the bridge recalls by contrast the money boys on the bridge But whereas
the money boys were shot in mid-range at wide angle Dabin is shot from
below with a zoom lens that makes him appear more distant as if he is high
up on a pulpit or a cross
Somewhat unexpectedly Dabin takes seriously ill and dies His death
recalls that of Jesus of course dying for othersrsquo sins but there is a distinct
ambiguity in Dabinrsquos death Does he die for othersrsquo sins or has he suffered
under his own illusions Is his the work of a savior or do normalized people
with judgments of others suffer because of their judgmental values Thefilm never resolves this ambiguity
On his deathbed Dabin pleads with his girlfriend to take over his work
to preach the gospel and save male prostitutes She promises to do so and
indeed in the next scene we see her standing on the same bridge holding
up the same Bible intoning monotonously ldquoDonrsquot sell anymorerdquo In the end
the girlfriend also ends up exhausted and sick in bed having similarly sacri-
ficed herself to a hopeless cause
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positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
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positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3334
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 438
Ah Pei further asserted that unlike money boys he never stuck out his hand
and asked for money People have always offered to buy things for him he
said but he never asked for anything ldquoI have always relied on myselfrdquo
Ah Zhuang quickly jumped in at this point ldquoIf I consider him to be a
money boy itrsquos because hersquos extremely intelligent in this regard Thatrsquos why
I think todayrsquos conversation is especially interesting We could talk about it
for a long time Lao Chen shed a lot of tears over him So he is a little dif-
ferent than the money boys at Half and Half [the gay bar] Do they have
these kind of money boys in the United States Sometimes he really did payfor things himself and their relationship was real I see it this way Hersquos a
little different than those others He still has a little feeling involvedrdquo David
Eng (this volume) astutely evaluates the difficulties in neoliberal modernity
of distinguishing between what he calls tokens of affection and tokens of
exchange
After Ah Zhuangrsquos explication Ah Pei did not directly address the com-
parison of himself with money boys Instead he inarticulately reasserted hisview that he had never stuck out his hand asking for money and had always
relied on himself Given Ah Zhuangrsquos blunt assertion I wanted Ah Pei to
respond I asked whether he saw himself as like those men in any way He
was direct ldquoI am absolutely not like themrdquo Ah Zhuang laughed furiously
ldquoI never stuck out my hand with Ah Zhuang eitherrdquo he replied to the laugh
ldquoLet Ah Zhuang tell you himself Do you admit it Ah Zhuang liked me so
he bought me things My old man [his current lover] is like this too Irsquom notvery smart Irsquom actually stupid my level is low but Lao Chen told him I was
clever Where am I cleverrdquo
I then bluntly asked him if he only sought out lovers who had money ldquoAh
Zhuang is a clear examplerdquo he replied ldquoAh Zhuang has nowhere near the
money of these other men but I still tell him I learned a lot from him I
used to have a foul mouth I still thank him for these past four years Thatrsquos
why I still keep a relationship with him no matter with gay friends or notI always introduce himrdquo
Ah Zhuang directed Ah Pei to explain how his relationship with Lao
Chen ended Ah Pei told a story of how Lao Chen began to see someone
else and did not want Ah Pei to come home anymore Ah Pei was furious
and refused to let him go He did all sorts of things to stop the relationship
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 439
from ending including threatening to expose Lao Chen at work Lao Chen
would certainly have lost his job not only because of homophobia but as
Ah Pei explained because he was already in hot water with the Party due
to his outspoken criticisms Ah Zhuang jumped in to point out how Ah
Peirsquos behavior with Lao Chen provided yet one more set of money boy sig-
nifiers ldquoIrsquoll explainrdquo insisted Ah Zhuang after Ah Pei had presented his
perspective ldquoFrom his point of view he wanted to occupy a position This
position was incredibly important to him Only with this position could he
have money Now it was very possible that this position could be taken overby someone else So thatrsquos why he wanted to take revenge Lao Chen came
looking for me to ask me what he should do lsquoServes you rightrsquo I said He
asked lsquoMaybe if I give him some money then he would be willing to leave
me alonersquo He asked me how much I said lsquoI donrsquot knowrsquo How could I
know how much money he should give him At the time I told him lsquoYou
can end things but you have to think of a way to do itrsquo rdquo Ah Pei diffidently
responded that he hadnrsquot wanted to let go of Lao Chen because yes he leda comfortable life with him and also he had feelings for him For Ah Pei
the fact that his life was comfortable with Lao Chen was quite distinct from
a money boyrsquos desire to be paid for sex But Ah Zhuang saw them as one
and the same Finally Lao Chen left for Canada promising to bring Ah Pei
with him after he had arrived there ldquoI was naiverdquo Ah Pei said because he
had believed him
Surprisingly Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang never explained to me much oftheir own relationship Perhaps in the end they sought to preserve some of
the fragments of their friendship They ended their conversation with me by
briefly mentioning Ah Peirsquos latest relationship with an older man someone
from France whom he had met in a bar one evening Ah Pei doesnrsquot speak
any French and this man doesnrsquot speak any Chinese Ah Zhuang translated
for them when necessary This man who worked for the French airlines
was planning to bring Ah Pei to France with him They had already appliedfor his visa In subsequent conversations Ah Zhuang derided Ah Peirsquos plans
How would Ah Pei make a living in France What could he do He would
have a hard time learning the language et cetera It was as if to say Ah Pei
did not deserve the special privilege of living in a Western country
One could dismiss this whole conversation as the obvious denouement of
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positions 182 Fall 2010 440
a relationship that had ended bitterly Indeed Ah Zhuang had thrown Ah
Pei out of his house But Ah Zhuangrsquos insistence that Ah Pei was a money
boy reflected more than mere bitterness By rejecting Ah Peirsquos claims that
he too could place himself in the category of ldquogay manrdquo Ah Zhuang was
attempting to establish a hegemonic definition of respectable gayness For
Ah Zhuang this respectability adhered in appropriate gender sensibilities
class embodiment the proper balance between dependency and equality
a strict separation of money and love and a worldliness that only those of
a certain class stature should aspire to display Ah Zhuang was trying to
establish what Lisa Duggan has called the ldquonew homonormativityrdquo Dug-
gan argues that this new homonormativity is the equivalent of neoliberal
politics in the sexual realm25 These sexual politics uphold rather than con-
test dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions and promise
a depoliticized gay culture While Duggan concerns herself only with the
United States and does not consider transnational queer politics we can still
consider how her argument illuminates the sexual politics of someone likeAh Zhuang Ah Zhuang hopes to make gay identity respectable within
the terms of postsocialist neoliberalism The fact that neoliberalism has
made desire the central realm for producing proper citizen-subjects made
Ah Zhuangrsquos discourse all the more fraught with anxiety Ah Peirsquos own
intimacy with a well-to-do foreign gay man further goaded Ah Zhuang to
condemn Ah Peirsquos actions as inappropriate in terms of sexual gendered and
culturalnational identity For Ah Pei was going abroad to live in a Westerncountry long before Ah Zhuang would have the opportunity to do so
While Ah Peirsquos views do not simply reverse this moral equation nor do
they exemplify resistance to homonormativity in any straightforward sense
they provide an incipient means of gaining insight into the techniques of neo-
liberal normalizations as well as their instabilities Ah Zhuangrsquos condemna-
tion of Ah Peirsquos plans to move to France with his lover reveals the extent to
which the transnationalism that made Ah Peirsquos current relationship possiblechanges how ldquoinappropriaterdquo desires manifest themselves in the postsocialist
era It was after all only after the transformations in the last few decades
that a person from France would come to live and work again in China and
that an ldquoinappropriaterdquo desire could now also be a transnational desire The
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 441
fact that they do not speak each otherrsquos language exemplifies how neoliberal-
ism has allowed for new possibilities in the manner in which people desire
each other not just which kinds of desires are legitimate but which kinds of
desires are sustainable through which kinds of technological aids and socio-
economic conditions and across which kinds of borders Yet in Ah Zhuangrsquos
view someone of Ah Peirsquos class background could only succeed in such an
achievement by entangling the desires for money sex and love rather than
keeping them separate However the separations between entrepreneurialism
and intimacy that Ah Zhuang wants to establish for respectable gayness are
difficult to maintain26 Neoliberal cosmopolitanism appears to be all about
entrepreneurial savvy Yet there is more than one way to be an entrepreneur
And there is more than one way to be a nonnormalized or even antinormal-
ized gay subject27
Scene 2
Two young men are squatting at the edge of a bridge passing the time by
blowing up condoms ldquoThis way it looks like a dick It changes into breasts
when it gets bigger The breast changes into a dick and the dick into a
breastrdquo one of them says and laughs As they continue to play with their
condom-balloons the other one asks ldquoDo you like the feeling of being pen-
etrated or the feeling when you stick it inrdquo ldquoBothrdquo comes the answer
This scene opens Feeding Boys Ayaya ( Aiyaya Qu Buru) a queer filmabout male hustlers or money boys by the well-known experimental film-
maker Cui Zirsquoen28 This first scene immediately cuts to a contrasting scene
Two men are in a small closed room filled with computer and filmmaking
equipment The older one is in the background sitting in front of his com-
puter The other much younger is in the forefront of the screen The per-
son manipulating the computer equipment says ldquoZaizai [characterrsquos name]
this theme is for you It might not completely match your character in thefilm The distance makes it more precise Do you have any objectionsrdquo The
young man standing in the forefront of the screen has a somber look on his
face He refuses to speak The camera angle is an extreme close-up enlarg-
ing his face to fill the screen and nearly blocking out a view of the film-
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positions 182 Fall 2010 442
maker The effect is of a split screen We hear the filmmaker from behind
urging him several times ldquoSay somethingrdquo But the other refuses to speak
The quick juxtaposition of these two scenes and their contrasting mise-
en-scene prefigure the major motifs in Feeding Boys Ayaya The opposition
is established visually in the lighting camera angles locations and position-
ing of the characters The first scene presents characters who we will later
come to realize are money boys though at this point their identities are
unclear The scene mixes irony and pathos freedom and marginalization
The ironic and lighthearted humor of the dialogue contrasts with the curi-
ous positioning of the two young men They are at the edge of a deserted
bridge in the very early morning sunlight The camera places both of them
in the center of the screen in a medium close-up thus highlighting rela-
tionality but also distance or alienation The bantering friendship of the
two young men is visually contrasted with their distance from the rest of
the population and from the normative workday Yet this alienation is also
a liberation from the very same mdash the freedom to play at any hour the lackof confinement in space This scene represents what Judith Halberstam has
called ldquoqueer time and spacerdquo Halberstam argues that queer time and space
are ldquowillfully eccentric modes of beingrdquo that challenge heteronormativity by
providing alternative relations to time and space29
The very next scene reminds us that what we have just seen and what we
will view in the rest of the film is a set of representations The question of
how to represent money boys and who can and should speak in their nameis highlighted in this film The filmmaker character in the second scene
is choosing the theme music not the young man The dark closed room
and the split screen raise the question of whether and how the young man
can escape the framing of his life by the other The silence of the young
man mdash another money boy mdash recalls Gayatri Spivakrsquos famous dictum that
the subaltern cannot speak by which she meant that only traces of their
own interpretations of their lives remains in the texts written about them bycolonial elites30
Feeding Boys is a continual juxtaposition of these two types of images mdash
one of money boys displaying a queer sociality and the other of someone mdash
whether the filmmaker character a Christian missionary out to save money
boys his girlfriend who takes over his work or the parents of an aspir-
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 443
ing money boy mdash speaking for or about them Although the film does not
romanticize their lives the money boy characters not only exceed but also
challenge these representations of them both their content and their mode
of representation They continually frustrate attempts to represent capture
or change them Zaizai for example later demands to choose his own theme
music an insistence that frustrates the filmmaker who claims it will ruin
his film Their queerness emerges in these challenges
With Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen enters the larger debates that have central-
ized the question of desire in postsocialist China Cui Zirsquoen uses experimen-
tal visual logics that blur documentary and fiction and that refuse narrative
linearity or closure to challenge not only the specific judgments about money
boys among gay men but the entire apparatus of normalization in China
that tries to delimit desire Cui Zirsquoen addresses the specificity of neoliberal-
ism in China by challenging the hegemonic articulations between Chinese
culture and proper desire on the one hand and labor money and desire on
the other The film has a carnivalesque quality reinforced by the hand-heldcamera techniques which is at once somber and playful It subverts bour-
geois heterosexuality as that which subtends Chinese culture by robbing it of
its glory The film represents money boys as people with an integral human-
ity who take the full measure of their lives while the people who judge
them in the name of neoliberal desires Chinese morality or Christianity
appear damaged filled with contradictory desires themselves or just plain
boring The film thus further subverts postsocialist normalizing desires bydirecting our gaze away from what many think is perverse or rather by
making the normal perverse and the perverse normal The people to be
pitied in this film are the heterosexuals who condemn the hustlersrsquo profes-
sion They are the ones who wither and die Hustlers in contrast have time
to play and enjoy life Yet Cui Zirsquoen does not indulge in a simple decon-
structive reversal Hustlers suffer too but mainly from the condemnation
and exploitation they experience as a result of the hypocritical desires of theheteronormative world
Although Feeding Boys seems to establish a debate between heterosexu-
als and gay male hustlers the themes raised in the film rehearse anxieties
similar to those I presented in my first scene that occur among gay men
Are hustlers respectable or do they sully the good name of other gay men
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positions 182 Fall 2010 444
Do they deserve sympathy or condemnation Are they gay or just exploit-
ing vulnerable gay men Are their desires to be celebrated or condemned
Are they appropriate for Chinarsquos postsocialist neoliberal future or do they
represent the degradation of that future Feeding Boys refuses these dichoto-
mous terms Rather than simply reverse their valence the film addresses
other queer questions that displace these normalizing ones How should
we engage our desires How can this engagement lead to nonnormative
lives How does class inflect desire How can nonnormative desires chal-
lenge class-based temporalities What is the relationship between money
and sex Finally what is the role of religion
Feeding Boys loosely revolves around the elusive search of a Christian het-
erosexual brother Dabin for his younger brother Xiao Bao who has dis-
appeared into the money boy life During his search he discovers that one
of his younger ldquoChristian brothersrdquo Xiao Jian has also decided to become
a money boy to practice Christian love Juxtaposing money boysrsquo serious
banter with the normalizing judgments of others Feeding Boys weaves inand out of several recurrent image-themes the everyday life of hustlers
Xiao Jianrsquos exploration of how to become a hustler the missionizing zeal of
Dabin to dissuade hustlers from continuing in their profession and finally
the desire to represent and normalize the lives of hustlers Throughout
Feeding Boys jumps between these image-themes thus putting them in
dialogue with one another The experimental filmrsquos refusal to present a
linear narrative mirrors the refusal by the money boy characters to accedeto the normalizing judgments of others Thus the form to echo Hayden
White is also the content31 Cui Zirsquoenrsquos filmmaking techniques warn us
that endeavors to normalize create severe dislocations and damage And
not merely to money boys
Image-Theme 1 The Mundanity of Money Boy Life
Feeding Boys strikingly refuses to display any images of money boys actually
engaged in sex or hustling for customers This lack of sex scenes contrasts
with Cui Zirsquoenrsquos other films which generally go out of their way to show sex
between men The only way we even know that these young men are money
boys is through the dialogue More specifically we hear the arguments that
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 445
straight people who disapprove of them engender Indeed the film is quite
chaste The one scene in which we see two people showing erotic affection
is between the older heterosexual brother of one of the money boys (XiaoBao) whose missionary goal is to convert hustlers and his girlfriend Feed-
ing Boys thus refuses to indulge viewersrsquo scopophilic desires Cui Zirsquoen teases
the viewer from the first scene Watching two men blowing up condoms
and briefly chatting about sex hints at more erotic scenes to come But they
never materialize A condom-balloon is all we ever get By thus tapping into
a gaze desirous for the perverse and then frustrating that desire Cui Zirsquoen
confronts the viewer with the need to think about representation and the
role of representation in normalizing desire mdash both in public discourse and
in his film
In place of the erotic the viewer is offered the stuff of everyday life One
recurrent image as in the first scene is of money boys on a bridge early in
the morning In one scene they playfully engage in ballet-like dance ges-
tures In another one of them displays his acrobatic skills doing severalback flips Later we see these same young men practicing taiji quan (a mar-
tial arts exercise) again early in the morning on the bridge These images
immediately bring to mind the ldquonormalrdquo populace in Chinarsquos cities who go
out each morning to do precisely these group exercises This idea is rein-
forced by the camera angle in these scenes which is a medium wide-angle
shot taking in both the bridge and the surrounding metropolis But the
bridge is also symptomatic of a moment of suspension between directionsin life or between worlds A bridge represents a gap as well as an attempt to
overcome a fissure in the landscape In one telling scene near the end of the
film a money boy begs for money on the bridge pleading with passersby
that he has given up his dissolute life and reformed himself Yet immediately
after we see him with another friend arguing with the Christian mission-
aryrsquos girlfriend stating unequivocally that even though they treated begging
as a ldquorealrdquo job no one wanted to give them money and that in todayrsquos worldpeople respect a prostitute more than a poor person The bridge thus repre-
sents two intertwined passages mdash from a socialist world of time and space
in which citizens had the leisure to do morning exercises and their lives
were not measured by money to a neoliberal world in which wealth is the
only measure of human dignity and no one mdash except those on the outside
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positions 182 Fall 2010 446
of bourgeois respectability mdash has time to spend exercising on a bridge This
passage is intertwined then with a passage from heteronormative relations
of time and space to queer time and space mdash the refusal of the relationshipbetween time work money and desire that neoliberalism has established
Another recurrent scene is of several young men playing in the park
They walk through the park in a desultory manner enjoying the day One
of them has his dog on a leash The dog is obviously well groomed and
well fed Only recently have Beijing residents been allowed to keep pets in
the city Dogs quickly became a key signifier of bourgeois cosmopolitan
accomplishment Why shouldnrsquot money boys be allowed to have them too
In the film the pet belies the idea that money boys lead an unstable dirty
and unreliable life as many believe Moreover it forces open the cluster of
oppositions between respectable and degraded desires in which bourgeois
heterosexual family life goes together with accoutrements like pets while
prostitution is supposed to represent nothing but lack
Other scenes reinforce the sense that money boys are like everyone else inthe way they go about the stuff of everyday life We see them singing in a
karaoke bar playing with a young boy on a playground and having a meal
with their families These young men are portrayed as neither angels nor
demons They are neither ecstatic nor suicidal But the film makes clear that
they live on the margins and have only one another for support
In only a few scenes do these money boys talk about their work But even
here their conversations resemble those of anyone who has ever grumbledabout his or her workplace At one point in the bar for example one of
the money boys tells the other Xiao Bao that his brother (the missionary)
has been looking for him Xiao Bao shakes his head and complains that a
customer has just ripped him off by refusing to pay In another scene in the
park during the daytime one of the money boys complains to the other that
he canrsquot seem to save any money because he always has to buy expensive
clothes to look nice for his customers The other responds that he should besmarter and get the customers to buy the clothes for him He proudly reveals
that he has saved quite a bit of money with which he plans to buy a house
for his mother
The film also playfully satirizes normalized work lives In one scene one
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 447
of the money boys says ldquoWe need structure We have to become profes-
sionalsrdquo Pointing to a gay bar behind him he says ldquoThis is our interna-
tional head officerdquo Another money boy repeats virtually the same wordsbut this time points to a twenty-story high rise building The film shifts to
an eerie scene of colorful masks then quickly to what looks to be a confer-
ence meeting in a bar Someone presumably their boss is taking roll call
They all stand to attention some of them wearing name tags as if at an aca-
demic meeting In this manner Cui Zirsquoen calls into question the relationship
between sex work and desire in China He highlights the instabilities in
how neoliberalism in China has produced social inequalities through trans-
national structures of differentially valued labors But he further demon-
strates the inextricability of sexuality bodies desire and labor To labor for
wealth is supposed to be the foremost desire in a neoliberal world Thus
normalization techniques reduce and embed desire in a structured world
of intensive labor extraction one that produces a capitalist-inflected heter-
onormativity (even as it has a nondeterministic relationship to that heter-onormativity) In other words Cui Zirsquoen deconstructs how the whole person
becomes a commodity in a neoliberal world and how that world while it
fosters desires also robs people of their desires for a full humanity Through
this humorous filmic meditation on desire Cui Zirsquoen thus provides biting
queer commentary on the reduction and devaluation of necessary labor in
postsocialist China
This commentary is most explicit in a scene near the end of the filmwhen the missionaryrsquos girlfriend pleadingly asks several money boys why
they do this work One of them responds with ten reasons ldquoOne you donrsquot
have to be president Two you donrsquot have to be a soldier Three you donrsquot
have to be a farmer and work the land Four you donrsquot have to wash dishes
Five you donrsquot have to marry and have kids Six you donrsquot have to become a
movie star Seven you donrsquot have to be a movie director Eight you donrsquot get
fat Nine you are exploited by others but donrsquot exploit others And ten youdonrsquot die because we use our bodies to satisfy both good and bad peoplersquos
desiresrdquo Through arguments with and about money boys the film thus
creates commentary on how neoliberalism in China appropriates not just
labor-power but the laborer as a desiring subject32 The queer commentary
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positions 182 Fall 2010 448
of Feeding Boys demonstrates how nonnormative alternatives lie outside of
those temporal and spatial markers of respectable Chinese experience mdash
namely marriage reproduction kinship and death The film thus chal-lenges the oppositions of respectability and shame
Image-Theme 2 How to Become a Money Boy
The thread of this image-theme most explicitly mocks normalizing judg-
ments about desire work class and sex Through this image-theme the
film represents gay male hustling as a profession as honorable as becom-
ing a lawyer or computer scientist In perhaps the most iconic scene in this
regard Feeding Boys stages an argument between Xiao Jian and his parents
that crafts a mimicry of family gatherings to decide the childrenrsquos future33
His parents appear to be respectable middle-class intellectuals The mise-
en-scene is a plushly decorated apartment in which the family lives together
The family is all seated there The father states unequivocally that this kindof work leads nowhere They bemoan the fact that they raised their son for
so many years and gave him the opportunity to do many things with his life
They insist they just want the best for him The parents are oddly calm and
though disgusted do not throw him out of the house Indeed in the next
scene he arrives early in the morning to the apartment stating boldly to his
parents that they arrived home from work earlier than him His mother
asks if he isnrsquot supposed to work the night shift and he responds that he willwork any shift The mother turns to the father and makes the pithy com-
ment ldquoSo we failed to discourage him from this line of workrdquo
In another scene in which Xiao Jian defends to Dabin his reasons for
wanting to become a money boy Cui Zirsquoen crafts a doubled-edged mock-
ery of socialist ideals as well by invoking the old socialist honor of learn-
ing from and serving the masses His satire in this regard cuts in multiple
directions It recalls not just the marginalization but the condemnationand punishment under socialism of those with inappropriate desires But
it also uses those socialist ideals to critique the neoliberal normalization of
the appropriate relationship between labor and desire Xiao Jian initiates an
argument with Dabin when he announces that he too wants to become
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 449
a money boy Xiao Jian is insistent ldquoI want to sell my body like Xiao Bao
[Dabinrsquos brother]rdquo He then explains that when Xiao Bao disappeared he
went to check out the male prostitution business ldquoMost of these youngstersare from villages and from very poor family backgrounds I was born into
a happy family I want to join the hustlers and change their social statusrdquo
Dabin retorts ldquoCan you make those people happy Itrsquos all about making
millionaires officials and rich guys happyrdquo ldquoYou told me that we have to
serve the humble Now I want to become one of themrdquo replies Xiao Jian
ldquoI want to become the lowest of the low together with robbers hooligans
petty thieves ex-convicts homosexuals and hustlers I want to stay at the
bottomrdquo Dabin then launches into classical Chinese metaphors ldquoWater
flows downward but man soars heavenwardrdquo Xiao Jian has an answer to
that as well insisting that man is also part of nature and is also capable of
running downhill ldquoItrsquos only natural and makes things more equalrdquo
The visual logics of this scene provide the ironic counter-commentary
During the entire scene Xiao Jian is fully dressed while we watch Dabin halfnaked as he dresses after a shower The viewer becomes engaged in the erot-
ics of watching Dabin slowly lather lotion over his entire body then pull on
tight-fitting underwear The camera lingers on his well built body By the end
of the scene Dabin is still half naked The erotics of the scene are heightened
by the effect of a mirror that stages Xiao Jian in reverse That is Xiao Jian is
seated to the left of Dabin but we only view him through the mirror where
he appears on Dabinrsquos right while Dabin occupies center stage as the half- naked figure of erotic righteousness The mirror clues us in to a split between
the dialogue and the visual logics This split reflects back to the spectator the
hypocritical contradictions in postsocialist enticements of desire
Image-Theme 3 The Trials and Tribulations of Missionary Work
Early in the film we see someone driving through Beijing in a nice carHe is a good looking serious young man It turns out to be Dabin search-
ing for Xiao Bao his younger brother Dabin walks into a bar looking for
him without success He proceeds to follow one of the money boys into the
bathroom and argues with him saying that he doesnrsquot understand why his
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positions 182 Fall 2010 450
job is so attractive ldquoHow could it attract you How can you enjoy it without
getting tiredrdquo The money boy calmly responds ldquoThe job has three advan-
tages First you earn money Second freedom Third you can fool aroundwith different peoplerdquo When Dabin aggressively asks if there are any dis-
advantages the money boy responds ldquoFirst you get sick easily Second itrsquos
a waste of condoms and KY jelly Third you donrsquot get enough sleeprdquo Dabin
cries ldquoIf you keep doing this you will get AIDSrdquo Thus opens the third
image-theme the heterosexual Christian evangelist who attempts to convert
money boys
Dabinrsquos idea of conversion conflates normative sexual desire and Chris-
tianity Thus in the next major scene in which he appears he argues with
two money boys telling them that birds in the sky donrsquot sell their bodies
but they have food to eat that lotus flowers donrsquot sell their bodies but they
are beautiful that dogs and earthworms donrsquot sell their bodies but they live
vigorous lives so why should they sell their bodies He then offers to give
them the Bible Cui Zirsquoen was raised as a Catholic in the northeast city of
Dalian In his previous films he took a Derek Jarman approach and made
symbolic Jesus figures suffer the slings and arrows of heterosexual rage He
tried to reconcile homoerotic desire with what he viewed as the true essence
of Catholicism In Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen has taken a distinctive approach
Here he asserts that those who use Christianity to suppress nonnormative
desires have a hopeless case on their hands Moreover the true essence of
Christianity is ambiguous Perhaps it really is a source of oppression ratherthan as in his previous films a potential guide for love
This ambiguity is underscored in the next major scene in which Dabin
attempts to win converts among money boys He is reading the Bible together
with his younger ldquoChristian brotherrdquo Xiao Jian who has also chosen to be a
money boy Xiao Jian appears earnest He asks ldquoDo you think Jesus would
like that I mean would he like the fact that men and women and men and
men and women and women have sexrdquo Dabin responds ldquoMen and menand women and men have sexual relationships That means that God gave
them their sexual desires and afterwards even gave them the ability to have
sex So who gave men and women the ability to have sex God did The
fact that God gave us this ability proves that he allows us to do itrdquo But the
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 451
young man persists ldquoYou said men and women do it for procreation If men
have sex with men they canrsquot procreate How do you explain thisrdquo Dabin
is stumped ldquoI have to turn to the Bible again for this questionrdquoThe moral inconclusiveness of the Bible and the ability to glean multiple
interpretations of desire from it leads the viewer to understand that there is
a distinction between heteronormativity and the normalization of desire
Strikingly Dabin does not condemn these young men for having sex with
other men He does not in other words condemn sexual desire tout court
or even homoerotic desire What he condemns is the exchange of sex for
money
Dabin is passionate in his missionary work In one scene we see him
standing on the bridge where money boys gather Christian Bible held up
high intoning his plea to them ldquoThe end of the world is near and you still
sell your bodiesrdquo No one speaks to him his travails seem fruitless Dabin on
the bridge recalls by contrast the money boys on the bridge But whereas
the money boys were shot in mid-range at wide angle Dabin is shot from
below with a zoom lens that makes him appear more distant as if he is high
up on a pulpit or a cross
Somewhat unexpectedly Dabin takes seriously ill and dies His death
recalls that of Jesus of course dying for othersrsquo sins but there is a distinct
ambiguity in Dabinrsquos death Does he die for othersrsquo sins or has he suffered
under his own illusions Is his the work of a savior or do normalized people
with judgments of others suffer because of their judgmental values Thefilm never resolves this ambiguity
On his deathbed Dabin pleads with his girlfriend to take over his work
to preach the gospel and save male prostitutes She promises to do so and
indeed in the next scene we see her standing on the same bridge holding
up the same Bible intoning monotonously ldquoDonrsquot sell anymorerdquo In the end
the girlfriend also ends up exhausted and sick in bed having similarly sacri-
ficed herself to a hopeless cause
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positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3334
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 439
from ending including threatening to expose Lao Chen at work Lao Chen
would certainly have lost his job not only because of homophobia but as
Ah Pei explained because he was already in hot water with the Party due
to his outspoken criticisms Ah Zhuang jumped in to point out how Ah
Peirsquos behavior with Lao Chen provided yet one more set of money boy sig-
nifiers ldquoIrsquoll explainrdquo insisted Ah Zhuang after Ah Pei had presented his
perspective ldquoFrom his point of view he wanted to occupy a position This
position was incredibly important to him Only with this position could he
have money Now it was very possible that this position could be taken overby someone else So thatrsquos why he wanted to take revenge Lao Chen came
looking for me to ask me what he should do lsquoServes you rightrsquo I said He
asked lsquoMaybe if I give him some money then he would be willing to leave
me alonersquo He asked me how much I said lsquoI donrsquot knowrsquo How could I
know how much money he should give him At the time I told him lsquoYou
can end things but you have to think of a way to do itrsquo rdquo Ah Pei diffidently
responded that he hadnrsquot wanted to let go of Lao Chen because yes he leda comfortable life with him and also he had feelings for him For Ah Pei
the fact that his life was comfortable with Lao Chen was quite distinct from
a money boyrsquos desire to be paid for sex But Ah Zhuang saw them as one
and the same Finally Lao Chen left for Canada promising to bring Ah Pei
with him after he had arrived there ldquoI was naiverdquo Ah Pei said because he
had believed him
Surprisingly Ah Pei and Ah Zhuang never explained to me much oftheir own relationship Perhaps in the end they sought to preserve some of
the fragments of their friendship They ended their conversation with me by
briefly mentioning Ah Peirsquos latest relationship with an older man someone
from France whom he had met in a bar one evening Ah Pei doesnrsquot speak
any French and this man doesnrsquot speak any Chinese Ah Zhuang translated
for them when necessary This man who worked for the French airlines
was planning to bring Ah Pei to France with him They had already appliedfor his visa In subsequent conversations Ah Zhuang derided Ah Peirsquos plans
How would Ah Pei make a living in France What could he do He would
have a hard time learning the language et cetera It was as if to say Ah Pei
did not deserve the special privilege of living in a Western country
One could dismiss this whole conversation as the obvious denouement of
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 440
a relationship that had ended bitterly Indeed Ah Zhuang had thrown Ah
Pei out of his house But Ah Zhuangrsquos insistence that Ah Pei was a money
boy reflected more than mere bitterness By rejecting Ah Peirsquos claims that
he too could place himself in the category of ldquogay manrdquo Ah Zhuang was
attempting to establish a hegemonic definition of respectable gayness For
Ah Zhuang this respectability adhered in appropriate gender sensibilities
class embodiment the proper balance between dependency and equality
a strict separation of money and love and a worldliness that only those of
a certain class stature should aspire to display Ah Zhuang was trying to
establish what Lisa Duggan has called the ldquonew homonormativityrdquo Dug-
gan argues that this new homonormativity is the equivalent of neoliberal
politics in the sexual realm25 These sexual politics uphold rather than con-
test dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions and promise
a depoliticized gay culture While Duggan concerns herself only with the
United States and does not consider transnational queer politics we can still
consider how her argument illuminates the sexual politics of someone likeAh Zhuang Ah Zhuang hopes to make gay identity respectable within
the terms of postsocialist neoliberalism The fact that neoliberalism has
made desire the central realm for producing proper citizen-subjects made
Ah Zhuangrsquos discourse all the more fraught with anxiety Ah Peirsquos own
intimacy with a well-to-do foreign gay man further goaded Ah Zhuang to
condemn Ah Peirsquos actions as inappropriate in terms of sexual gendered and
culturalnational identity For Ah Pei was going abroad to live in a Westerncountry long before Ah Zhuang would have the opportunity to do so
While Ah Peirsquos views do not simply reverse this moral equation nor do
they exemplify resistance to homonormativity in any straightforward sense
they provide an incipient means of gaining insight into the techniques of neo-
liberal normalizations as well as their instabilities Ah Zhuangrsquos condemna-
tion of Ah Peirsquos plans to move to France with his lover reveals the extent to
which the transnationalism that made Ah Peirsquos current relationship possiblechanges how ldquoinappropriaterdquo desires manifest themselves in the postsocialist
era It was after all only after the transformations in the last few decades
that a person from France would come to live and work again in China and
that an ldquoinappropriaterdquo desire could now also be a transnational desire The
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 441
fact that they do not speak each otherrsquos language exemplifies how neoliberal-
ism has allowed for new possibilities in the manner in which people desire
each other not just which kinds of desires are legitimate but which kinds of
desires are sustainable through which kinds of technological aids and socio-
economic conditions and across which kinds of borders Yet in Ah Zhuangrsquos
view someone of Ah Peirsquos class background could only succeed in such an
achievement by entangling the desires for money sex and love rather than
keeping them separate However the separations between entrepreneurialism
and intimacy that Ah Zhuang wants to establish for respectable gayness are
difficult to maintain26 Neoliberal cosmopolitanism appears to be all about
entrepreneurial savvy Yet there is more than one way to be an entrepreneur
And there is more than one way to be a nonnormalized or even antinormal-
ized gay subject27
Scene 2
Two young men are squatting at the edge of a bridge passing the time by
blowing up condoms ldquoThis way it looks like a dick It changes into breasts
when it gets bigger The breast changes into a dick and the dick into a
breastrdquo one of them says and laughs As they continue to play with their
condom-balloons the other one asks ldquoDo you like the feeling of being pen-
etrated or the feeling when you stick it inrdquo ldquoBothrdquo comes the answer
This scene opens Feeding Boys Ayaya ( Aiyaya Qu Buru) a queer filmabout male hustlers or money boys by the well-known experimental film-
maker Cui Zirsquoen28 This first scene immediately cuts to a contrasting scene
Two men are in a small closed room filled with computer and filmmaking
equipment The older one is in the background sitting in front of his com-
puter The other much younger is in the forefront of the screen The per-
son manipulating the computer equipment says ldquoZaizai [characterrsquos name]
this theme is for you It might not completely match your character in thefilm The distance makes it more precise Do you have any objectionsrdquo The
young man standing in the forefront of the screen has a somber look on his
face He refuses to speak The camera angle is an extreme close-up enlarg-
ing his face to fill the screen and nearly blocking out a view of the film-
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 442
maker The effect is of a split screen We hear the filmmaker from behind
urging him several times ldquoSay somethingrdquo But the other refuses to speak
The quick juxtaposition of these two scenes and their contrasting mise-
en-scene prefigure the major motifs in Feeding Boys Ayaya The opposition
is established visually in the lighting camera angles locations and position-
ing of the characters The first scene presents characters who we will later
come to realize are money boys though at this point their identities are
unclear The scene mixes irony and pathos freedom and marginalization
The ironic and lighthearted humor of the dialogue contrasts with the curi-
ous positioning of the two young men They are at the edge of a deserted
bridge in the very early morning sunlight The camera places both of them
in the center of the screen in a medium close-up thus highlighting rela-
tionality but also distance or alienation The bantering friendship of the
two young men is visually contrasted with their distance from the rest of
the population and from the normative workday Yet this alienation is also
a liberation from the very same mdash the freedom to play at any hour the lackof confinement in space This scene represents what Judith Halberstam has
called ldquoqueer time and spacerdquo Halberstam argues that queer time and space
are ldquowillfully eccentric modes of beingrdquo that challenge heteronormativity by
providing alternative relations to time and space29
The very next scene reminds us that what we have just seen and what we
will view in the rest of the film is a set of representations The question of
how to represent money boys and who can and should speak in their nameis highlighted in this film The filmmaker character in the second scene
is choosing the theme music not the young man The dark closed room
and the split screen raise the question of whether and how the young man
can escape the framing of his life by the other The silence of the young
man mdash another money boy mdash recalls Gayatri Spivakrsquos famous dictum that
the subaltern cannot speak by which she meant that only traces of their
own interpretations of their lives remains in the texts written about them bycolonial elites30
Feeding Boys is a continual juxtaposition of these two types of images mdash
one of money boys displaying a queer sociality and the other of someone mdash
whether the filmmaker character a Christian missionary out to save money
boys his girlfriend who takes over his work or the parents of an aspir-
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 443
ing money boy mdash speaking for or about them Although the film does not
romanticize their lives the money boy characters not only exceed but also
challenge these representations of them both their content and their mode
of representation They continually frustrate attempts to represent capture
or change them Zaizai for example later demands to choose his own theme
music an insistence that frustrates the filmmaker who claims it will ruin
his film Their queerness emerges in these challenges
With Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen enters the larger debates that have central-
ized the question of desire in postsocialist China Cui Zirsquoen uses experimen-
tal visual logics that blur documentary and fiction and that refuse narrative
linearity or closure to challenge not only the specific judgments about money
boys among gay men but the entire apparatus of normalization in China
that tries to delimit desire Cui Zirsquoen addresses the specificity of neoliberal-
ism in China by challenging the hegemonic articulations between Chinese
culture and proper desire on the one hand and labor money and desire on
the other The film has a carnivalesque quality reinforced by the hand-heldcamera techniques which is at once somber and playful It subverts bour-
geois heterosexuality as that which subtends Chinese culture by robbing it of
its glory The film represents money boys as people with an integral human-
ity who take the full measure of their lives while the people who judge
them in the name of neoliberal desires Chinese morality or Christianity
appear damaged filled with contradictory desires themselves or just plain
boring The film thus further subverts postsocialist normalizing desires bydirecting our gaze away from what many think is perverse or rather by
making the normal perverse and the perverse normal The people to be
pitied in this film are the heterosexuals who condemn the hustlersrsquo profes-
sion They are the ones who wither and die Hustlers in contrast have time
to play and enjoy life Yet Cui Zirsquoen does not indulge in a simple decon-
structive reversal Hustlers suffer too but mainly from the condemnation
and exploitation they experience as a result of the hypocritical desires of theheteronormative world
Although Feeding Boys seems to establish a debate between heterosexu-
als and gay male hustlers the themes raised in the film rehearse anxieties
similar to those I presented in my first scene that occur among gay men
Are hustlers respectable or do they sully the good name of other gay men
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 444
Do they deserve sympathy or condemnation Are they gay or just exploit-
ing vulnerable gay men Are their desires to be celebrated or condemned
Are they appropriate for Chinarsquos postsocialist neoliberal future or do they
represent the degradation of that future Feeding Boys refuses these dichoto-
mous terms Rather than simply reverse their valence the film addresses
other queer questions that displace these normalizing ones How should
we engage our desires How can this engagement lead to nonnormative
lives How does class inflect desire How can nonnormative desires chal-
lenge class-based temporalities What is the relationship between money
and sex Finally what is the role of religion
Feeding Boys loosely revolves around the elusive search of a Christian het-
erosexual brother Dabin for his younger brother Xiao Bao who has dis-
appeared into the money boy life During his search he discovers that one
of his younger ldquoChristian brothersrdquo Xiao Jian has also decided to become
a money boy to practice Christian love Juxtaposing money boysrsquo serious
banter with the normalizing judgments of others Feeding Boys weaves inand out of several recurrent image-themes the everyday life of hustlers
Xiao Jianrsquos exploration of how to become a hustler the missionizing zeal of
Dabin to dissuade hustlers from continuing in their profession and finally
the desire to represent and normalize the lives of hustlers Throughout
Feeding Boys jumps between these image-themes thus putting them in
dialogue with one another The experimental filmrsquos refusal to present a
linear narrative mirrors the refusal by the money boy characters to accedeto the normalizing judgments of others Thus the form to echo Hayden
White is also the content31 Cui Zirsquoenrsquos filmmaking techniques warn us
that endeavors to normalize create severe dislocations and damage And
not merely to money boys
Image-Theme 1 The Mundanity of Money Boy Life
Feeding Boys strikingly refuses to display any images of money boys actually
engaged in sex or hustling for customers This lack of sex scenes contrasts
with Cui Zirsquoenrsquos other films which generally go out of their way to show sex
between men The only way we even know that these young men are money
boys is through the dialogue More specifically we hear the arguments that
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 445
straight people who disapprove of them engender Indeed the film is quite
chaste The one scene in which we see two people showing erotic affection
is between the older heterosexual brother of one of the money boys (XiaoBao) whose missionary goal is to convert hustlers and his girlfriend Feed-
ing Boys thus refuses to indulge viewersrsquo scopophilic desires Cui Zirsquoen teases
the viewer from the first scene Watching two men blowing up condoms
and briefly chatting about sex hints at more erotic scenes to come But they
never materialize A condom-balloon is all we ever get By thus tapping into
a gaze desirous for the perverse and then frustrating that desire Cui Zirsquoen
confronts the viewer with the need to think about representation and the
role of representation in normalizing desire mdash both in public discourse and
in his film
In place of the erotic the viewer is offered the stuff of everyday life One
recurrent image as in the first scene is of money boys on a bridge early in
the morning In one scene they playfully engage in ballet-like dance ges-
tures In another one of them displays his acrobatic skills doing severalback flips Later we see these same young men practicing taiji quan (a mar-
tial arts exercise) again early in the morning on the bridge These images
immediately bring to mind the ldquonormalrdquo populace in Chinarsquos cities who go
out each morning to do precisely these group exercises This idea is rein-
forced by the camera angle in these scenes which is a medium wide-angle
shot taking in both the bridge and the surrounding metropolis But the
bridge is also symptomatic of a moment of suspension between directionsin life or between worlds A bridge represents a gap as well as an attempt to
overcome a fissure in the landscape In one telling scene near the end of the
film a money boy begs for money on the bridge pleading with passersby
that he has given up his dissolute life and reformed himself Yet immediately
after we see him with another friend arguing with the Christian mission-
aryrsquos girlfriend stating unequivocally that even though they treated begging
as a ldquorealrdquo job no one wanted to give them money and that in todayrsquos worldpeople respect a prostitute more than a poor person The bridge thus repre-
sents two intertwined passages mdash from a socialist world of time and space
in which citizens had the leisure to do morning exercises and their lives
were not measured by money to a neoliberal world in which wealth is the
only measure of human dignity and no one mdash except those on the outside
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positions 182 Fall 2010 446
of bourgeois respectability mdash has time to spend exercising on a bridge This
passage is intertwined then with a passage from heteronormative relations
of time and space to queer time and space mdash the refusal of the relationshipbetween time work money and desire that neoliberalism has established
Another recurrent scene is of several young men playing in the park
They walk through the park in a desultory manner enjoying the day One
of them has his dog on a leash The dog is obviously well groomed and
well fed Only recently have Beijing residents been allowed to keep pets in
the city Dogs quickly became a key signifier of bourgeois cosmopolitan
accomplishment Why shouldnrsquot money boys be allowed to have them too
In the film the pet belies the idea that money boys lead an unstable dirty
and unreliable life as many believe Moreover it forces open the cluster of
oppositions between respectable and degraded desires in which bourgeois
heterosexual family life goes together with accoutrements like pets while
prostitution is supposed to represent nothing but lack
Other scenes reinforce the sense that money boys are like everyone else inthe way they go about the stuff of everyday life We see them singing in a
karaoke bar playing with a young boy on a playground and having a meal
with their families These young men are portrayed as neither angels nor
demons They are neither ecstatic nor suicidal But the film makes clear that
they live on the margins and have only one another for support
In only a few scenes do these money boys talk about their work But even
here their conversations resemble those of anyone who has ever grumbledabout his or her workplace At one point in the bar for example one of
the money boys tells the other Xiao Bao that his brother (the missionary)
has been looking for him Xiao Bao shakes his head and complains that a
customer has just ripped him off by refusing to pay In another scene in the
park during the daytime one of the money boys complains to the other that
he canrsquot seem to save any money because he always has to buy expensive
clothes to look nice for his customers The other responds that he should besmarter and get the customers to buy the clothes for him He proudly reveals
that he has saved quite a bit of money with which he plans to buy a house
for his mother
The film also playfully satirizes normalized work lives In one scene one
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 447
of the money boys says ldquoWe need structure We have to become profes-
sionalsrdquo Pointing to a gay bar behind him he says ldquoThis is our interna-
tional head officerdquo Another money boy repeats virtually the same wordsbut this time points to a twenty-story high rise building The film shifts to
an eerie scene of colorful masks then quickly to what looks to be a confer-
ence meeting in a bar Someone presumably their boss is taking roll call
They all stand to attention some of them wearing name tags as if at an aca-
demic meeting In this manner Cui Zirsquoen calls into question the relationship
between sex work and desire in China He highlights the instabilities in
how neoliberalism in China has produced social inequalities through trans-
national structures of differentially valued labors But he further demon-
strates the inextricability of sexuality bodies desire and labor To labor for
wealth is supposed to be the foremost desire in a neoliberal world Thus
normalization techniques reduce and embed desire in a structured world
of intensive labor extraction one that produces a capitalist-inflected heter-
onormativity (even as it has a nondeterministic relationship to that heter-onormativity) In other words Cui Zirsquoen deconstructs how the whole person
becomes a commodity in a neoliberal world and how that world while it
fosters desires also robs people of their desires for a full humanity Through
this humorous filmic meditation on desire Cui Zirsquoen thus provides biting
queer commentary on the reduction and devaluation of necessary labor in
postsocialist China
This commentary is most explicit in a scene near the end of the filmwhen the missionaryrsquos girlfriend pleadingly asks several money boys why
they do this work One of them responds with ten reasons ldquoOne you donrsquot
have to be president Two you donrsquot have to be a soldier Three you donrsquot
have to be a farmer and work the land Four you donrsquot have to wash dishes
Five you donrsquot have to marry and have kids Six you donrsquot have to become a
movie star Seven you donrsquot have to be a movie director Eight you donrsquot get
fat Nine you are exploited by others but donrsquot exploit others And ten youdonrsquot die because we use our bodies to satisfy both good and bad peoplersquos
desiresrdquo Through arguments with and about money boys the film thus
creates commentary on how neoliberalism in China appropriates not just
labor-power but the laborer as a desiring subject32 The queer commentary
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positions 182 Fall 2010 448
of Feeding Boys demonstrates how nonnormative alternatives lie outside of
those temporal and spatial markers of respectable Chinese experience mdash
namely marriage reproduction kinship and death The film thus chal-lenges the oppositions of respectability and shame
Image-Theme 2 How to Become a Money Boy
The thread of this image-theme most explicitly mocks normalizing judg-
ments about desire work class and sex Through this image-theme the
film represents gay male hustling as a profession as honorable as becom-
ing a lawyer or computer scientist In perhaps the most iconic scene in this
regard Feeding Boys stages an argument between Xiao Jian and his parents
that crafts a mimicry of family gatherings to decide the childrenrsquos future33
His parents appear to be respectable middle-class intellectuals The mise-
en-scene is a plushly decorated apartment in which the family lives together
The family is all seated there The father states unequivocally that this kindof work leads nowhere They bemoan the fact that they raised their son for
so many years and gave him the opportunity to do many things with his life
They insist they just want the best for him The parents are oddly calm and
though disgusted do not throw him out of the house Indeed in the next
scene he arrives early in the morning to the apartment stating boldly to his
parents that they arrived home from work earlier than him His mother
asks if he isnrsquot supposed to work the night shift and he responds that he willwork any shift The mother turns to the father and makes the pithy com-
ment ldquoSo we failed to discourage him from this line of workrdquo
In another scene in which Xiao Jian defends to Dabin his reasons for
wanting to become a money boy Cui Zirsquoen crafts a doubled-edged mock-
ery of socialist ideals as well by invoking the old socialist honor of learn-
ing from and serving the masses His satire in this regard cuts in multiple
directions It recalls not just the marginalization but the condemnationand punishment under socialism of those with inappropriate desires But
it also uses those socialist ideals to critique the neoliberal normalization of
the appropriate relationship between labor and desire Xiao Jian initiates an
argument with Dabin when he announces that he too wants to become
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 449
a money boy Xiao Jian is insistent ldquoI want to sell my body like Xiao Bao
[Dabinrsquos brother]rdquo He then explains that when Xiao Bao disappeared he
went to check out the male prostitution business ldquoMost of these youngstersare from villages and from very poor family backgrounds I was born into
a happy family I want to join the hustlers and change their social statusrdquo
Dabin retorts ldquoCan you make those people happy Itrsquos all about making
millionaires officials and rich guys happyrdquo ldquoYou told me that we have to
serve the humble Now I want to become one of themrdquo replies Xiao Jian
ldquoI want to become the lowest of the low together with robbers hooligans
petty thieves ex-convicts homosexuals and hustlers I want to stay at the
bottomrdquo Dabin then launches into classical Chinese metaphors ldquoWater
flows downward but man soars heavenwardrdquo Xiao Jian has an answer to
that as well insisting that man is also part of nature and is also capable of
running downhill ldquoItrsquos only natural and makes things more equalrdquo
The visual logics of this scene provide the ironic counter-commentary
During the entire scene Xiao Jian is fully dressed while we watch Dabin halfnaked as he dresses after a shower The viewer becomes engaged in the erot-
ics of watching Dabin slowly lather lotion over his entire body then pull on
tight-fitting underwear The camera lingers on his well built body By the end
of the scene Dabin is still half naked The erotics of the scene are heightened
by the effect of a mirror that stages Xiao Jian in reverse That is Xiao Jian is
seated to the left of Dabin but we only view him through the mirror where
he appears on Dabinrsquos right while Dabin occupies center stage as the half- naked figure of erotic righteousness The mirror clues us in to a split between
the dialogue and the visual logics This split reflects back to the spectator the
hypocritical contradictions in postsocialist enticements of desire
Image-Theme 3 The Trials and Tribulations of Missionary Work
Early in the film we see someone driving through Beijing in a nice carHe is a good looking serious young man It turns out to be Dabin search-
ing for Xiao Bao his younger brother Dabin walks into a bar looking for
him without success He proceeds to follow one of the money boys into the
bathroom and argues with him saying that he doesnrsquot understand why his
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positions 182 Fall 2010 450
job is so attractive ldquoHow could it attract you How can you enjoy it without
getting tiredrdquo The money boy calmly responds ldquoThe job has three advan-
tages First you earn money Second freedom Third you can fool aroundwith different peoplerdquo When Dabin aggressively asks if there are any dis-
advantages the money boy responds ldquoFirst you get sick easily Second itrsquos
a waste of condoms and KY jelly Third you donrsquot get enough sleeprdquo Dabin
cries ldquoIf you keep doing this you will get AIDSrdquo Thus opens the third
image-theme the heterosexual Christian evangelist who attempts to convert
money boys
Dabinrsquos idea of conversion conflates normative sexual desire and Chris-
tianity Thus in the next major scene in which he appears he argues with
two money boys telling them that birds in the sky donrsquot sell their bodies
but they have food to eat that lotus flowers donrsquot sell their bodies but they
are beautiful that dogs and earthworms donrsquot sell their bodies but they live
vigorous lives so why should they sell their bodies He then offers to give
them the Bible Cui Zirsquoen was raised as a Catholic in the northeast city of
Dalian In his previous films he took a Derek Jarman approach and made
symbolic Jesus figures suffer the slings and arrows of heterosexual rage He
tried to reconcile homoerotic desire with what he viewed as the true essence
of Catholicism In Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen has taken a distinctive approach
Here he asserts that those who use Christianity to suppress nonnormative
desires have a hopeless case on their hands Moreover the true essence of
Christianity is ambiguous Perhaps it really is a source of oppression ratherthan as in his previous films a potential guide for love
This ambiguity is underscored in the next major scene in which Dabin
attempts to win converts among money boys He is reading the Bible together
with his younger ldquoChristian brotherrdquo Xiao Jian who has also chosen to be a
money boy Xiao Jian appears earnest He asks ldquoDo you think Jesus would
like that I mean would he like the fact that men and women and men and
men and women and women have sexrdquo Dabin responds ldquoMen and menand women and men have sexual relationships That means that God gave
them their sexual desires and afterwards even gave them the ability to have
sex So who gave men and women the ability to have sex God did The
fact that God gave us this ability proves that he allows us to do itrdquo But the
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 451
young man persists ldquoYou said men and women do it for procreation If men
have sex with men they canrsquot procreate How do you explain thisrdquo Dabin
is stumped ldquoI have to turn to the Bible again for this questionrdquoThe moral inconclusiveness of the Bible and the ability to glean multiple
interpretations of desire from it leads the viewer to understand that there is
a distinction between heteronormativity and the normalization of desire
Strikingly Dabin does not condemn these young men for having sex with
other men He does not in other words condemn sexual desire tout court
or even homoerotic desire What he condemns is the exchange of sex for
money
Dabin is passionate in his missionary work In one scene we see him
standing on the bridge where money boys gather Christian Bible held up
high intoning his plea to them ldquoThe end of the world is near and you still
sell your bodiesrdquo No one speaks to him his travails seem fruitless Dabin on
the bridge recalls by contrast the money boys on the bridge But whereas
the money boys were shot in mid-range at wide angle Dabin is shot from
below with a zoom lens that makes him appear more distant as if he is high
up on a pulpit or a cross
Somewhat unexpectedly Dabin takes seriously ill and dies His death
recalls that of Jesus of course dying for othersrsquo sins but there is a distinct
ambiguity in Dabinrsquos death Does he die for othersrsquo sins or has he suffered
under his own illusions Is his the work of a savior or do normalized people
with judgments of others suffer because of their judgmental values Thefilm never resolves this ambiguity
On his deathbed Dabin pleads with his girlfriend to take over his work
to preach the gospel and save male prostitutes She promises to do so and
indeed in the next scene we see her standing on the same bridge holding
up the same Bible intoning monotonously ldquoDonrsquot sell anymorerdquo In the end
the girlfriend also ends up exhausted and sick in bed having similarly sacri-
ficed herself to a hopeless cause
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positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
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positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3334
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3434
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
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positions 182 Fall 2010 440
a relationship that had ended bitterly Indeed Ah Zhuang had thrown Ah
Pei out of his house But Ah Zhuangrsquos insistence that Ah Pei was a money
boy reflected more than mere bitterness By rejecting Ah Peirsquos claims that
he too could place himself in the category of ldquogay manrdquo Ah Zhuang was
attempting to establish a hegemonic definition of respectable gayness For
Ah Zhuang this respectability adhered in appropriate gender sensibilities
class embodiment the proper balance between dependency and equality
a strict separation of money and love and a worldliness that only those of
a certain class stature should aspire to display Ah Zhuang was trying to
establish what Lisa Duggan has called the ldquonew homonormativityrdquo Dug-
gan argues that this new homonormativity is the equivalent of neoliberal
politics in the sexual realm25 These sexual politics uphold rather than con-
test dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions and promise
a depoliticized gay culture While Duggan concerns herself only with the
United States and does not consider transnational queer politics we can still
consider how her argument illuminates the sexual politics of someone likeAh Zhuang Ah Zhuang hopes to make gay identity respectable within
the terms of postsocialist neoliberalism The fact that neoliberalism has
made desire the central realm for producing proper citizen-subjects made
Ah Zhuangrsquos discourse all the more fraught with anxiety Ah Peirsquos own
intimacy with a well-to-do foreign gay man further goaded Ah Zhuang to
condemn Ah Peirsquos actions as inappropriate in terms of sexual gendered and
culturalnational identity For Ah Pei was going abroad to live in a Westerncountry long before Ah Zhuang would have the opportunity to do so
While Ah Peirsquos views do not simply reverse this moral equation nor do
they exemplify resistance to homonormativity in any straightforward sense
they provide an incipient means of gaining insight into the techniques of neo-
liberal normalizations as well as their instabilities Ah Zhuangrsquos condemna-
tion of Ah Peirsquos plans to move to France with his lover reveals the extent to
which the transnationalism that made Ah Peirsquos current relationship possiblechanges how ldquoinappropriaterdquo desires manifest themselves in the postsocialist
era It was after all only after the transformations in the last few decades
that a person from France would come to live and work again in China and
that an ldquoinappropriaterdquo desire could now also be a transnational desire The
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 441
fact that they do not speak each otherrsquos language exemplifies how neoliberal-
ism has allowed for new possibilities in the manner in which people desire
each other not just which kinds of desires are legitimate but which kinds of
desires are sustainable through which kinds of technological aids and socio-
economic conditions and across which kinds of borders Yet in Ah Zhuangrsquos
view someone of Ah Peirsquos class background could only succeed in such an
achievement by entangling the desires for money sex and love rather than
keeping them separate However the separations between entrepreneurialism
and intimacy that Ah Zhuang wants to establish for respectable gayness are
difficult to maintain26 Neoliberal cosmopolitanism appears to be all about
entrepreneurial savvy Yet there is more than one way to be an entrepreneur
And there is more than one way to be a nonnormalized or even antinormal-
ized gay subject27
Scene 2
Two young men are squatting at the edge of a bridge passing the time by
blowing up condoms ldquoThis way it looks like a dick It changes into breasts
when it gets bigger The breast changes into a dick and the dick into a
breastrdquo one of them says and laughs As they continue to play with their
condom-balloons the other one asks ldquoDo you like the feeling of being pen-
etrated or the feeling when you stick it inrdquo ldquoBothrdquo comes the answer
This scene opens Feeding Boys Ayaya ( Aiyaya Qu Buru) a queer filmabout male hustlers or money boys by the well-known experimental film-
maker Cui Zirsquoen28 This first scene immediately cuts to a contrasting scene
Two men are in a small closed room filled with computer and filmmaking
equipment The older one is in the background sitting in front of his com-
puter The other much younger is in the forefront of the screen The per-
son manipulating the computer equipment says ldquoZaizai [characterrsquos name]
this theme is for you It might not completely match your character in thefilm The distance makes it more precise Do you have any objectionsrdquo The
young man standing in the forefront of the screen has a somber look on his
face He refuses to speak The camera angle is an extreme close-up enlarg-
ing his face to fill the screen and nearly blocking out a view of the film-
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positions 182 Fall 2010 442
maker The effect is of a split screen We hear the filmmaker from behind
urging him several times ldquoSay somethingrdquo But the other refuses to speak
The quick juxtaposition of these two scenes and their contrasting mise-
en-scene prefigure the major motifs in Feeding Boys Ayaya The opposition
is established visually in the lighting camera angles locations and position-
ing of the characters The first scene presents characters who we will later
come to realize are money boys though at this point their identities are
unclear The scene mixes irony and pathos freedom and marginalization
The ironic and lighthearted humor of the dialogue contrasts with the curi-
ous positioning of the two young men They are at the edge of a deserted
bridge in the very early morning sunlight The camera places both of them
in the center of the screen in a medium close-up thus highlighting rela-
tionality but also distance or alienation The bantering friendship of the
two young men is visually contrasted with their distance from the rest of
the population and from the normative workday Yet this alienation is also
a liberation from the very same mdash the freedom to play at any hour the lackof confinement in space This scene represents what Judith Halberstam has
called ldquoqueer time and spacerdquo Halberstam argues that queer time and space
are ldquowillfully eccentric modes of beingrdquo that challenge heteronormativity by
providing alternative relations to time and space29
The very next scene reminds us that what we have just seen and what we
will view in the rest of the film is a set of representations The question of
how to represent money boys and who can and should speak in their nameis highlighted in this film The filmmaker character in the second scene
is choosing the theme music not the young man The dark closed room
and the split screen raise the question of whether and how the young man
can escape the framing of his life by the other The silence of the young
man mdash another money boy mdash recalls Gayatri Spivakrsquos famous dictum that
the subaltern cannot speak by which she meant that only traces of their
own interpretations of their lives remains in the texts written about them bycolonial elites30
Feeding Boys is a continual juxtaposition of these two types of images mdash
one of money boys displaying a queer sociality and the other of someone mdash
whether the filmmaker character a Christian missionary out to save money
boys his girlfriend who takes over his work or the parents of an aspir-
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 443
ing money boy mdash speaking for or about them Although the film does not
romanticize their lives the money boy characters not only exceed but also
challenge these representations of them both their content and their mode
of representation They continually frustrate attempts to represent capture
or change them Zaizai for example later demands to choose his own theme
music an insistence that frustrates the filmmaker who claims it will ruin
his film Their queerness emerges in these challenges
With Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen enters the larger debates that have central-
ized the question of desire in postsocialist China Cui Zirsquoen uses experimen-
tal visual logics that blur documentary and fiction and that refuse narrative
linearity or closure to challenge not only the specific judgments about money
boys among gay men but the entire apparatus of normalization in China
that tries to delimit desire Cui Zirsquoen addresses the specificity of neoliberal-
ism in China by challenging the hegemonic articulations between Chinese
culture and proper desire on the one hand and labor money and desire on
the other The film has a carnivalesque quality reinforced by the hand-heldcamera techniques which is at once somber and playful It subverts bour-
geois heterosexuality as that which subtends Chinese culture by robbing it of
its glory The film represents money boys as people with an integral human-
ity who take the full measure of their lives while the people who judge
them in the name of neoliberal desires Chinese morality or Christianity
appear damaged filled with contradictory desires themselves or just plain
boring The film thus further subverts postsocialist normalizing desires bydirecting our gaze away from what many think is perverse or rather by
making the normal perverse and the perverse normal The people to be
pitied in this film are the heterosexuals who condemn the hustlersrsquo profes-
sion They are the ones who wither and die Hustlers in contrast have time
to play and enjoy life Yet Cui Zirsquoen does not indulge in a simple decon-
structive reversal Hustlers suffer too but mainly from the condemnation
and exploitation they experience as a result of the hypocritical desires of theheteronormative world
Although Feeding Boys seems to establish a debate between heterosexu-
als and gay male hustlers the themes raised in the film rehearse anxieties
similar to those I presented in my first scene that occur among gay men
Are hustlers respectable or do they sully the good name of other gay men
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positions 182 Fall 2010 444
Do they deserve sympathy or condemnation Are they gay or just exploit-
ing vulnerable gay men Are their desires to be celebrated or condemned
Are they appropriate for Chinarsquos postsocialist neoliberal future or do they
represent the degradation of that future Feeding Boys refuses these dichoto-
mous terms Rather than simply reverse their valence the film addresses
other queer questions that displace these normalizing ones How should
we engage our desires How can this engagement lead to nonnormative
lives How does class inflect desire How can nonnormative desires chal-
lenge class-based temporalities What is the relationship between money
and sex Finally what is the role of religion
Feeding Boys loosely revolves around the elusive search of a Christian het-
erosexual brother Dabin for his younger brother Xiao Bao who has dis-
appeared into the money boy life During his search he discovers that one
of his younger ldquoChristian brothersrdquo Xiao Jian has also decided to become
a money boy to practice Christian love Juxtaposing money boysrsquo serious
banter with the normalizing judgments of others Feeding Boys weaves inand out of several recurrent image-themes the everyday life of hustlers
Xiao Jianrsquos exploration of how to become a hustler the missionizing zeal of
Dabin to dissuade hustlers from continuing in their profession and finally
the desire to represent and normalize the lives of hustlers Throughout
Feeding Boys jumps between these image-themes thus putting them in
dialogue with one another The experimental filmrsquos refusal to present a
linear narrative mirrors the refusal by the money boy characters to accedeto the normalizing judgments of others Thus the form to echo Hayden
White is also the content31 Cui Zirsquoenrsquos filmmaking techniques warn us
that endeavors to normalize create severe dislocations and damage And
not merely to money boys
Image-Theme 1 The Mundanity of Money Boy Life
Feeding Boys strikingly refuses to display any images of money boys actually
engaged in sex or hustling for customers This lack of sex scenes contrasts
with Cui Zirsquoenrsquos other films which generally go out of their way to show sex
between men The only way we even know that these young men are money
boys is through the dialogue More specifically we hear the arguments that
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 445
straight people who disapprove of them engender Indeed the film is quite
chaste The one scene in which we see two people showing erotic affection
is between the older heterosexual brother of one of the money boys (XiaoBao) whose missionary goal is to convert hustlers and his girlfriend Feed-
ing Boys thus refuses to indulge viewersrsquo scopophilic desires Cui Zirsquoen teases
the viewer from the first scene Watching two men blowing up condoms
and briefly chatting about sex hints at more erotic scenes to come But they
never materialize A condom-balloon is all we ever get By thus tapping into
a gaze desirous for the perverse and then frustrating that desire Cui Zirsquoen
confronts the viewer with the need to think about representation and the
role of representation in normalizing desire mdash both in public discourse and
in his film
In place of the erotic the viewer is offered the stuff of everyday life One
recurrent image as in the first scene is of money boys on a bridge early in
the morning In one scene they playfully engage in ballet-like dance ges-
tures In another one of them displays his acrobatic skills doing severalback flips Later we see these same young men practicing taiji quan (a mar-
tial arts exercise) again early in the morning on the bridge These images
immediately bring to mind the ldquonormalrdquo populace in Chinarsquos cities who go
out each morning to do precisely these group exercises This idea is rein-
forced by the camera angle in these scenes which is a medium wide-angle
shot taking in both the bridge and the surrounding metropolis But the
bridge is also symptomatic of a moment of suspension between directionsin life or between worlds A bridge represents a gap as well as an attempt to
overcome a fissure in the landscape In one telling scene near the end of the
film a money boy begs for money on the bridge pleading with passersby
that he has given up his dissolute life and reformed himself Yet immediately
after we see him with another friend arguing with the Christian mission-
aryrsquos girlfriend stating unequivocally that even though they treated begging
as a ldquorealrdquo job no one wanted to give them money and that in todayrsquos worldpeople respect a prostitute more than a poor person The bridge thus repre-
sents two intertwined passages mdash from a socialist world of time and space
in which citizens had the leisure to do morning exercises and their lives
were not measured by money to a neoliberal world in which wealth is the
only measure of human dignity and no one mdash except those on the outside
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positions 182 Fall 2010 446
of bourgeois respectability mdash has time to spend exercising on a bridge This
passage is intertwined then with a passage from heteronormative relations
of time and space to queer time and space mdash the refusal of the relationshipbetween time work money and desire that neoliberalism has established
Another recurrent scene is of several young men playing in the park
They walk through the park in a desultory manner enjoying the day One
of them has his dog on a leash The dog is obviously well groomed and
well fed Only recently have Beijing residents been allowed to keep pets in
the city Dogs quickly became a key signifier of bourgeois cosmopolitan
accomplishment Why shouldnrsquot money boys be allowed to have them too
In the film the pet belies the idea that money boys lead an unstable dirty
and unreliable life as many believe Moreover it forces open the cluster of
oppositions between respectable and degraded desires in which bourgeois
heterosexual family life goes together with accoutrements like pets while
prostitution is supposed to represent nothing but lack
Other scenes reinforce the sense that money boys are like everyone else inthe way they go about the stuff of everyday life We see them singing in a
karaoke bar playing with a young boy on a playground and having a meal
with their families These young men are portrayed as neither angels nor
demons They are neither ecstatic nor suicidal But the film makes clear that
they live on the margins and have only one another for support
In only a few scenes do these money boys talk about their work But even
here their conversations resemble those of anyone who has ever grumbledabout his or her workplace At one point in the bar for example one of
the money boys tells the other Xiao Bao that his brother (the missionary)
has been looking for him Xiao Bao shakes his head and complains that a
customer has just ripped him off by refusing to pay In another scene in the
park during the daytime one of the money boys complains to the other that
he canrsquot seem to save any money because he always has to buy expensive
clothes to look nice for his customers The other responds that he should besmarter and get the customers to buy the clothes for him He proudly reveals
that he has saved quite a bit of money with which he plans to buy a house
for his mother
The film also playfully satirizes normalized work lives In one scene one
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 447
of the money boys says ldquoWe need structure We have to become profes-
sionalsrdquo Pointing to a gay bar behind him he says ldquoThis is our interna-
tional head officerdquo Another money boy repeats virtually the same wordsbut this time points to a twenty-story high rise building The film shifts to
an eerie scene of colorful masks then quickly to what looks to be a confer-
ence meeting in a bar Someone presumably their boss is taking roll call
They all stand to attention some of them wearing name tags as if at an aca-
demic meeting In this manner Cui Zirsquoen calls into question the relationship
between sex work and desire in China He highlights the instabilities in
how neoliberalism in China has produced social inequalities through trans-
national structures of differentially valued labors But he further demon-
strates the inextricability of sexuality bodies desire and labor To labor for
wealth is supposed to be the foremost desire in a neoliberal world Thus
normalization techniques reduce and embed desire in a structured world
of intensive labor extraction one that produces a capitalist-inflected heter-
onormativity (even as it has a nondeterministic relationship to that heter-onormativity) In other words Cui Zirsquoen deconstructs how the whole person
becomes a commodity in a neoliberal world and how that world while it
fosters desires also robs people of their desires for a full humanity Through
this humorous filmic meditation on desire Cui Zirsquoen thus provides biting
queer commentary on the reduction and devaluation of necessary labor in
postsocialist China
This commentary is most explicit in a scene near the end of the filmwhen the missionaryrsquos girlfriend pleadingly asks several money boys why
they do this work One of them responds with ten reasons ldquoOne you donrsquot
have to be president Two you donrsquot have to be a soldier Three you donrsquot
have to be a farmer and work the land Four you donrsquot have to wash dishes
Five you donrsquot have to marry and have kids Six you donrsquot have to become a
movie star Seven you donrsquot have to be a movie director Eight you donrsquot get
fat Nine you are exploited by others but donrsquot exploit others And ten youdonrsquot die because we use our bodies to satisfy both good and bad peoplersquos
desiresrdquo Through arguments with and about money boys the film thus
creates commentary on how neoliberalism in China appropriates not just
labor-power but the laborer as a desiring subject32 The queer commentary
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positions 182 Fall 2010 448
of Feeding Boys demonstrates how nonnormative alternatives lie outside of
those temporal and spatial markers of respectable Chinese experience mdash
namely marriage reproduction kinship and death The film thus chal-lenges the oppositions of respectability and shame
Image-Theme 2 How to Become a Money Boy
The thread of this image-theme most explicitly mocks normalizing judg-
ments about desire work class and sex Through this image-theme the
film represents gay male hustling as a profession as honorable as becom-
ing a lawyer or computer scientist In perhaps the most iconic scene in this
regard Feeding Boys stages an argument between Xiao Jian and his parents
that crafts a mimicry of family gatherings to decide the childrenrsquos future33
His parents appear to be respectable middle-class intellectuals The mise-
en-scene is a plushly decorated apartment in which the family lives together
The family is all seated there The father states unequivocally that this kindof work leads nowhere They bemoan the fact that they raised their son for
so many years and gave him the opportunity to do many things with his life
They insist they just want the best for him The parents are oddly calm and
though disgusted do not throw him out of the house Indeed in the next
scene he arrives early in the morning to the apartment stating boldly to his
parents that they arrived home from work earlier than him His mother
asks if he isnrsquot supposed to work the night shift and he responds that he willwork any shift The mother turns to the father and makes the pithy com-
ment ldquoSo we failed to discourage him from this line of workrdquo
In another scene in which Xiao Jian defends to Dabin his reasons for
wanting to become a money boy Cui Zirsquoen crafts a doubled-edged mock-
ery of socialist ideals as well by invoking the old socialist honor of learn-
ing from and serving the masses His satire in this regard cuts in multiple
directions It recalls not just the marginalization but the condemnationand punishment under socialism of those with inappropriate desires But
it also uses those socialist ideals to critique the neoliberal normalization of
the appropriate relationship between labor and desire Xiao Jian initiates an
argument with Dabin when he announces that he too wants to become
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 449
a money boy Xiao Jian is insistent ldquoI want to sell my body like Xiao Bao
[Dabinrsquos brother]rdquo He then explains that when Xiao Bao disappeared he
went to check out the male prostitution business ldquoMost of these youngstersare from villages and from very poor family backgrounds I was born into
a happy family I want to join the hustlers and change their social statusrdquo
Dabin retorts ldquoCan you make those people happy Itrsquos all about making
millionaires officials and rich guys happyrdquo ldquoYou told me that we have to
serve the humble Now I want to become one of themrdquo replies Xiao Jian
ldquoI want to become the lowest of the low together with robbers hooligans
petty thieves ex-convicts homosexuals and hustlers I want to stay at the
bottomrdquo Dabin then launches into classical Chinese metaphors ldquoWater
flows downward but man soars heavenwardrdquo Xiao Jian has an answer to
that as well insisting that man is also part of nature and is also capable of
running downhill ldquoItrsquos only natural and makes things more equalrdquo
The visual logics of this scene provide the ironic counter-commentary
During the entire scene Xiao Jian is fully dressed while we watch Dabin halfnaked as he dresses after a shower The viewer becomes engaged in the erot-
ics of watching Dabin slowly lather lotion over his entire body then pull on
tight-fitting underwear The camera lingers on his well built body By the end
of the scene Dabin is still half naked The erotics of the scene are heightened
by the effect of a mirror that stages Xiao Jian in reverse That is Xiao Jian is
seated to the left of Dabin but we only view him through the mirror where
he appears on Dabinrsquos right while Dabin occupies center stage as the half- naked figure of erotic righteousness The mirror clues us in to a split between
the dialogue and the visual logics This split reflects back to the spectator the
hypocritical contradictions in postsocialist enticements of desire
Image-Theme 3 The Trials and Tribulations of Missionary Work
Early in the film we see someone driving through Beijing in a nice carHe is a good looking serious young man It turns out to be Dabin search-
ing for Xiao Bao his younger brother Dabin walks into a bar looking for
him without success He proceeds to follow one of the money boys into the
bathroom and argues with him saying that he doesnrsquot understand why his
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positions 182 Fall 2010 450
job is so attractive ldquoHow could it attract you How can you enjoy it without
getting tiredrdquo The money boy calmly responds ldquoThe job has three advan-
tages First you earn money Second freedom Third you can fool aroundwith different peoplerdquo When Dabin aggressively asks if there are any dis-
advantages the money boy responds ldquoFirst you get sick easily Second itrsquos
a waste of condoms and KY jelly Third you donrsquot get enough sleeprdquo Dabin
cries ldquoIf you keep doing this you will get AIDSrdquo Thus opens the third
image-theme the heterosexual Christian evangelist who attempts to convert
money boys
Dabinrsquos idea of conversion conflates normative sexual desire and Chris-
tianity Thus in the next major scene in which he appears he argues with
two money boys telling them that birds in the sky donrsquot sell their bodies
but they have food to eat that lotus flowers donrsquot sell their bodies but they
are beautiful that dogs and earthworms donrsquot sell their bodies but they live
vigorous lives so why should they sell their bodies He then offers to give
them the Bible Cui Zirsquoen was raised as a Catholic in the northeast city of
Dalian In his previous films he took a Derek Jarman approach and made
symbolic Jesus figures suffer the slings and arrows of heterosexual rage He
tried to reconcile homoerotic desire with what he viewed as the true essence
of Catholicism In Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen has taken a distinctive approach
Here he asserts that those who use Christianity to suppress nonnormative
desires have a hopeless case on their hands Moreover the true essence of
Christianity is ambiguous Perhaps it really is a source of oppression ratherthan as in his previous films a potential guide for love
This ambiguity is underscored in the next major scene in which Dabin
attempts to win converts among money boys He is reading the Bible together
with his younger ldquoChristian brotherrdquo Xiao Jian who has also chosen to be a
money boy Xiao Jian appears earnest He asks ldquoDo you think Jesus would
like that I mean would he like the fact that men and women and men and
men and women and women have sexrdquo Dabin responds ldquoMen and menand women and men have sexual relationships That means that God gave
them their sexual desires and afterwards even gave them the ability to have
sex So who gave men and women the ability to have sex God did The
fact that God gave us this ability proves that he allows us to do itrdquo But the
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 451
young man persists ldquoYou said men and women do it for procreation If men
have sex with men they canrsquot procreate How do you explain thisrdquo Dabin
is stumped ldquoI have to turn to the Bible again for this questionrdquoThe moral inconclusiveness of the Bible and the ability to glean multiple
interpretations of desire from it leads the viewer to understand that there is
a distinction between heteronormativity and the normalization of desire
Strikingly Dabin does not condemn these young men for having sex with
other men He does not in other words condemn sexual desire tout court
or even homoerotic desire What he condemns is the exchange of sex for
money
Dabin is passionate in his missionary work In one scene we see him
standing on the bridge where money boys gather Christian Bible held up
high intoning his plea to them ldquoThe end of the world is near and you still
sell your bodiesrdquo No one speaks to him his travails seem fruitless Dabin on
the bridge recalls by contrast the money boys on the bridge But whereas
the money boys were shot in mid-range at wide angle Dabin is shot from
below with a zoom lens that makes him appear more distant as if he is high
up on a pulpit or a cross
Somewhat unexpectedly Dabin takes seriously ill and dies His death
recalls that of Jesus of course dying for othersrsquo sins but there is a distinct
ambiguity in Dabinrsquos death Does he die for othersrsquo sins or has he suffered
under his own illusions Is his the work of a savior or do normalized people
with judgments of others suffer because of their judgmental values Thefilm never resolves this ambiguity
On his deathbed Dabin pleads with his girlfriend to take over his work
to preach the gospel and save male prostitutes She promises to do so and
indeed in the next scene we see her standing on the same bridge holding
up the same Bible intoning monotonously ldquoDonrsquot sell anymorerdquo In the end
the girlfriend also ends up exhausted and sick in bed having similarly sacri-
ficed herself to a hopeless cause
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positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 1734
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 441
fact that they do not speak each otherrsquos language exemplifies how neoliberal-
ism has allowed for new possibilities in the manner in which people desire
each other not just which kinds of desires are legitimate but which kinds of
desires are sustainable through which kinds of technological aids and socio-
economic conditions and across which kinds of borders Yet in Ah Zhuangrsquos
view someone of Ah Peirsquos class background could only succeed in such an
achievement by entangling the desires for money sex and love rather than
keeping them separate However the separations between entrepreneurialism
and intimacy that Ah Zhuang wants to establish for respectable gayness are
difficult to maintain26 Neoliberal cosmopolitanism appears to be all about
entrepreneurial savvy Yet there is more than one way to be an entrepreneur
And there is more than one way to be a nonnormalized or even antinormal-
ized gay subject27
Scene 2
Two young men are squatting at the edge of a bridge passing the time by
blowing up condoms ldquoThis way it looks like a dick It changes into breasts
when it gets bigger The breast changes into a dick and the dick into a
breastrdquo one of them says and laughs As they continue to play with their
condom-balloons the other one asks ldquoDo you like the feeling of being pen-
etrated or the feeling when you stick it inrdquo ldquoBothrdquo comes the answer
This scene opens Feeding Boys Ayaya ( Aiyaya Qu Buru) a queer filmabout male hustlers or money boys by the well-known experimental film-
maker Cui Zirsquoen28 This first scene immediately cuts to a contrasting scene
Two men are in a small closed room filled with computer and filmmaking
equipment The older one is in the background sitting in front of his com-
puter The other much younger is in the forefront of the screen The per-
son manipulating the computer equipment says ldquoZaizai [characterrsquos name]
this theme is for you It might not completely match your character in thefilm The distance makes it more precise Do you have any objectionsrdquo The
young man standing in the forefront of the screen has a somber look on his
face He refuses to speak The camera angle is an extreme close-up enlarg-
ing his face to fill the screen and nearly blocking out a view of the film-
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 442
maker The effect is of a split screen We hear the filmmaker from behind
urging him several times ldquoSay somethingrdquo But the other refuses to speak
The quick juxtaposition of these two scenes and their contrasting mise-
en-scene prefigure the major motifs in Feeding Boys Ayaya The opposition
is established visually in the lighting camera angles locations and position-
ing of the characters The first scene presents characters who we will later
come to realize are money boys though at this point their identities are
unclear The scene mixes irony and pathos freedom and marginalization
The ironic and lighthearted humor of the dialogue contrasts with the curi-
ous positioning of the two young men They are at the edge of a deserted
bridge in the very early morning sunlight The camera places both of them
in the center of the screen in a medium close-up thus highlighting rela-
tionality but also distance or alienation The bantering friendship of the
two young men is visually contrasted with their distance from the rest of
the population and from the normative workday Yet this alienation is also
a liberation from the very same mdash the freedom to play at any hour the lackof confinement in space This scene represents what Judith Halberstam has
called ldquoqueer time and spacerdquo Halberstam argues that queer time and space
are ldquowillfully eccentric modes of beingrdquo that challenge heteronormativity by
providing alternative relations to time and space29
The very next scene reminds us that what we have just seen and what we
will view in the rest of the film is a set of representations The question of
how to represent money boys and who can and should speak in their nameis highlighted in this film The filmmaker character in the second scene
is choosing the theme music not the young man The dark closed room
and the split screen raise the question of whether and how the young man
can escape the framing of his life by the other The silence of the young
man mdash another money boy mdash recalls Gayatri Spivakrsquos famous dictum that
the subaltern cannot speak by which she meant that only traces of their
own interpretations of their lives remains in the texts written about them bycolonial elites30
Feeding Boys is a continual juxtaposition of these two types of images mdash
one of money boys displaying a queer sociality and the other of someone mdash
whether the filmmaker character a Christian missionary out to save money
boys his girlfriend who takes over his work or the parents of an aspir-
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 443
ing money boy mdash speaking for or about them Although the film does not
romanticize their lives the money boy characters not only exceed but also
challenge these representations of them both their content and their mode
of representation They continually frustrate attempts to represent capture
or change them Zaizai for example later demands to choose his own theme
music an insistence that frustrates the filmmaker who claims it will ruin
his film Their queerness emerges in these challenges
With Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen enters the larger debates that have central-
ized the question of desire in postsocialist China Cui Zirsquoen uses experimen-
tal visual logics that blur documentary and fiction and that refuse narrative
linearity or closure to challenge not only the specific judgments about money
boys among gay men but the entire apparatus of normalization in China
that tries to delimit desire Cui Zirsquoen addresses the specificity of neoliberal-
ism in China by challenging the hegemonic articulations between Chinese
culture and proper desire on the one hand and labor money and desire on
the other The film has a carnivalesque quality reinforced by the hand-heldcamera techniques which is at once somber and playful It subverts bour-
geois heterosexuality as that which subtends Chinese culture by robbing it of
its glory The film represents money boys as people with an integral human-
ity who take the full measure of their lives while the people who judge
them in the name of neoliberal desires Chinese morality or Christianity
appear damaged filled with contradictory desires themselves or just plain
boring The film thus further subverts postsocialist normalizing desires bydirecting our gaze away from what many think is perverse or rather by
making the normal perverse and the perverse normal The people to be
pitied in this film are the heterosexuals who condemn the hustlersrsquo profes-
sion They are the ones who wither and die Hustlers in contrast have time
to play and enjoy life Yet Cui Zirsquoen does not indulge in a simple decon-
structive reversal Hustlers suffer too but mainly from the condemnation
and exploitation they experience as a result of the hypocritical desires of theheteronormative world
Although Feeding Boys seems to establish a debate between heterosexu-
als and gay male hustlers the themes raised in the film rehearse anxieties
similar to those I presented in my first scene that occur among gay men
Are hustlers respectable or do they sully the good name of other gay men
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 444
Do they deserve sympathy or condemnation Are they gay or just exploit-
ing vulnerable gay men Are their desires to be celebrated or condemned
Are they appropriate for Chinarsquos postsocialist neoliberal future or do they
represent the degradation of that future Feeding Boys refuses these dichoto-
mous terms Rather than simply reverse their valence the film addresses
other queer questions that displace these normalizing ones How should
we engage our desires How can this engagement lead to nonnormative
lives How does class inflect desire How can nonnormative desires chal-
lenge class-based temporalities What is the relationship between money
and sex Finally what is the role of religion
Feeding Boys loosely revolves around the elusive search of a Christian het-
erosexual brother Dabin for his younger brother Xiao Bao who has dis-
appeared into the money boy life During his search he discovers that one
of his younger ldquoChristian brothersrdquo Xiao Jian has also decided to become
a money boy to practice Christian love Juxtaposing money boysrsquo serious
banter with the normalizing judgments of others Feeding Boys weaves inand out of several recurrent image-themes the everyday life of hustlers
Xiao Jianrsquos exploration of how to become a hustler the missionizing zeal of
Dabin to dissuade hustlers from continuing in their profession and finally
the desire to represent and normalize the lives of hustlers Throughout
Feeding Boys jumps between these image-themes thus putting them in
dialogue with one another The experimental filmrsquos refusal to present a
linear narrative mirrors the refusal by the money boy characters to accedeto the normalizing judgments of others Thus the form to echo Hayden
White is also the content31 Cui Zirsquoenrsquos filmmaking techniques warn us
that endeavors to normalize create severe dislocations and damage And
not merely to money boys
Image-Theme 1 The Mundanity of Money Boy Life
Feeding Boys strikingly refuses to display any images of money boys actually
engaged in sex or hustling for customers This lack of sex scenes contrasts
with Cui Zirsquoenrsquos other films which generally go out of their way to show sex
between men The only way we even know that these young men are money
boys is through the dialogue More specifically we hear the arguments that
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 445
straight people who disapprove of them engender Indeed the film is quite
chaste The one scene in which we see two people showing erotic affection
is between the older heterosexual brother of one of the money boys (XiaoBao) whose missionary goal is to convert hustlers and his girlfriend Feed-
ing Boys thus refuses to indulge viewersrsquo scopophilic desires Cui Zirsquoen teases
the viewer from the first scene Watching two men blowing up condoms
and briefly chatting about sex hints at more erotic scenes to come But they
never materialize A condom-balloon is all we ever get By thus tapping into
a gaze desirous for the perverse and then frustrating that desire Cui Zirsquoen
confronts the viewer with the need to think about representation and the
role of representation in normalizing desire mdash both in public discourse and
in his film
In place of the erotic the viewer is offered the stuff of everyday life One
recurrent image as in the first scene is of money boys on a bridge early in
the morning In one scene they playfully engage in ballet-like dance ges-
tures In another one of them displays his acrobatic skills doing severalback flips Later we see these same young men practicing taiji quan (a mar-
tial arts exercise) again early in the morning on the bridge These images
immediately bring to mind the ldquonormalrdquo populace in Chinarsquos cities who go
out each morning to do precisely these group exercises This idea is rein-
forced by the camera angle in these scenes which is a medium wide-angle
shot taking in both the bridge and the surrounding metropolis But the
bridge is also symptomatic of a moment of suspension between directionsin life or between worlds A bridge represents a gap as well as an attempt to
overcome a fissure in the landscape In one telling scene near the end of the
film a money boy begs for money on the bridge pleading with passersby
that he has given up his dissolute life and reformed himself Yet immediately
after we see him with another friend arguing with the Christian mission-
aryrsquos girlfriend stating unequivocally that even though they treated begging
as a ldquorealrdquo job no one wanted to give them money and that in todayrsquos worldpeople respect a prostitute more than a poor person The bridge thus repre-
sents two intertwined passages mdash from a socialist world of time and space
in which citizens had the leisure to do morning exercises and their lives
were not measured by money to a neoliberal world in which wealth is the
only measure of human dignity and no one mdash except those on the outside
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 446
of bourgeois respectability mdash has time to spend exercising on a bridge This
passage is intertwined then with a passage from heteronormative relations
of time and space to queer time and space mdash the refusal of the relationshipbetween time work money and desire that neoliberalism has established
Another recurrent scene is of several young men playing in the park
They walk through the park in a desultory manner enjoying the day One
of them has his dog on a leash The dog is obviously well groomed and
well fed Only recently have Beijing residents been allowed to keep pets in
the city Dogs quickly became a key signifier of bourgeois cosmopolitan
accomplishment Why shouldnrsquot money boys be allowed to have them too
In the film the pet belies the idea that money boys lead an unstable dirty
and unreliable life as many believe Moreover it forces open the cluster of
oppositions between respectable and degraded desires in which bourgeois
heterosexual family life goes together with accoutrements like pets while
prostitution is supposed to represent nothing but lack
Other scenes reinforce the sense that money boys are like everyone else inthe way they go about the stuff of everyday life We see them singing in a
karaoke bar playing with a young boy on a playground and having a meal
with their families These young men are portrayed as neither angels nor
demons They are neither ecstatic nor suicidal But the film makes clear that
they live on the margins and have only one another for support
In only a few scenes do these money boys talk about their work But even
here their conversations resemble those of anyone who has ever grumbledabout his or her workplace At one point in the bar for example one of
the money boys tells the other Xiao Bao that his brother (the missionary)
has been looking for him Xiao Bao shakes his head and complains that a
customer has just ripped him off by refusing to pay In another scene in the
park during the daytime one of the money boys complains to the other that
he canrsquot seem to save any money because he always has to buy expensive
clothes to look nice for his customers The other responds that he should besmarter and get the customers to buy the clothes for him He proudly reveals
that he has saved quite a bit of money with which he plans to buy a house
for his mother
The film also playfully satirizes normalized work lives In one scene one
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 447
of the money boys says ldquoWe need structure We have to become profes-
sionalsrdquo Pointing to a gay bar behind him he says ldquoThis is our interna-
tional head officerdquo Another money boy repeats virtually the same wordsbut this time points to a twenty-story high rise building The film shifts to
an eerie scene of colorful masks then quickly to what looks to be a confer-
ence meeting in a bar Someone presumably their boss is taking roll call
They all stand to attention some of them wearing name tags as if at an aca-
demic meeting In this manner Cui Zirsquoen calls into question the relationship
between sex work and desire in China He highlights the instabilities in
how neoliberalism in China has produced social inequalities through trans-
national structures of differentially valued labors But he further demon-
strates the inextricability of sexuality bodies desire and labor To labor for
wealth is supposed to be the foremost desire in a neoliberal world Thus
normalization techniques reduce and embed desire in a structured world
of intensive labor extraction one that produces a capitalist-inflected heter-
onormativity (even as it has a nondeterministic relationship to that heter-onormativity) In other words Cui Zirsquoen deconstructs how the whole person
becomes a commodity in a neoliberal world and how that world while it
fosters desires also robs people of their desires for a full humanity Through
this humorous filmic meditation on desire Cui Zirsquoen thus provides biting
queer commentary on the reduction and devaluation of necessary labor in
postsocialist China
This commentary is most explicit in a scene near the end of the filmwhen the missionaryrsquos girlfriend pleadingly asks several money boys why
they do this work One of them responds with ten reasons ldquoOne you donrsquot
have to be president Two you donrsquot have to be a soldier Three you donrsquot
have to be a farmer and work the land Four you donrsquot have to wash dishes
Five you donrsquot have to marry and have kids Six you donrsquot have to become a
movie star Seven you donrsquot have to be a movie director Eight you donrsquot get
fat Nine you are exploited by others but donrsquot exploit others And ten youdonrsquot die because we use our bodies to satisfy both good and bad peoplersquos
desiresrdquo Through arguments with and about money boys the film thus
creates commentary on how neoliberalism in China appropriates not just
labor-power but the laborer as a desiring subject32 The queer commentary
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 448
of Feeding Boys demonstrates how nonnormative alternatives lie outside of
those temporal and spatial markers of respectable Chinese experience mdash
namely marriage reproduction kinship and death The film thus chal-lenges the oppositions of respectability and shame
Image-Theme 2 How to Become a Money Boy
The thread of this image-theme most explicitly mocks normalizing judg-
ments about desire work class and sex Through this image-theme the
film represents gay male hustling as a profession as honorable as becom-
ing a lawyer or computer scientist In perhaps the most iconic scene in this
regard Feeding Boys stages an argument between Xiao Jian and his parents
that crafts a mimicry of family gatherings to decide the childrenrsquos future33
His parents appear to be respectable middle-class intellectuals The mise-
en-scene is a plushly decorated apartment in which the family lives together
The family is all seated there The father states unequivocally that this kindof work leads nowhere They bemoan the fact that they raised their son for
so many years and gave him the opportunity to do many things with his life
They insist they just want the best for him The parents are oddly calm and
though disgusted do not throw him out of the house Indeed in the next
scene he arrives early in the morning to the apartment stating boldly to his
parents that they arrived home from work earlier than him His mother
asks if he isnrsquot supposed to work the night shift and he responds that he willwork any shift The mother turns to the father and makes the pithy com-
ment ldquoSo we failed to discourage him from this line of workrdquo
In another scene in which Xiao Jian defends to Dabin his reasons for
wanting to become a money boy Cui Zirsquoen crafts a doubled-edged mock-
ery of socialist ideals as well by invoking the old socialist honor of learn-
ing from and serving the masses His satire in this regard cuts in multiple
directions It recalls not just the marginalization but the condemnationand punishment under socialism of those with inappropriate desires But
it also uses those socialist ideals to critique the neoliberal normalization of
the appropriate relationship between labor and desire Xiao Jian initiates an
argument with Dabin when he announces that he too wants to become
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 449
a money boy Xiao Jian is insistent ldquoI want to sell my body like Xiao Bao
[Dabinrsquos brother]rdquo He then explains that when Xiao Bao disappeared he
went to check out the male prostitution business ldquoMost of these youngstersare from villages and from very poor family backgrounds I was born into
a happy family I want to join the hustlers and change their social statusrdquo
Dabin retorts ldquoCan you make those people happy Itrsquos all about making
millionaires officials and rich guys happyrdquo ldquoYou told me that we have to
serve the humble Now I want to become one of themrdquo replies Xiao Jian
ldquoI want to become the lowest of the low together with robbers hooligans
petty thieves ex-convicts homosexuals and hustlers I want to stay at the
bottomrdquo Dabin then launches into classical Chinese metaphors ldquoWater
flows downward but man soars heavenwardrdquo Xiao Jian has an answer to
that as well insisting that man is also part of nature and is also capable of
running downhill ldquoItrsquos only natural and makes things more equalrdquo
The visual logics of this scene provide the ironic counter-commentary
During the entire scene Xiao Jian is fully dressed while we watch Dabin halfnaked as he dresses after a shower The viewer becomes engaged in the erot-
ics of watching Dabin slowly lather lotion over his entire body then pull on
tight-fitting underwear The camera lingers on his well built body By the end
of the scene Dabin is still half naked The erotics of the scene are heightened
by the effect of a mirror that stages Xiao Jian in reverse That is Xiao Jian is
seated to the left of Dabin but we only view him through the mirror where
he appears on Dabinrsquos right while Dabin occupies center stage as the half- naked figure of erotic righteousness The mirror clues us in to a split between
the dialogue and the visual logics This split reflects back to the spectator the
hypocritical contradictions in postsocialist enticements of desire
Image-Theme 3 The Trials and Tribulations of Missionary Work
Early in the film we see someone driving through Beijing in a nice carHe is a good looking serious young man It turns out to be Dabin search-
ing for Xiao Bao his younger brother Dabin walks into a bar looking for
him without success He proceeds to follow one of the money boys into the
bathroom and argues with him saying that he doesnrsquot understand why his
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positions 182 Fall 2010 450
job is so attractive ldquoHow could it attract you How can you enjoy it without
getting tiredrdquo The money boy calmly responds ldquoThe job has three advan-
tages First you earn money Second freedom Third you can fool aroundwith different peoplerdquo When Dabin aggressively asks if there are any dis-
advantages the money boy responds ldquoFirst you get sick easily Second itrsquos
a waste of condoms and KY jelly Third you donrsquot get enough sleeprdquo Dabin
cries ldquoIf you keep doing this you will get AIDSrdquo Thus opens the third
image-theme the heterosexual Christian evangelist who attempts to convert
money boys
Dabinrsquos idea of conversion conflates normative sexual desire and Chris-
tianity Thus in the next major scene in which he appears he argues with
two money boys telling them that birds in the sky donrsquot sell their bodies
but they have food to eat that lotus flowers donrsquot sell their bodies but they
are beautiful that dogs and earthworms donrsquot sell their bodies but they live
vigorous lives so why should they sell their bodies He then offers to give
them the Bible Cui Zirsquoen was raised as a Catholic in the northeast city of
Dalian In his previous films he took a Derek Jarman approach and made
symbolic Jesus figures suffer the slings and arrows of heterosexual rage He
tried to reconcile homoerotic desire with what he viewed as the true essence
of Catholicism In Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen has taken a distinctive approach
Here he asserts that those who use Christianity to suppress nonnormative
desires have a hopeless case on their hands Moreover the true essence of
Christianity is ambiguous Perhaps it really is a source of oppression ratherthan as in his previous films a potential guide for love
This ambiguity is underscored in the next major scene in which Dabin
attempts to win converts among money boys He is reading the Bible together
with his younger ldquoChristian brotherrdquo Xiao Jian who has also chosen to be a
money boy Xiao Jian appears earnest He asks ldquoDo you think Jesus would
like that I mean would he like the fact that men and women and men and
men and women and women have sexrdquo Dabin responds ldquoMen and menand women and men have sexual relationships That means that God gave
them their sexual desires and afterwards even gave them the ability to have
sex So who gave men and women the ability to have sex God did The
fact that God gave us this ability proves that he allows us to do itrdquo But the
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 451
young man persists ldquoYou said men and women do it for procreation If men
have sex with men they canrsquot procreate How do you explain thisrdquo Dabin
is stumped ldquoI have to turn to the Bible again for this questionrdquoThe moral inconclusiveness of the Bible and the ability to glean multiple
interpretations of desire from it leads the viewer to understand that there is
a distinction between heteronormativity and the normalization of desire
Strikingly Dabin does not condemn these young men for having sex with
other men He does not in other words condemn sexual desire tout court
or even homoerotic desire What he condemns is the exchange of sex for
money
Dabin is passionate in his missionary work In one scene we see him
standing on the bridge where money boys gather Christian Bible held up
high intoning his plea to them ldquoThe end of the world is near and you still
sell your bodiesrdquo No one speaks to him his travails seem fruitless Dabin on
the bridge recalls by contrast the money boys on the bridge But whereas
the money boys were shot in mid-range at wide angle Dabin is shot from
below with a zoom lens that makes him appear more distant as if he is high
up on a pulpit or a cross
Somewhat unexpectedly Dabin takes seriously ill and dies His death
recalls that of Jesus of course dying for othersrsquo sins but there is a distinct
ambiguity in Dabinrsquos death Does he die for othersrsquo sins or has he suffered
under his own illusions Is his the work of a savior or do normalized people
with judgments of others suffer because of their judgmental values Thefilm never resolves this ambiguity
On his deathbed Dabin pleads with his girlfriend to take over his work
to preach the gospel and save male prostitutes She promises to do so and
indeed in the next scene we see her standing on the same bridge holding
up the same Bible intoning monotonously ldquoDonrsquot sell anymorerdquo In the end
the girlfriend also ends up exhausted and sick in bed having similarly sacri-
ficed herself to a hopeless cause
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positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
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positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 442
maker The effect is of a split screen We hear the filmmaker from behind
urging him several times ldquoSay somethingrdquo But the other refuses to speak
The quick juxtaposition of these two scenes and their contrasting mise-
en-scene prefigure the major motifs in Feeding Boys Ayaya The opposition
is established visually in the lighting camera angles locations and position-
ing of the characters The first scene presents characters who we will later
come to realize are money boys though at this point their identities are
unclear The scene mixes irony and pathos freedom and marginalization
The ironic and lighthearted humor of the dialogue contrasts with the curi-
ous positioning of the two young men They are at the edge of a deserted
bridge in the very early morning sunlight The camera places both of them
in the center of the screen in a medium close-up thus highlighting rela-
tionality but also distance or alienation The bantering friendship of the
two young men is visually contrasted with their distance from the rest of
the population and from the normative workday Yet this alienation is also
a liberation from the very same mdash the freedom to play at any hour the lackof confinement in space This scene represents what Judith Halberstam has
called ldquoqueer time and spacerdquo Halberstam argues that queer time and space
are ldquowillfully eccentric modes of beingrdquo that challenge heteronormativity by
providing alternative relations to time and space29
The very next scene reminds us that what we have just seen and what we
will view in the rest of the film is a set of representations The question of
how to represent money boys and who can and should speak in their nameis highlighted in this film The filmmaker character in the second scene
is choosing the theme music not the young man The dark closed room
and the split screen raise the question of whether and how the young man
can escape the framing of his life by the other The silence of the young
man mdash another money boy mdash recalls Gayatri Spivakrsquos famous dictum that
the subaltern cannot speak by which she meant that only traces of their
own interpretations of their lives remains in the texts written about them bycolonial elites30
Feeding Boys is a continual juxtaposition of these two types of images mdash
one of money boys displaying a queer sociality and the other of someone mdash
whether the filmmaker character a Christian missionary out to save money
boys his girlfriend who takes over his work or the parents of an aspir-
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 443
ing money boy mdash speaking for or about them Although the film does not
romanticize their lives the money boy characters not only exceed but also
challenge these representations of them both their content and their mode
of representation They continually frustrate attempts to represent capture
or change them Zaizai for example later demands to choose his own theme
music an insistence that frustrates the filmmaker who claims it will ruin
his film Their queerness emerges in these challenges
With Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen enters the larger debates that have central-
ized the question of desire in postsocialist China Cui Zirsquoen uses experimen-
tal visual logics that blur documentary and fiction and that refuse narrative
linearity or closure to challenge not only the specific judgments about money
boys among gay men but the entire apparatus of normalization in China
that tries to delimit desire Cui Zirsquoen addresses the specificity of neoliberal-
ism in China by challenging the hegemonic articulations between Chinese
culture and proper desire on the one hand and labor money and desire on
the other The film has a carnivalesque quality reinforced by the hand-heldcamera techniques which is at once somber and playful It subverts bour-
geois heterosexuality as that which subtends Chinese culture by robbing it of
its glory The film represents money boys as people with an integral human-
ity who take the full measure of their lives while the people who judge
them in the name of neoliberal desires Chinese morality or Christianity
appear damaged filled with contradictory desires themselves or just plain
boring The film thus further subverts postsocialist normalizing desires bydirecting our gaze away from what many think is perverse or rather by
making the normal perverse and the perverse normal The people to be
pitied in this film are the heterosexuals who condemn the hustlersrsquo profes-
sion They are the ones who wither and die Hustlers in contrast have time
to play and enjoy life Yet Cui Zirsquoen does not indulge in a simple decon-
structive reversal Hustlers suffer too but mainly from the condemnation
and exploitation they experience as a result of the hypocritical desires of theheteronormative world
Although Feeding Boys seems to establish a debate between heterosexu-
als and gay male hustlers the themes raised in the film rehearse anxieties
similar to those I presented in my first scene that occur among gay men
Are hustlers respectable or do they sully the good name of other gay men
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 444
Do they deserve sympathy or condemnation Are they gay or just exploit-
ing vulnerable gay men Are their desires to be celebrated or condemned
Are they appropriate for Chinarsquos postsocialist neoliberal future or do they
represent the degradation of that future Feeding Boys refuses these dichoto-
mous terms Rather than simply reverse their valence the film addresses
other queer questions that displace these normalizing ones How should
we engage our desires How can this engagement lead to nonnormative
lives How does class inflect desire How can nonnormative desires chal-
lenge class-based temporalities What is the relationship between money
and sex Finally what is the role of religion
Feeding Boys loosely revolves around the elusive search of a Christian het-
erosexual brother Dabin for his younger brother Xiao Bao who has dis-
appeared into the money boy life During his search he discovers that one
of his younger ldquoChristian brothersrdquo Xiao Jian has also decided to become
a money boy to practice Christian love Juxtaposing money boysrsquo serious
banter with the normalizing judgments of others Feeding Boys weaves inand out of several recurrent image-themes the everyday life of hustlers
Xiao Jianrsquos exploration of how to become a hustler the missionizing zeal of
Dabin to dissuade hustlers from continuing in their profession and finally
the desire to represent and normalize the lives of hustlers Throughout
Feeding Boys jumps between these image-themes thus putting them in
dialogue with one another The experimental filmrsquos refusal to present a
linear narrative mirrors the refusal by the money boy characters to accedeto the normalizing judgments of others Thus the form to echo Hayden
White is also the content31 Cui Zirsquoenrsquos filmmaking techniques warn us
that endeavors to normalize create severe dislocations and damage And
not merely to money boys
Image-Theme 1 The Mundanity of Money Boy Life
Feeding Boys strikingly refuses to display any images of money boys actually
engaged in sex or hustling for customers This lack of sex scenes contrasts
with Cui Zirsquoenrsquos other films which generally go out of their way to show sex
between men The only way we even know that these young men are money
boys is through the dialogue More specifically we hear the arguments that
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 445
straight people who disapprove of them engender Indeed the film is quite
chaste The one scene in which we see two people showing erotic affection
is between the older heterosexual brother of one of the money boys (XiaoBao) whose missionary goal is to convert hustlers and his girlfriend Feed-
ing Boys thus refuses to indulge viewersrsquo scopophilic desires Cui Zirsquoen teases
the viewer from the first scene Watching two men blowing up condoms
and briefly chatting about sex hints at more erotic scenes to come But they
never materialize A condom-balloon is all we ever get By thus tapping into
a gaze desirous for the perverse and then frustrating that desire Cui Zirsquoen
confronts the viewer with the need to think about representation and the
role of representation in normalizing desire mdash both in public discourse and
in his film
In place of the erotic the viewer is offered the stuff of everyday life One
recurrent image as in the first scene is of money boys on a bridge early in
the morning In one scene they playfully engage in ballet-like dance ges-
tures In another one of them displays his acrobatic skills doing severalback flips Later we see these same young men practicing taiji quan (a mar-
tial arts exercise) again early in the morning on the bridge These images
immediately bring to mind the ldquonormalrdquo populace in Chinarsquos cities who go
out each morning to do precisely these group exercises This idea is rein-
forced by the camera angle in these scenes which is a medium wide-angle
shot taking in both the bridge and the surrounding metropolis But the
bridge is also symptomatic of a moment of suspension between directionsin life or between worlds A bridge represents a gap as well as an attempt to
overcome a fissure in the landscape In one telling scene near the end of the
film a money boy begs for money on the bridge pleading with passersby
that he has given up his dissolute life and reformed himself Yet immediately
after we see him with another friend arguing with the Christian mission-
aryrsquos girlfriend stating unequivocally that even though they treated begging
as a ldquorealrdquo job no one wanted to give them money and that in todayrsquos worldpeople respect a prostitute more than a poor person The bridge thus repre-
sents two intertwined passages mdash from a socialist world of time and space
in which citizens had the leisure to do morning exercises and their lives
were not measured by money to a neoliberal world in which wealth is the
only measure of human dignity and no one mdash except those on the outside
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positions 182 Fall 2010 446
of bourgeois respectability mdash has time to spend exercising on a bridge This
passage is intertwined then with a passage from heteronormative relations
of time and space to queer time and space mdash the refusal of the relationshipbetween time work money and desire that neoliberalism has established
Another recurrent scene is of several young men playing in the park
They walk through the park in a desultory manner enjoying the day One
of them has his dog on a leash The dog is obviously well groomed and
well fed Only recently have Beijing residents been allowed to keep pets in
the city Dogs quickly became a key signifier of bourgeois cosmopolitan
accomplishment Why shouldnrsquot money boys be allowed to have them too
In the film the pet belies the idea that money boys lead an unstable dirty
and unreliable life as many believe Moreover it forces open the cluster of
oppositions between respectable and degraded desires in which bourgeois
heterosexual family life goes together with accoutrements like pets while
prostitution is supposed to represent nothing but lack
Other scenes reinforce the sense that money boys are like everyone else inthe way they go about the stuff of everyday life We see them singing in a
karaoke bar playing with a young boy on a playground and having a meal
with their families These young men are portrayed as neither angels nor
demons They are neither ecstatic nor suicidal But the film makes clear that
they live on the margins and have only one another for support
In only a few scenes do these money boys talk about their work But even
here their conversations resemble those of anyone who has ever grumbledabout his or her workplace At one point in the bar for example one of
the money boys tells the other Xiao Bao that his brother (the missionary)
has been looking for him Xiao Bao shakes his head and complains that a
customer has just ripped him off by refusing to pay In another scene in the
park during the daytime one of the money boys complains to the other that
he canrsquot seem to save any money because he always has to buy expensive
clothes to look nice for his customers The other responds that he should besmarter and get the customers to buy the clothes for him He proudly reveals
that he has saved quite a bit of money with which he plans to buy a house
for his mother
The film also playfully satirizes normalized work lives In one scene one
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 447
of the money boys says ldquoWe need structure We have to become profes-
sionalsrdquo Pointing to a gay bar behind him he says ldquoThis is our interna-
tional head officerdquo Another money boy repeats virtually the same wordsbut this time points to a twenty-story high rise building The film shifts to
an eerie scene of colorful masks then quickly to what looks to be a confer-
ence meeting in a bar Someone presumably their boss is taking roll call
They all stand to attention some of them wearing name tags as if at an aca-
demic meeting In this manner Cui Zirsquoen calls into question the relationship
between sex work and desire in China He highlights the instabilities in
how neoliberalism in China has produced social inequalities through trans-
national structures of differentially valued labors But he further demon-
strates the inextricability of sexuality bodies desire and labor To labor for
wealth is supposed to be the foremost desire in a neoliberal world Thus
normalization techniques reduce and embed desire in a structured world
of intensive labor extraction one that produces a capitalist-inflected heter-
onormativity (even as it has a nondeterministic relationship to that heter-onormativity) In other words Cui Zirsquoen deconstructs how the whole person
becomes a commodity in a neoliberal world and how that world while it
fosters desires also robs people of their desires for a full humanity Through
this humorous filmic meditation on desire Cui Zirsquoen thus provides biting
queer commentary on the reduction and devaluation of necessary labor in
postsocialist China
This commentary is most explicit in a scene near the end of the filmwhen the missionaryrsquos girlfriend pleadingly asks several money boys why
they do this work One of them responds with ten reasons ldquoOne you donrsquot
have to be president Two you donrsquot have to be a soldier Three you donrsquot
have to be a farmer and work the land Four you donrsquot have to wash dishes
Five you donrsquot have to marry and have kids Six you donrsquot have to become a
movie star Seven you donrsquot have to be a movie director Eight you donrsquot get
fat Nine you are exploited by others but donrsquot exploit others And ten youdonrsquot die because we use our bodies to satisfy both good and bad peoplersquos
desiresrdquo Through arguments with and about money boys the film thus
creates commentary on how neoliberalism in China appropriates not just
labor-power but the laborer as a desiring subject32 The queer commentary
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positions 182 Fall 2010 448
of Feeding Boys demonstrates how nonnormative alternatives lie outside of
those temporal and spatial markers of respectable Chinese experience mdash
namely marriage reproduction kinship and death The film thus chal-lenges the oppositions of respectability and shame
Image-Theme 2 How to Become a Money Boy
The thread of this image-theme most explicitly mocks normalizing judg-
ments about desire work class and sex Through this image-theme the
film represents gay male hustling as a profession as honorable as becom-
ing a lawyer or computer scientist In perhaps the most iconic scene in this
regard Feeding Boys stages an argument between Xiao Jian and his parents
that crafts a mimicry of family gatherings to decide the childrenrsquos future33
His parents appear to be respectable middle-class intellectuals The mise-
en-scene is a plushly decorated apartment in which the family lives together
The family is all seated there The father states unequivocally that this kindof work leads nowhere They bemoan the fact that they raised their son for
so many years and gave him the opportunity to do many things with his life
They insist they just want the best for him The parents are oddly calm and
though disgusted do not throw him out of the house Indeed in the next
scene he arrives early in the morning to the apartment stating boldly to his
parents that they arrived home from work earlier than him His mother
asks if he isnrsquot supposed to work the night shift and he responds that he willwork any shift The mother turns to the father and makes the pithy com-
ment ldquoSo we failed to discourage him from this line of workrdquo
In another scene in which Xiao Jian defends to Dabin his reasons for
wanting to become a money boy Cui Zirsquoen crafts a doubled-edged mock-
ery of socialist ideals as well by invoking the old socialist honor of learn-
ing from and serving the masses His satire in this regard cuts in multiple
directions It recalls not just the marginalization but the condemnationand punishment under socialism of those with inappropriate desires But
it also uses those socialist ideals to critique the neoliberal normalization of
the appropriate relationship between labor and desire Xiao Jian initiates an
argument with Dabin when he announces that he too wants to become
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 449
a money boy Xiao Jian is insistent ldquoI want to sell my body like Xiao Bao
[Dabinrsquos brother]rdquo He then explains that when Xiao Bao disappeared he
went to check out the male prostitution business ldquoMost of these youngstersare from villages and from very poor family backgrounds I was born into
a happy family I want to join the hustlers and change their social statusrdquo
Dabin retorts ldquoCan you make those people happy Itrsquos all about making
millionaires officials and rich guys happyrdquo ldquoYou told me that we have to
serve the humble Now I want to become one of themrdquo replies Xiao Jian
ldquoI want to become the lowest of the low together with robbers hooligans
petty thieves ex-convicts homosexuals and hustlers I want to stay at the
bottomrdquo Dabin then launches into classical Chinese metaphors ldquoWater
flows downward but man soars heavenwardrdquo Xiao Jian has an answer to
that as well insisting that man is also part of nature and is also capable of
running downhill ldquoItrsquos only natural and makes things more equalrdquo
The visual logics of this scene provide the ironic counter-commentary
During the entire scene Xiao Jian is fully dressed while we watch Dabin halfnaked as he dresses after a shower The viewer becomes engaged in the erot-
ics of watching Dabin slowly lather lotion over his entire body then pull on
tight-fitting underwear The camera lingers on his well built body By the end
of the scene Dabin is still half naked The erotics of the scene are heightened
by the effect of a mirror that stages Xiao Jian in reverse That is Xiao Jian is
seated to the left of Dabin but we only view him through the mirror where
he appears on Dabinrsquos right while Dabin occupies center stage as the half- naked figure of erotic righteousness The mirror clues us in to a split between
the dialogue and the visual logics This split reflects back to the spectator the
hypocritical contradictions in postsocialist enticements of desire
Image-Theme 3 The Trials and Tribulations of Missionary Work
Early in the film we see someone driving through Beijing in a nice carHe is a good looking serious young man It turns out to be Dabin search-
ing for Xiao Bao his younger brother Dabin walks into a bar looking for
him without success He proceeds to follow one of the money boys into the
bathroom and argues with him saying that he doesnrsquot understand why his
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positions 182 Fall 2010 450
job is so attractive ldquoHow could it attract you How can you enjoy it without
getting tiredrdquo The money boy calmly responds ldquoThe job has three advan-
tages First you earn money Second freedom Third you can fool aroundwith different peoplerdquo When Dabin aggressively asks if there are any dis-
advantages the money boy responds ldquoFirst you get sick easily Second itrsquos
a waste of condoms and KY jelly Third you donrsquot get enough sleeprdquo Dabin
cries ldquoIf you keep doing this you will get AIDSrdquo Thus opens the third
image-theme the heterosexual Christian evangelist who attempts to convert
money boys
Dabinrsquos idea of conversion conflates normative sexual desire and Chris-
tianity Thus in the next major scene in which he appears he argues with
two money boys telling them that birds in the sky donrsquot sell their bodies
but they have food to eat that lotus flowers donrsquot sell their bodies but they
are beautiful that dogs and earthworms donrsquot sell their bodies but they live
vigorous lives so why should they sell their bodies He then offers to give
them the Bible Cui Zirsquoen was raised as a Catholic in the northeast city of
Dalian In his previous films he took a Derek Jarman approach and made
symbolic Jesus figures suffer the slings and arrows of heterosexual rage He
tried to reconcile homoerotic desire with what he viewed as the true essence
of Catholicism In Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen has taken a distinctive approach
Here he asserts that those who use Christianity to suppress nonnormative
desires have a hopeless case on their hands Moreover the true essence of
Christianity is ambiguous Perhaps it really is a source of oppression ratherthan as in his previous films a potential guide for love
This ambiguity is underscored in the next major scene in which Dabin
attempts to win converts among money boys He is reading the Bible together
with his younger ldquoChristian brotherrdquo Xiao Jian who has also chosen to be a
money boy Xiao Jian appears earnest He asks ldquoDo you think Jesus would
like that I mean would he like the fact that men and women and men and
men and women and women have sexrdquo Dabin responds ldquoMen and menand women and men have sexual relationships That means that God gave
them their sexual desires and afterwards even gave them the ability to have
sex So who gave men and women the ability to have sex God did The
fact that God gave us this ability proves that he allows us to do itrdquo But the
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 451
young man persists ldquoYou said men and women do it for procreation If men
have sex with men they canrsquot procreate How do you explain thisrdquo Dabin
is stumped ldquoI have to turn to the Bible again for this questionrdquoThe moral inconclusiveness of the Bible and the ability to glean multiple
interpretations of desire from it leads the viewer to understand that there is
a distinction between heteronormativity and the normalization of desire
Strikingly Dabin does not condemn these young men for having sex with
other men He does not in other words condemn sexual desire tout court
or even homoerotic desire What he condemns is the exchange of sex for
money
Dabin is passionate in his missionary work In one scene we see him
standing on the bridge where money boys gather Christian Bible held up
high intoning his plea to them ldquoThe end of the world is near and you still
sell your bodiesrdquo No one speaks to him his travails seem fruitless Dabin on
the bridge recalls by contrast the money boys on the bridge But whereas
the money boys were shot in mid-range at wide angle Dabin is shot from
below with a zoom lens that makes him appear more distant as if he is high
up on a pulpit or a cross
Somewhat unexpectedly Dabin takes seriously ill and dies His death
recalls that of Jesus of course dying for othersrsquo sins but there is a distinct
ambiguity in Dabinrsquos death Does he die for othersrsquo sins or has he suffered
under his own illusions Is his the work of a savior or do normalized people
with judgments of others suffer because of their judgmental values Thefilm never resolves this ambiguity
On his deathbed Dabin pleads with his girlfriend to take over his work
to preach the gospel and save male prostitutes She promises to do so and
indeed in the next scene we see her standing on the same bridge holding
up the same Bible intoning monotonously ldquoDonrsquot sell anymorerdquo In the end
the girlfriend also ends up exhausted and sick in bed having similarly sacri-
ficed herself to a hopeless cause
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positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
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positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3334
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 443
ing money boy mdash speaking for or about them Although the film does not
romanticize their lives the money boy characters not only exceed but also
challenge these representations of them both their content and their mode
of representation They continually frustrate attempts to represent capture
or change them Zaizai for example later demands to choose his own theme
music an insistence that frustrates the filmmaker who claims it will ruin
his film Their queerness emerges in these challenges
With Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen enters the larger debates that have central-
ized the question of desire in postsocialist China Cui Zirsquoen uses experimen-
tal visual logics that blur documentary and fiction and that refuse narrative
linearity or closure to challenge not only the specific judgments about money
boys among gay men but the entire apparatus of normalization in China
that tries to delimit desire Cui Zirsquoen addresses the specificity of neoliberal-
ism in China by challenging the hegemonic articulations between Chinese
culture and proper desire on the one hand and labor money and desire on
the other The film has a carnivalesque quality reinforced by the hand-heldcamera techniques which is at once somber and playful It subverts bour-
geois heterosexuality as that which subtends Chinese culture by robbing it of
its glory The film represents money boys as people with an integral human-
ity who take the full measure of their lives while the people who judge
them in the name of neoliberal desires Chinese morality or Christianity
appear damaged filled with contradictory desires themselves or just plain
boring The film thus further subverts postsocialist normalizing desires bydirecting our gaze away from what many think is perverse or rather by
making the normal perverse and the perverse normal The people to be
pitied in this film are the heterosexuals who condemn the hustlersrsquo profes-
sion They are the ones who wither and die Hustlers in contrast have time
to play and enjoy life Yet Cui Zirsquoen does not indulge in a simple decon-
structive reversal Hustlers suffer too but mainly from the condemnation
and exploitation they experience as a result of the hypocritical desires of theheteronormative world
Although Feeding Boys seems to establish a debate between heterosexu-
als and gay male hustlers the themes raised in the film rehearse anxieties
similar to those I presented in my first scene that occur among gay men
Are hustlers respectable or do they sully the good name of other gay men
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 444
Do they deserve sympathy or condemnation Are they gay or just exploit-
ing vulnerable gay men Are their desires to be celebrated or condemned
Are they appropriate for Chinarsquos postsocialist neoliberal future or do they
represent the degradation of that future Feeding Boys refuses these dichoto-
mous terms Rather than simply reverse their valence the film addresses
other queer questions that displace these normalizing ones How should
we engage our desires How can this engagement lead to nonnormative
lives How does class inflect desire How can nonnormative desires chal-
lenge class-based temporalities What is the relationship between money
and sex Finally what is the role of religion
Feeding Boys loosely revolves around the elusive search of a Christian het-
erosexual brother Dabin for his younger brother Xiao Bao who has dis-
appeared into the money boy life During his search he discovers that one
of his younger ldquoChristian brothersrdquo Xiao Jian has also decided to become
a money boy to practice Christian love Juxtaposing money boysrsquo serious
banter with the normalizing judgments of others Feeding Boys weaves inand out of several recurrent image-themes the everyday life of hustlers
Xiao Jianrsquos exploration of how to become a hustler the missionizing zeal of
Dabin to dissuade hustlers from continuing in their profession and finally
the desire to represent and normalize the lives of hustlers Throughout
Feeding Boys jumps between these image-themes thus putting them in
dialogue with one another The experimental filmrsquos refusal to present a
linear narrative mirrors the refusal by the money boy characters to accedeto the normalizing judgments of others Thus the form to echo Hayden
White is also the content31 Cui Zirsquoenrsquos filmmaking techniques warn us
that endeavors to normalize create severe dislocations and damage And
not merely to money boys
Image-Theme 1 The Mundanity of Money Boy Life
Feeding Boys strikingly refuses to display any images of money boys actually
engaged in sex or hustling for customers This lack of sex scenes contrasts
with Cui Zirsquoenrsquos other films which generally go out of their way to show sex
between men The only way we even know that these young men are money
boys is through the dialogue More specifically we hear the arguments that
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 445
straight people who disapprove of them engender Indeed the film is quite
chaste The one scene in which we see two people showing erotic affection
is between the older heterosexual brother of one of the money boys (XiaoBao) whose missionary goal is to convert hustlers and his girlfriend Feed-
ing Boys thus refuses to indulge viewersrsquo scopophilic desires Cui Zirsquoen teases
the viewer from the first scene Watching two men blowing up condoms
and briefly chatting about sex hints at more erotic scenes to come But they
never materialize A condom-balloon is all we ever get By thus tapping into
a gaze desirous for the perverse and then frustrating that desire Cui Zirsquoen
confronts the viewer with the need to think about representation and the
role of representation in normalizing desire mdash both in public discourse and
in his film
In place of the erotic the viewer is offered the stuff of everyday life One
recurrent image as in the first scene is of money boys on a bridge early in
the morning In one scene they playfully engage in ballet-like dance ges-
tures In another one of them displays his acrobatic skills doing severalback flips Later we see these same young men practicing taiji quan (a mar-
tial arts exercise) again early in the morning on the bridge These images
immediately bring to mind the ldquonormalrdquo populace in Chinarsquos cities who go
out each morning to do precisely these group exercises This idea is rein-
forced by the camera angle in these scenes which is a medium wide-angle
shot taking in both the bridge and the surrounding metropolis But the
bridge is also symptomatic of a moment of suspension between directionsin life or between worlds A bridge represents a gap as well as an attempt to
overcome a fissure in the landscape In one telling scene near the end of the
film a money boy begs for money on the bridge pleading with passersby
that he has given up his dissolute life and reformed himself Yet immediately
after we see him with another friend arguing with the Christian mission-
aryrsquos girlfriend stating unequivocally that even though they treated begging
as a ldquorealrdquo job no one wanted to give them money and that in todayrsquos worldpeople respect a prostitute more than a poor person The bridge thus repre-
sents two intertwined passages mdash from a socialist world of time and space
in which citizens had the leisure to do morning exercises and their lives
were not measured by money to a neoliberal world in which wealth is the
only measure of human dignity and no one mdash except those on the outside
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positions 182 Fall 2010 446
of bourgeois respectability mdash has time to spend exercising on a bridge This
passage is intertwined then with a passage from heteronormative relations
of time and space to queer time and space mdash the refusal of the relationshipbetween time work money and desire that neoliberalism has established
Another recurrent scene is of several young men playing in the park
They walk through the park in a desultory manner enjoying the day One
of them has his dog on a leash The dog is obviously well groomed and
well fed Only recently have Beijing residents been allowed to keep pets in
the city Dogs quickly became a key signifier of bourgeois cosmopolitan
accomplishment Why shouldnrsquot money boys be allowed to have them too
In the film the pet belies the idea that money boys lead an unstable dirty
and unreliable life as many believe Moreover it forces open the cluster of
oppositions between respectable and degraded desires in which bourgeois
heterosexual family life goes together with accoutrements like pets while
prostitution is supposed to represent nothing but lack
Other scenes reinforce the sense that money boys are like everyone else inthe way they go about the stuff of everyday life We see them singing in a
karaoke bar playing with a young boy on a playground and having a meal
with their families These young men are portrayed as neither angels nor
demons They are neither ecstatic nor suicidal But the film makes clear that
they live on the margins and have only one another for support
In only a few scenes do these money boys talk about their work But even
here their conversations resemble those of anyone who has ever grumbledabout his or her workplace At one point in the bar for example one of
the money boys tells the other Xiao Bao that his brother (the missionary)
has been looking for him Xiao Bao shakes his head and complains that a
customer has just ripped him off by refusing to pay In another scene in the
park during the daytime one of the money boys complains to the other that
he canrsquot seem to save any money because he always has to buy expensive
clothes to look nice for his customers The other responds that he should besmarter and get the customers to buy the clothes for him He proudly reveals
that he has saved quite a bit of money with which he plans to buy a house
for his mother
The film also playfully satirizes normalized work lives In one scene one
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 447
of the money boys says ldquoWe need structure We have to become profes-
sionalsrdquo Pointing to a gay bar behind him he says ldquoThis is our interna-
tional head officerdquo Another money boy repeats virtually the same wordsbut this time points to a twenty-story high rise building The film shifts to
an eerie scene of colorful masks then quickly to what looks to be a confer-
ence meeting in a bar Someone presumably their boss is taking roll call
They all stand to attention some of them wearing name tags as if at an aca-
demic meeting In this manner Cui Zirsquoen calls into question the relationship
between sex work and desire in China He highlights the instabilities in
how neoliberalism in China has produced social inequalities through trans-
national structures of differentially valued labors But he further demon-
strates the inextricability of sexuality bodies desire and labor To labor for
wealth is supposed to be the foremost desire in a neoliberal world Thus
normalization techniques reduce and embed desire in a structured world
of intensive labor extraction one that produces a capitalist-inflected heter-
onormativity (even as it has a nondeterministic relationship to that heter-onormativity) In other words Cui Zirsquoen deconstructs how the whole person
becomes a commodity in a neoliberal world and how that world while it
fosters desires also robs people of their desires for a full humanity Through
this humorous filmic meditation on desire Cui Zirsquoen thus provides biting
queer commentary on the reduction and devaluation of necessary labor in
postsocialist China
This commentary is most explicit in a scene near the end of the filmwhen the missionaryrsquos girlfriend pleadingly asks several money boys why
they do this work One of them responds with ten reasons ldquoOne you donrsquot
have to be president Two you donrsquot have to be a soldier Three you donrsquot
have to be a farmer and work the land Four you donrsquot have to wash dishes
Five you donrsquot have to marry and have kids Six you donrsquot have to become a
movie star Seven you donrsquot have to be a movie director Eight you donrsquot get
fat Nine you are exploited by others but donrsquot exploit others And ten youdonrsquot die because we use our bodies to satisfy both good and bad peoplersquos
desiresrdquo Through arguments with and about money boys the film thus
creates commentary on how neoliberalism in China appropriates not just
labor-power but the laborer as a desiring subject32 The queer commentary
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positions 182 Fall 2010 448
of Feeding Boys demonstrates how nonnormative alternatives lie outside of
those temporal and spatial markers of respectable Chinese experience mdash
namely marriage reproduction kinship and death The film thus chal-lenges the oppositions of respectability and shame
Image-Theme 2 How to Become a Money Boy
The thread of this image-theme most explicitly mocks normalizing judg-
ments about desire work class and sex Through this image-theme the
film represents gay male hustling as a profession as honorable as becom-
ing a lawyer or computer scientist In perhaps the most iconic scene in this
regard Feeding Boys stages an argument between Xiao Jian and his parents
that crafts a mimicry of family gatherings to decide the childrenrsquos future33
His parents appear to be respectable middle-class intellectuals The mise-
en-scene is a plushly decorated apartment in which the family lives together
The family is all seated there The father states unequivocally that this kindof work leads nowhere They bemoan the fact that they raised their son for
so many years and gave him the opportunity to do many things with his life
They insist they just want the best for him The parents are oddly calm and
though disgusted do not throw him out of the house Indeed in the next
scene he arrives early in the morning to the apartment stating boldly to his
parents that they arrived home from work earlier than him His mother
asks if he isnrsquot supposed to work the night shift and he responds that he willwork any shift The mother turns to the father and makes the pithy com-
ment ldquoSo we failed to discourage him from this line of workrdquo
In another scene in which Xiao Jian defends to Dabin his reasons for
wanting to become a money boy Cui Zirsquoen crafts a doubled-edged mock-
ery of socialist ideals as well by invoking the old socialist honor of learn-
ing from and serving the masses His satire in this regard cuts in multiple
directions It recalls not just the marginalization but the condemnationand punishment under socialism of those with inappropriate desires But
it also uses those socialist ideals to critique the neoliberal normalization of
the appropriate relationship between labor and desire Xiao Jian initiates an
argument with Dabin when he announces that he too wants to become
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 449
a money boy Xiao Jian is insistent ldquoI want to sell my body like Xiao Bao
[Dabinrsquos brother]rdquo He then explains that when Xiao Bao disappeared he
went to check out the male prostitution business ldquoMost of these youngstersare from villages and from very poor family backgrounds I was born into
a happy family I want to join the hustlers and change their social statusrdquo
Dabin retorts ldquoCan you make those people happy Itrsquos all about making
millionaires officials and rich guys happyrdquo ldquoYou told me that we have to
serve the humble Now I want to become one of themrdquo replies Xiao Jian
ldquoI want to become the lowest of the low together with robbers hooligans
petty thieves ex-convicts homosexuals and hustlers I want to stay at the
bottomrdquo Dabin then launches into classical Chinese metaphors ldquoWater
flows downward but man soars heavenwardrdquo Xiao Jian has an answer to
that as well insisting that man is also part of nature and is also capable of
running downhill ldquoItrsquos only natural and makes things more equalrdquo
The visual logics of this scene provide the ironic counter-commentary
During the entire scene Xiao Jian is fully dressed while we watch Dabin halfnaked as he dresses after a shower The viewer becomes engaged in the erot-
ics of watching Dabin slowly lather lotion over his entire body then pull on
tight-fitting underwear The camera lingers on his well built body By the end
of the scene Dabin is still half naked The erotics of the scene are heightened
by the effect of a mirror that stages Xiao Jian in reverse That is Xiao Jian is
seated to the left of Dabin but we only view him through the mirror where
he appears on Dabinrsquos right while Dabin occupies center stage as the half- naked figure of erotic righteousness The mirror clues us in to a split between
the dialogue and the visual logics This split reflects back to the spectator the
hypocritical contradictions in postsocialist enticements of desire
Image-Theme 3 The Trials and Tribulations of Missionary Work
Early in the film we see someone driving through Beijing in a nice carHe is a good looking serious young man It turns out to be Dabin search-
ing for Xiao Bao his younger brother Dabin walks into a bar looking for
him without success He proceeds to follow one of the money boys into the
bathroom and argues with him saying that he doesnrsquot understand why his
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 450
job is so attractive ldquoHow could it attract you How can you enjoy it without
getting tiredrdquo The money boy calmly responds ldquoThe job has three advan-
tages First you earn money Second freedom Third you can fool aroundwith different peoplerdquo When Dabin aggressively asks if there are any dis-
advantages the money boy responds ldquoFirst you get sick easily Second itrsquos
a waste of condoms and KY jelly Third you donrsquot get enough sleeprdquo Dabin
cries ldquoIf you keep doing this you will get AIDSrdquo Thus opens the third
image-theme the heterosexual Christian evangelist who attempts to convert
money boys
Dabinrsquos idea of conversion conflates normative sexual desire and Chris-
tianity Thus in the next major scene in which he appears he argues with
two money boys telling them that birds in the sky donrsquot sell their bodies
but they have food to eat that lotus flowers donrsquot sell their bodies but they
are beautiful that dogs and earthworms donrsquot sell their bodies but they live
vigorous lives so why should they sell their bodies He then offers to give
them the Bible Cui Zirsquoen was raised as a Catholic in the northeast city of
Dalian In his previous films he took a Derek Jarman approach and made
symbolic Jesus figures suffer the slings and arrows of heterosexual rage He
tried to reconcile homoerotic desire with what he viewed as the true essence
of Catholicism In Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen has taken a distinctive approach
Here he asserts that those who use Christianity to suppress nonnormative
desires have a hopeless case on their hands Moreover the true essence of
Christianity is ambiguous Perhaps it really is a source of oppression ratherthan as in his previous films a potential guide for love
This ambiguity is underscored in the next major scene in which Dabin
attempts to win converts among money boys He is reading the Bible together
with his younger ldquoChristian brotherrdquo Xiao Jian who has also chosen to be a
money boy Xiao Jian appears earnest He asks ldquoDo you think Jesus would
like that I mean would he like the fact that men and women and men and
men and women and women have sexrdquo Dabin responds ldquoMen and menand women and men have sexual relationships That means that God gave
them their sexual desires and afterwards even gave them the ability to have
sex So who gave men and women the ability to have sex God did The
fact that God gave us this ability proves that he allows us to do itrdquo But the
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 451
young man persists ldquoYou said men and women do it for procreation If men
have sex with men they canrsquot procreate How do you explain thisrdquo Dabin
is stumped ldquoI have to turn to the Bible again for this questionrdquoThe moral inconclusiveness of the Bible and the ability to glean multiple
interpretations of desire from it leads the viewer to understand that there is
a distinction between heteronormativity and the normalization of desire
Strikingly Dabin does not condemn these young men for having sex with
other men He does not in other words condemn sexual desire tout court
or even homoerotic desire What he condemns is the exchange of sex for
money
Dabin is passionate in his missionary work In one scene we see him
standing on the bridge where money boys gather Christian Bible held up
high intoning his plea to them ldquoThe end of the world is near and you still
sell your bodiesrdquo No one speaks to him his travails seem fruitless Dabin on
the bridge recalls by contrast the money boys on the bridge But whereas
the money boys were shot in mid-range at wide angle Dabin is shot from
below with a zoom lens that makes him appear more distant as if he is high
up on a pulpit or a cross
Somewhat unexpectedly Dabin takes seriously ill and dies His death
recalls that of Jesus of course dying for othersrsquo sins but there is a distinct
ambiguity in Dabinrsquos death Does he die for othersrsquo sins or has he suffered
under his own illusions Is his the work of a savior or do normalized people
with judgments of others suffer because of their judgmental values Thefilm never resolves this ambiguity
On his deathbed Dabin pleads with his girlfriend to take over his work
to preach the gospel and save male prostitutes She promises to do so and
indeed in the next scene we see her standing on the same bridge holding
up the same Bible intoning monotonously ldquoDonrsquot sell anymorerdquo In the end
the girlfriend also ends up exhausted and sick in bed having similarly sacri-
ficed herself to a hopeless cause
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
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positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 444
Do they deserve sympathy or condemnation Are they gay or just exploit-
ing vulnerable gay men Are their desires to be celebrated or condemned
Are they appropriate for Chinarsquos postsocialist neoliberal future or do they
represent the degradation of that future Feeding Boys refuses these dichoto-
mous terms Rather than simply reverse their valence the film addresses
other queer questions that displace these normalizing ones How should
we engage our desires How can this engagement lead to nonnormative
lives How does class inflect desire How can nonnormative desires chal-
lenge class-based temporalities What is the relationship between money
and sex Finally what is the role of religion
Feeding Boys loosely revolves around the elusive search of a Christian het-
erosexual brother Dabin for his younger brother Xiao Bao who has dis-
appeared into the money boy life During his search he discovers that one
of his younger ldquoChristian brothersrdquo Xiao Jian has also decided to become
a money boy to practice Christian love Juxtaposing money boysrsquo serious
banter with the normalizing judgments of others Feeding Boys weaves inand out of several recurrent image-themes the everyday life of hustlers
Xiao Jianrsquos exploration of how to become a hustler the missionizing zeal of
Dabin to dissuade hustlers from continuing in their profession and finally
the desire to represent and normalize the lives of hustlers Throughout
Feeding Boys jumps between these image-themes thus putting them in
dialogue with one another The experimental filmrsquos refusal to present a
linear narrative mirrors the refusal by the money boy characters to accedeto the normalizing judgments of others Thus the form to echo Hayden
White is also the content31 Cui Zirsquoenrsquos filmmaking techniques warn us
that endeavors to normalize create severe dislocations and damage And
not merely to money boys
Image-Theme 1 The Mundanity of Money Boy Life
Feeding Boys strikingly refuses to display any images of money boys actually
engaged in sex or hustling for customers This lack of sex scenes contrasts
with Cui Zirsquoenrsquos other films which generally go out of their way to show sex
between men The only way we even know that these young men are money
boys is through the dialogue More specifically we hear the arguments that
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 445
straight people who disapprove of them engender Indeed the film is quite
chaste The one scene in which we see two people showing erotic affection
is between the older heterosexual brother of one of the money boys (XiaoBao) whose missionary goal is to convert hustlers and his girlfriend Feed-
ing Boys thus refuses to indulge viewersrsquo scopophilic desires Cui Zirsquoen teases
the viewer from the first scene Watching two men blowing up condoms
and briefly chatting about sex hints at more erotic scenes to come But they
never materialize A condom-balloon is all we ever get By thus tapping into
a gaze desirous for the perverse and then frustrating that desire Cui Zirsquoen
confronts the viewer with the need to think about representation and the
role of representation in normalizing desire mdash both in public discourse and
in his film
In place of the erotic the viewer is offered the stuff of everyday life One
recurrent image as in the first scene is of money boys on a bridge early in
the morning In one scene they playfully engage in ballet-like dance ges-
tures In another one of them displays his acrobatic skills doing severalback flips Later we see these same young men practicing taiji quan (a mar-
tial arts exercise) again early in the morning on the bridge These images
immediately bring to mind the ldquonormalrdquo populace in Chinarsquos cities who go
out each morning to do precisely these group exercises This idea is rein-
forced by the camera angle in these scenes which is a medium wide-angle
shot taking in both the bridge and the surrounding metropolis But the
bridge is also symptomatic of a moment of suspension between directionsin life or between worlds A bridge represents a gap as well as an attempt to
overcome a fissure in the landscape In one telling scene near the end of the
film a money boy begs for money on the bridge pleading with passersby
that he has given up his dissolute life and reformed himself Yet immediately
after we see him with another friend arguing with the Christian mission-
aryrsquos girlfriend stating unequivocally that even though they treated begging
as a ldquorealrdquo job no one wanted to give them money and that in todayrsquos worldpeople respect a prostitute more than a poor person The bridge thus repre-
sents two intertwined passages mdash from a socialist world of time and space
in which citizens had the leisure to do morning exercises and their lives
were not measured by money to a neoliberal world in which wealth is the
only measure of human dignity and no one mdash except those on the outside
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positions 182 Fall 2010 446
of bourgeois respectability mdash has time to spend exercising on a bridge This
passage is intertwined then with a passage from heteronormative relations
of time and space to queer time and space mdash the refusal of the relationshipbetween time work money and desire that neoliberalism has established
Another recurrent scene is of several young men playing in the park
They walk through the park in a desultory manner enjoying the day One
of them has his dog on a leash The dog is obviously well groomed and
well fed Only recently have Beijing residents been allowed to keep pets in
the city Dogs quickly became a key signifier of bourgeois cosmopolitan
accomplishment Why shouldnrsquot money boys be allowed to have them too
In the film the pet belies the idea that money boys lead an unstable dirty
and unreliable life as many believe Moreover it forces open the cluster of
oppositions between respectable and degraded desires in which bourgeois
heterosexual family life goes together with accoutrements like pets while
prostitution is supposed to represent nothing but lack
Other scenes reinforce the sense that money boys are like everyone else inthe way they go about the stuff of everyday life We see them singing in a
karaoke bar playing with a young boy on a playground and having a meal
with their families These young men are portrayed as neither angels nor
demons They are neither ecstatic nor suicidal But the film makes clear that
they live on the margins and have only one another for support
In only a few scenes do these money boys talk about their work But even
here their conversations resemble those of anyone who has ever grumbledabout his or her workplace At one point in the bar for example one of
the money boys tells the other Xiao Bao that his brother (the missionary)
has been looking for him Xiao Bao shakes his head and complains that a
customer has just ripped him off by refusing to pay In another scene in the
park during the daytime one of the money boys complains to the other that
he canrsquot seem to save any money because he always has to buy expensive
clothes to look nice for his customers The other responds that he should besmarter and get the customers to buy the clothes for him He proudly reveals
that he has saved quite a bit of money with which he plans to buy a house
for his mother
The film also playfully satirizes normalized work lives In one scene one
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 447
of the money boys says ldquoWe need structure We have to become profes-
sionalsrdquo Pointing to a gay bar behind him he says ldquoThis is our interna-
tional head officerdquo Another money boy repeats virtually the same wordsbut this time points to a twenty-story high rise building The film shifts to
an eerie scene of colorful masks then quickly to what looks to be a confer-
ence meeting in a bar Someone presumably their boss is taking roll call
They all stand to attention some of them wearing name tags as if at an aca-
demic meeting In this manner Cui Zirsquoen calls into question the relationship
between sex work and desire in China He highlights the instabilities in
how neoliberalism in China has produced social inequalities through trans-
national structures of differentially valued labors But he further demon-
strates the inextricability of sexuality bodies desire and labor To labor for
wealth is supposed to be the foremost desire in a neoliberal world Thus
normalization techniques reduce and embed desire in a structured world
of intensive labor extraction one that produces a capitalist-inflected heter-
onormativity (even as it has a nondeterministic relationship to that heter-onormativity) In other words Cui Zirsquoen deconstructs how the whole person
becomes a commodity in a neoliberal world and how that world while it
fosters desires also robs people of their desires for a full humanity Through
this humorous filmic meditation on desire Cui Zirsquoen thus provides biting
queer commentary on the reduction and devaluation of necessary labor in
postsocialist China
This commentary is most explicit in a scene near the end of the filmwhen the missionaryrsquos girlfriend pleadingly asks several money boys why
they do this work One of them responds with ten reasons ldquoOne you donrsquot
have to be president Two you donrsquot have to be a soldier Three you donrsquot
have to be a farmer and work the land Four you donrsquot have to wash dishes
Five you donrsquot have to marry and have kids Six you donrsquot have to become a
movie star Seven you donrsquot have to be a movie director Eight you donrsquot get
fat Nine you are exploited by others but donrsquot exploit others And ten youdonrsquot die because we use our bodies to satisfy both good and bad peoplersquos
desiresrdquo Through arguments with and about money boys the film thus
creates commentary on how neoliberalism in China appropriates not just
labor-power but the laborer as a desiring subject32 The queer commentary
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positions 182 Fall 2010 448
of Feeding Boys demonstrates how nonnormative alternatives lie outside of
those temporal and spatial markers of respectable Chinese experience mdash
namely marriage reproduction kinship and death The film thus chal-lenges the oppositions of respectability and shame
Image-Theme 2 How to Become a Money Boy
The thread of this image-theme most explicitly mocks normalizing judg-
ments about desire work class and sex Through this image-theme the
film represents gay male hustling as a profession as honorable as becom-
ing a lawyer or computer scientist In perhaps the most iconic scene in this
regard Feeding Boys stages an argument between Xiao Jian and his parents
that crafts a mimicry of family gatherings to decide the childrenrsquos future33
His parents appear to be respectable middle-class intellectuals The mise-
en-scene is a plushly decorated apartment in which the family lives together
The family is all seated there The father states unequivocally that this kindof work leads nowhere They bemoan the fact that they raised their son for
so many years and gave him the opportunity to do many things with his life
They insist they just want the best for him The parents are oddly calm and
though disgusted do not throw him out of the house Indeed in the next
scene he arrives early in the morning to the apartment stating boldly to his
parents that they arrived home from work earlier than him His mother
asks if he isnrsquot supposed to work the night shift and he responds that he willwork any shift The mother turns to the father and makes the pithy com-
ment ldquoSo we failed to discourage him from this line of workrdquo
In another scene in which Xiao Jian defends to Dabin his reasons for
wanting to become a money boy Cui Zirsquoen crafts a doubled-edged mock-
ery of socialist ideals as well by invoking the old socialist honor of learn-
ing from and serving the masses His satire in this regard cuts in multiple
directions It recalls not just the marginalization but the condemnationand punishment under socialism of those with inappropriate desires But
it also uses those socialist ideals to critique the neoliberal normalization of
the appropriate relationship between labor and desire Xiao Jian initiates an
argument with Dabin when he announces that he too wants to become
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 449
a money boy Xiao Jian is insistent ldquoI want to sell my body like Xiao Bao
[Dabinrsquos brother]rdquo He then explains that when Xiao Bao disappeared he
went to check out the male prostitution business ldquoMost of these youngstersare from villages and from very poor family backgrounds I was born into
a happy family I want to join the hustlers and change their social statusrdquo
Dabin retorts ldquoCan you make those people happy Itrsquos all about making
millionaires officials and rich guys happyrdquo ldquoYou told me that we have to
serve the humble Now I want to become one of themrdquo replies Xiao Jian
ldquoI want to become the lowest of the low together with robbers hooligans
petty thieves ex-convicts homosexuals and hustlers I want to stay at the
bottomrdquo Dabin then launches into classical Chinese metaphors ldquoWater
flows downward but man soars heavenwardrdquo Xiao Jian has an answer to
that as well insisting that man is also part of nature and is also capable of
running downhill ldquoItrsquos only natural and makes things more equalrdquo
The visual logics of this scene provide the ironic counter-commentary
During the entire scene Xiao Jian is fully dressed while we watch Dabin halfnaked as he dresses after a shower The viewer becomes engaged in the erot-
ics of watching Dabin slowly lather lotion over his entire body then pull on
tight-fitting underwear The camera lingers on his well built body By the end
of the scene Dabin is still half naked The erotics of the scene are heightened
by the effect of a mirror that stages Xiao Jian in reverse That is Xiao Jian is
seated to the left of Dabin but we only view him through the mirror where
he appears on Dabinrsquos right while Dabin occupies center stage as the half- naked figure of erotic righteousness The mirror clues us in to a split between
the dialogue and the visual logics This split reflects back to the spectator the
hypocritical contradictions in postsocialist enticements of desire
Image-Theme 3 The Trials and Tribulations of Missionary Work
Early in the film we see someone driving through Beijing in a nice carHe is a good looking serious young man It turns out to be Dabin search-
ing for Xiao Bao his younger brother Dabin walks into a bar looking for
him without success He proceeds to follow one of the money boys into the
bathroom and argues with him saying that he doesnrsquot understand why his
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 450
job is so attractive ldquoHow could it attract you How can you enjoy it without
getting tiredrdquo The money boy calmly responds ldquoThe job has three advan-
tages First you earn money Second freedom Third you can fool aroundwith different peoplerdquo When Dabin aggressively asks if there are any dis-
advantages the money boy responds ldquoFirst you get sick easily Second itrsquos
a waste of condoms and KY jelly Third you donrsquot get enough sleeprdquo Dabin
cries ldquoIf you keep doing this you will get AIDSrdquo Thus opens the third
image-theme the heterosexual Christian evangelist who attempts to convert
money boys
Dabinrsquos idea of conversion conflates normative sexual desire and Chris-
tianity Thus in the next major scene in which he appears he argues with
two money boys telling them that birds in the sky donrsquot sell their bodies
but they have food to eat that lotus flowers donrsquot sell their bodies but they
are beautiful that dogs and earthworms donrsquot sell their bodies but they live
vigorous lives so why should they sell their bodies He then offers to give
them the Bible Cui Zirsquoen was raised as a Catholic in the northeast city of
Dalian In his previous films he took a Derek Jarman approach and made
symbolic Jesus figures suffer the slings and arrows of heterosexual rage He
tried to reconcile homoerotic desire with what he viewed as the true essence
of Catholicism In Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen has taken a distinctive approach
Here he asserts that those who use Christianity to suppress nonnormative
desires have a hopeless case on their hands Moreover the true essence of
Christianity is ambiguous Perhaps it really is a source of oppression ratherthan as in his previous films a potential guide for love
This ambiguity is underscored in the next major scene in which Dabin
attempts to win converts among money boys He is reading the Bible together
with his younger ldquoChristian brotherrdquo Xiao Jian who has also chosen to be a
money boy Xiao Jian appears earnest He asks ldquoDo you think Jesus would
like that I mean would he like the fact that men and women and men and
men and women and women have sexrdquo Dabin responds ldquoMen and menand women and men have sexual relationships That means that God gave
them their sexual desires and afterwards even gave them the ability to have
sex So who gave men and women the ability to have sex God did The
fact that God gave us this ability proves that he allows us to do itrdquo But the
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 451
young man persists ldquoYou said men and women do it for procreation If men
have sex with men they canrsquot procreate How do you explain thisrdquo Dabin
is stumped ldquoI have to turn to the Bible again for this questionrdquoThe moral inconclusiveness of the Bible and the ability to glean multiple
interpretations of desire from it leads the viewer to understand that there is
a distinction between heteronormativity and the normalization of desire
Strikingly Dabin does not condemn these young men for having sex with
other men He does not in other words condemn sexual desire tout court
or even homoerotic desire What he condemns is the exchange of sex for
money
Dabin is passionate in his missionary work In one scene we see him
standing on the bridge where money boys gather Christian Bible held up
high intoning his plea to them ldquoThe end of the world is near and you still
sell your bodiesrdquo No one speaks to him his travails seem fruitless Dabin on
the bridge recalls by contrast the money boys on the bridge But whereas
the money boys were shot in mid-range at wide angle Dabin is shot from
below with a zoom lens that makes him appear more distant as if he is high
up on a pulpit or a cross
Somewhat unexpectedly Dabin takes seriously ill and dies His death
recalls that of Jesus of course dying for othersrsquo sins but there is a distinct
ambiguity in Dabinrsquos death Does he die for othersrsquo sins or has he suffered
under his own illusions Is his the work of a savior or do normalized people
with judgments of others suffer because of their judgmental values Thefilm never resolves this ambiguity
On his deathbed Dabin pleads with his girlfriend to take over his work
to preach the gospel and save male prostitutes She promises to do so and
indeed in the next scene we see her standing on the same bridge holding
up the same Bible intoning monotonously ldquoDonrsquot sell anymorerdquo In the end
the girlfriend also ends up exhausted and sick in bed having similarly sacri-
ficed herself to a hopeless cause
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
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positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 445
straight people who disapprove of them engender Indeed the film is quite
chaste The one scene in which we see two people showing erotic affection
is between the older heterosexual brother of one of the money boys (XiaoBao) whose missionary goal is to convert hustlers and his girlfriend Feed-
ing Boys thus refuses to indulge viewersrsquo scopophilic desires Cui Zirsquoen teases
the viewer from the first scene Watching two men blowing up condoms
and briefly chatting about sex hints at more erotic scenes to come But they
never materialize A condom-balloon is all we ever get By thus tapping into
a gaze desirous for the perverse and then frustrating that desire Cui Zirsquoen
confronts the viewer with the need to think about representation and the
role of representation in normalizing desire mdash both in public discourse and
in his film
In place of the erotic the viewer is offered the stuff of everyday life One
recurrent image as in the first scene is of money boys on a bridge early in
the morning In one scene they playfully engage in ballet-like dance ges-
tures In another one of them displays his acrobatic skills doing severalback flips Later we see these same young men practicing taiji quan (a mar-
tial arts exercise) again early in the morning on the bridge These images
immediately bring to mind the ldquonormalrdquo populace in Chinarsquos cities who go
out each morning to do precisely these group exercises This idea is rein-
forced by the camera angle in these scenes which is a medium wide-angle
shot taking in both the bridge and the surrounding metropolis But the
bridge is also symptomatic of a moment of suspension between directionsin life or between worlds A bridge represents a gap as well as an attempt to
overcome a fissure in the landscape In one telling scene near the end of the
film a money boy begs for money on the bridge pleading with passersby
that he has given up his dissolute life and reformed himself Yet immediately
after we see him with another friend arguing with the Christian mission-
aryrsquos girlfriend stating unequivocally that even though they treated begging
as a ldquorealrdquo job no one wanted to give them money and that in todayrsquos worldpeople respect a prostitute more than a poor person The bridge thus repre-
sents two intertwined passages mdash from a socialist world of time and space
in which citizens had the leisure to do morning exercises and their lives
were not measured by money to a neoliberal world in which wealth is the
only measure of human dignity and no one mdash except those on the outside
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positions 182 Fall 2010 446
of bourgeois respectability mdash has time to spend exercising on a bridge This
passage is intertwined then with a passage from heteronormative relations
of time and space to queer time and space mdash the refusal of the relationshipbetween time work money and desire that neoliberalism has established
Another recurrent scene is of several young men playing in the park
They walk through the park in a desultory manner enjoying the day One
of them has his dog on a leash The dog is obviously well groomed and
well fed Only recently have Beijing residents been allowed to keep pets in
the city Dogs quickly became a key signifier of bourgeois cosmopolitan
accomplishment Why shouldnrsquot money boys be allowed to have them too
In the film the pet belies the idea that money boys lead an unstable dirty
and unreliable life as many believe Moreover it forces open the cluster of
oppositions between respectable and degraded desires in which bourgeois
heterosexual family life goes together with accoutrements like pets while
prostitution is supposed to represent nothing but lack
Other scenes reinforce the sense that money boys are like everyone else inthe way they go about the stuff of everyday life We see them singing in a
karaoke bar playing with a young boy on a playground and having a meal
with their families These young men are portrayed as neither angels nor
demons They are neither ecstatic nor suicidal But the film makes clear that
they live on the margins and have only one another for support
In only a few scenes do these money boys talk about their work But even
here their conversations resemble those of anyone who has ever grumbledabout his or her workplace At one point in the bar for example one of
the money boys tells the other Xiao Bao that his brother (the missionary)
has been looking for him Xiao Bao shakes his head and complains that a
customer has just ripped him off by refusing to pay In another scene in the
park during the daytime one of the money boys complains to the other that
he canrsquot seem to save any money because he always has to buy expensive
clothes to look nice for his customers The other responds that he should besmarter and get the customers to buy the clothes for him He proudly reveals
that he has saved quite a bit of money with which he plans to buy a house
for his mother
The film also playfully satirizes normalized work lives In one scene one
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 447
of the money boys says ldquoWe need structure We have to become profes-
sionalsrdquo Pointing to a gay bar behind him he says ldquoThis is our interna-
tional head officerdquo Another money boy repeats virtually the same wordsbut this time points to a twenty-story high rise building The film shifts to
an eerie scene of colorful masks then quickly to what looks to be a confer-
ence meeting in a bar Someone presumably their boss is taking roll call
They all stand to attention some of them wearing name tags as if at an aca-
demic meeting In this manner Cui Zirsquoen calls into question the relationship
between sex work and desire in China He highlights the instabilities in
how neoliberalism in China has produced social inequalities through trans-
national structures of differentially valued labors But he further demon-
strates the inextricability of sexuality bodies desire and labor To labor for
wealth is supposed to be the foremost desire in a neoliberal world Thus
normalization techniques reduce and embed desire in a structured world
of intensive labor extraction one that produces a capitalist-inflected heter-
onormativity (even as it has a nondeterministic relationship to that heter-onormativity) In other words Cui Zirsquoen deconstructs how the whole person
becomes a commodity in a neoliberal world and how that world while it
fosters desires also robs people of their desires for a full humanity Through
this humorous filmic meditation on desire Cui Zirsquoen thus provides biting
queer commentary on the reduction and devaluation of necessary labor in
postsocialist China
This commentary is most explicit in a scene near the end of the filmwhen the missionaryrsquos girlfriend pleadingly asks several money boys why
they do this work One of them responds with ten reasons ldquoOne you donrsquot
have to be president Two you donrsquot have to be a soldier Three you donrsquot
have to be a farmer and work the land Four you donrsquot have to wash dishes
Five you donrsquot have to marry and have kids Six you donrsquot have to become a
movie star Seven you donrsquot have to be a movie director Eight you donrsquot get
fat Nine you are exploited by others but donrsquot exploit others And ten youdonrsquot die because we use our bodies to satisfy both good and bad peoplersquos
desiresrdquo Through arguments with and about money boys the film thus
creates commentary on how neoliberalism in China appropriates not just
labor-power but the laborer as a desiring subject32 The queer commentary
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 448
of Feeding Boys demonstrates how nonnormative alternatives lie outside of
those temporal and spatial markers of respectable Chinese experience mdash
namely marriage reproduction kinship and death The film thus chal-lenges the oppositions of respectability and shame
Image-Theme 2 How to Become a Money Boy
The thread of this image-theme most explicitly mocks normalizing judg-
ments about desire work class and sex Through this image-theme the
film represents gay male hustling as a profession as honorable as becom-
ing a lawyer or computer scientist In perhaps the most iconic scene in this
regard Feeding Boys stages an argument between Xiao Jian and his parents
that crafts a mimicry of family gatherings to decide the childrenrsquos future33
His parents appear to be respectable middle-class intellectuals The mise-
en-scene is a plushly decorated apartment in which the family lives together
The family is all seated there The father states unequivocally that this kindof work leads nowhere They bemoan the fact that they raised their son for
so many years and gave him the opportunity to do many things with his life
They insist they just want the best for him The parents are oddly calm and
though disgusted do not throw him out of the house Indeed in the next
scene he arrives early in the morning to the apartment stating boldly to his
parents that they arrived home from work earlier than him His mother
asks if he isnrsquot supposed to work the night shift and he responds that he willwork any shift The mother turns to the father and makes the pithy com-
ment ldquoSo we failed to discourage him from this line of workrdquo
In another scene in which Xiao Jian defends to Dabin his reasons for
wanting to become a money boy Cui Zirsquoen crafts a doubled-edged mock-
ery of socialist ideals as well by invoking the old socialist honor of learn-
ing from and serving the masses His satire in this regard cuts in multiple
directions It recalls not just the marginalization but the condemnationand punishment under socialism of those with inappropriate desires But
it also uses those socialist ideals to critique the neoliberal normalization of
the appropriate relationship between labor and desire Xiao Jian initiates an
argument with Dabin when he announces that he too wants to become
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 449
a money boy Xiao Jian is insistent ldquoI want to sell my body like Xiao Bao
[Dabinrsquos brother]rdquo He then explains that when Xiao Bao disappeared he
went to check out the male prostitution business ldquoMost of these youngstersare from villages and from very poor family backgrounds I was born into
a happy family I want to join the hustlers and change their social statusrdquo
Dabin retorts ldquoCan you make those people happy Itrsquos all about making
millionaires officials and rich guys happyrdquo ldquoYou told me that we have to
serve the humble Now I want to become one of themrdquo replies Xiao Jian
ldquoI want to become the lowest of the low together with robbers hooligans
petty thieves ex-convicts homosexuals and hustlers I want to stay at the
bottomrdquo Dabin then launches into classical Chinese metaphors ldquoWater
flows downward but man soars heavenwardrdquo Xiao Jian has an answer to
that as well insisting that man is also part of nature and is also capable of
running downhill ldquoItrsquos only natural and makes things more equalrdquo
The visual logics of this scene provide the ironic counter-commentary
During the entire scene Xiao Jian is fully dressed while we watch Dabin halfnaked as he dresses after a shower The viewer becomes engaged in the erot-
ics of watching Dabin slowly lather lotion over his entire body then pull on
tight-fitting underwear The camera lingers on his well built body By the end
of the scene Dabin is still half naked The erotics of the scene are heightened
by the effect of a mirror that stages Xiao Jian in reverse That is Xiao Jian is
seated to the left of Dabin but we only view him through the mirror where
he appears on Dabinrsquos right while Dabin occupies center stage as the half- naked figure of erotic righteousness The mirror clues us in to a split between
the dialogue and the visual logics This split reflects back to the spectator the
hypocritical contradictions in postsocialist enticements of desire
Image-Theme 3 The Trials and Tribulations of Missionary Work
Early in the film we see someone driving through Beijing in a nice carHe is a good looking serious young man It turns out to be Dabin search-
ing for Xiao Bao his younger brother Dabin walks into a bar looking for
him without success He proceeds to follow one of the money boys into the
bathroom and argues with him saying that he doesnrsquot understand why his
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 450
job is so attractive ldquoHow could it attract you How can you enjoy it without
getting tiredrdquo The money boy calmly responds ldquoThe job has three advan-
tages First you earn money Second freedom Third you can fool aroundwith different peoplerdquo When Dabin aggressively asks if there are any dis-
advantages the money boy responds ldquoFirst you get sick easily Second itrsquos
a waste of condoms and KY jelly Third you donrsquot get enough sleeprdquo Dabin
cries ldquoIf you keep doing this you will get AIDSrdquo Thus opens the third
image-theme the heterosexual Christian evangelist who attempts to convert
money boys
Dabinrsquos idea of conversion conflates normative sexual desire and Chris-
tianity Thus in the next major scene in which he appears he argues with
two money boys telling them that birds in the sky donrsquot sell their bodies
but they have food to eat that lotus flowers donrsquot sell their bodies but they
are beautiful that dogs and earthworms donrsquot sell their bodies but they live
vigorous lives so why should they sell their bodies He then offers to give
them the Bible Cui Zirsquoen was raised as a Catholic in the northeast city of
Dalian In his previous films he took a Derek Jarman approach and made
symbolic Jesus figures suffer the slings and arrows of heterosexual rage He
tried to reconcile homoerotic desire with what he viewed as the true essence
of Catholicism In Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen has taken a distinctive approach
Here he asserts that those who use Christianity to suppress nonnormative
desires have a hopeless case on their hands Moreover the true essence of
Christianity is ambiguous Perhaps it really is a source of oppression ratherthan as in his previous films a potential guide for love
This ambiguity is underscored in the next major scene in which Dabin
attempts to win converts among money boys He is reading the Bible together
with his younger ldquoChristian brotherrdquo Xiao Jian who has also chosen to be a
money boy Xiao Jian appears earnest He asks ldquoDo you think Jesus would
like that I mean would he like the fact that men and women and men and
men and women and women have sexrdquo Dabin responds ldquoMen and menand women and men have sexual relationships That means that God gave
them their sexual desires and afterwards even gave them the ability to have
sex So who gave men and women the ability to have sex God did The
fact that God gave us this ability proves that he allows us to do itrdquo But the
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 451
young man persists ldquoYou said men and women do it for procreation If men
have sex with men they canrsquot procreate How do you explain thisrdquo Dabin
is stumped ldquoI have to turn to the Bible again for this questionrdquoThe moral inconclusiveness of the Bible and the ability to glean multiple
interpretations of desire from it leads the viewer to understand that there is
a distinction between heteronormativity and the normalization of desire
Strikingly Dabin does not condemn these young men for having sex with
other men He does not in other words condemn sexual desire tout court
or even homoerotic desire What he condemns is the exchange of sex for
money
Dabin is passionate in his missionary work In one scene we see him
standing on the bridge where money boys gather Christian Bible held up
high intoning his plea to them ldquoThe end of the world is near and you still
sell your bodiesrdquo No one speaks to him his travails seem fruitless Dabin on
the bridge recalls by contrast the money boys on the bridge But whereas
the money boys were shot in mid-range at wide angle Dabin is shot from
below with a zoom lens that makes him appear more distant as if he is high
up on a pulpit or a cross
Somewhat unexpectedly Dabin takes seriously ill and dies His death
recalls that of Jesus of course dying for othersrsquo sins but there is a distinct
ambiguity in Dabinrsquos death Does he die for othersrsquo sins or has he suffered
under his own illusions Is his the work of a savior or do normalized people
with judgments of others suffer because of their judgmental values Thefilm never resolves this ambiguity
On his deathbed Dabin pleads with his girlfriend to take over his work
to preach the gospel and save male prostitutes She promises to do so and
indeed in the next scene we see her standing on the same bridge holding
up the same Bible intoning monotonously ldquoDonrsquot sell anymorerdquo In the end
the girlfriend also ends up exhausted and sick in bed having similarly sacri-
ficed herself to a hopeless cause
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
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positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
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positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 446
of bourgeois respectability mdash has time to spend exercising on a bridge This
passage is intertwined then with a passage from heteronormative relations
of time and space to queer time and space mdash the refusal of the relationshipbetween time work money and desire that neoliberalism has established
Another recurrent scene is of several young men playing in the park
They walk through the park in a desultory manner enjoying the day One
of them has his dog on a leash The dog is obviously well groomed and
well fed Only recently have Beijing residents been allowed to keep pets in
the city Dogs quickly became a key signifier of bourgeois cosmopolitan
accomplishment Why shouldnrsquot money boys be allowed to have them too
In the film the pet belies the idea that money boys lead an unstable dirty
and unreliable life as many believe Moreover it forces open the cluster of
oppositions between respectable and degraded desires in which bourgeois
heterosexual family life goes together with accoutrements like pets while
prostitution is supposed to represent nothing but lack
Other scenes reinforce the sense that money boys are like everyone else inthe way they go about the stuff of everyday life We see them singing in a
karaoke bar playing with a young boy on a playground and having a meal
with their families These young men are portrayed as neither angels nor
demons They are neither ecstatic nor suicidal But the film makes clear that
they live on the margins and have only one another for support
In only a few scenes do these money boys talk about their work But even
here their conversations resemble those of anyone who has ever grumbledabout his or her workplace At one point in the bar for example one of
the money boys tells the other Xiao Bao that his brother (the missionary)
has been looking for him Xiao Bao shakes his head and complains that a
customer has just ripped him off by refusing to pay In another scene in the
park during the daytime one of the money boys complains to the other that
he canrsquot seem to save any money because he always has to buy expensive
clothes to look nice for his customers The other responds that he should besmarter and get the customers to buy the clothes for him He proudly reveals
that he has saved quite a bit of money with which he plans to buy a house
for his mother
The film also playfully satirizes normalized work lives In one scene one
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 447
of the money boys says ldquoWe need structure We have to become profes-
sionalsrdquo Pointing to a gay bar behind him he says ldquoThis is our interna-
tional head officerdquo Another money boy repeats virtually the same wordsbut this time points to a twenty-story high rise building The film shifts to
an eerie scene of colorful masks then quickly to what looks to be a confer-
ence meeting in a bar Someone presumably their boss is taking roll call
They all stand to attention some of them wearing name tags as if at an aca-
demic meeting In this manner Cui Zirsquoen calls into question the relationship
between sex work and desire in China He highlights the instabilities in
how neoliberalism in China has produced social inequalities through trans-
national structures of differentially valued labors But he further demon-
strates the inextricability of sexuality bodies desire and labor To labor for
wealth is supposed to be the foremost desire in a neoliberal world Thus
normalization techniques reduce and embed desire in a structured world
of intensive labor extraction one that produces a capitalist-inflected heter-
onormativity (even as it has a nondeterministic relationship to that heter-onormativity) In other words Cui Zirsquoen deconstructs how the whole person
becomes a commodity in a neoliberal world and how that world while it
fosters desires also robs people of their desires for a full humanity Through
this humorous filmic meditation on desire Cui Zirsquoen thus provides biting
queer commentary on the reduction and devaluation of necessary labor in
postsocialist China
This commentary is most explicit in a scene near the end of the filmwhen the missionaryrsquos girlfriend pleadingly asks several money boys why
they do this work One of them responds with ten reasons ldquoOne you donrsquot
have to be president Two you donrsquot have to be a soldier Three you donrsquot
have to be a farmer and work the land Four you donrsquot have to wash dishes
Five you donrsquot have to marry and have kids Six you donrsquot have to become a
movie star Seven you donrsquot have to be a movie director Eight you donrsquot get
fat Nine you are exploited by others but donrsquot exploit others And ten youdonrsquot die because we use our bodies to satisfy both good and bad peoplersquos
desiresrdquo Through arguments with and about money boys the film thus
creates commentary on how neoliberalism in China appropriates not just
labor-power but the laborer as a desiring subject32 The queer commentary
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positions 182 Fall 2010 448
of Feeding Boys demonstrates how nonnormative alternatives lie outside of
those temporal and spatial markers of respectable Chinese experience mdash
namely marriage reproduction kinship and death The film thus chal-lenges the oppositions of respectability and shame
Image-Theme 2 How to Become a Money Boy
The thread of this image-theme most explicitly mocks normalizing judg-
ments about desire work class and sex Through this image-theme the
film represents gay male hustling as a profession as honorable as becom-
ing a lawyer or computer scientist In perhaps the most iconic scene in this
regard Feeding Boys stages an argument between Xiao Jian and his parents
that crafts a mimicry of family gatherings to decide the childrenrsquos future33
His parents appear to be respectable middle-class intellectuals The mise-
en-scene is a plushly decorated apartment in which the family lives together
The family is all seated there The father states unequivocally that this kindof work leads nowhere They bemoan the fact that they raised their son for
so many years and gave him the opportunity to do many things with his life
They insist they just want the best for him The parents are oddly calm and
though disgusted do not throw him out of the house Indeed in the next
scene he arrives early in the morning to the apartment stating boldly to his
parents that they arrived home from work earlier than him His mother
asks if he isnrsquot supposed to work the night shift and he responds that he willwork any shift The mother turns to the father and makes the pithy com-
ment ldquoSo we failed to discourage him from this line of workrdquo
In another scene in which Xiao Jian defends to Dabin his reasons for
wanting to become a money boy Cui Zirsquoen crafts a doubled-edged mock-
ery of socialist ideals as well by invoking the old socialist honor of learn-
ing from and serving the masses His satire in this regard cuts in multiple
directions It recalls not just the marginalization but the condemnationand punishment under socialism of those with inappropriate desires But
it also uses those socialist ideals to critique the neoliberal normalization of
the appropriate relationship between labor and desire Xiao Jian initiates an
argument with Dabin when he announces that he too wants to become
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 449
a money boy Xiao Jian is insistent ldquoI want to sell my body like Xiao Bao
[Dabinrsquos brother]rdquo He then explains that when Xiao Bao disappeared he
went to check out the male prostitution business ldquoMost of these youngstersare from villages and from very poor family backgrounds I was born into
a happy family I want to join the hustlers and change their social statusrdquo
Dabin retorts ldquoCan you make those people happy Itrsquos all about making
millionaires officials and rich guys happyrdquo ldquoYou told me that we have to
serve the humble Now I want to become one of themrdquo replies Xiao Jian
ldquoI want to become the lowest of the low together with robbers hooligans
petty thieves ex-convicts homosexuals and hustlers I want to stay at the
bottomrdquo Dabin then launches into classical Chinese metaphors ldquoWater
flows downward but man soars heavenwardrdquo Xiao Jian has an answer to
that as well insisting that man is also part of nature and is also capable of
running downhill ldquoItrsquos only natural and makes things more equalrdquo
The visual logics of this scene provide the ironic counter-commentary
During the entire scene Xiao Jian is fully dressed while we watch Dabin halfnaked as he dresses after a shower The viewer becomes engaged in the erot-
ics of watching Dabin slowly lather lotion over his entire body then pull on
tight-fitting underwear The camera lingers on his well built body By the end
of the scene Dabin is still half naked The erotics of the scene are heightened
by the effect of a mirror that stages Xiao Jian in reverse That is Xiao Jian is
seated to the left of Dabin but we only view him through the mirror where
he appears on Dabinrsquos right while Dabin occupies center stage as the half- naked figure of erotic righteousness The mirror clues us in to a split between
the dialogue and the visual logics This split reflects back to the spectator the
hypocritical contradictions in postsocialist enticements of desire
Image-Theme 3 The Trials and Tribulations of Missionary Work
Early in the film we see someone driving through Beijing in a nice carHe is a good looking serious young man It turns out to be Dabin search-
ing for Xiao Bao his younger brother Dabin walks into a bar looking for
him without success He proceeds to follow one of the money boys into the
bathroom and argues with him saying that he doesnrsquot understand why his
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 450
job is so attractive ldquoHow could it attract you How can you enjoy it without
getting tiredrdquo The money boy calmly responds ldquoThe job has three advan-
tages First you earn money Second freedom Third you can fool aroundwith different peoplerdquo When Dabin aggressively asks if there are any dis-
advantages the money boy responds ldquoFirst you get sick easily Second itrsquos
a waste of condoms and KY jelly Third you donrsquot get enough sleeprdquo Dabin
cries ldquoIf you keep doing this you will get AIDSrdquo Thus opens the third
image-theme the heterosexual Christian evangelist who attempts to convert
money boys
Dabinrsquos idea of conversion conflates normative sexual desire and Chris-
tianity Thus in the next major scene in which he appears he argues with
two money boys telling them that birds in the sky donrsquot sell their bodies
but they have food to eat that lotus flowers donrsquot sell their bodies but they
are beautiful that dogs and earthworms donrsquot sell their bodies but they live
vigorous lives so why should they sell their bodies He then offers to give
them the Bible Cui Zirsquoen was raised as a Catholic in the northeast city of
Dalian In his previous films he took a Derek Jarman approach and made
symbolic Jesus figures suffer the slings and arrows of heterosexual rage He
tried to reconcile homoerotic desire with what he viewed as the true essence
of Catholicism In Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen has taken a distinctive approach
Here he asserts that those who use Christianity to suppress nonnormative
desires have a hopeless case on their hands Moreover the true essence of
Christianity is ambiguous Perhaps it really is a source of oppression ratherthan as in his previous films a potential guide for love
This ambiguity is underscored in the next major scene in which Dabin
attempts to win converts among money boys He is reading the Bible together
with his younger ldquoChristian brotherrdquo Xiao Jian who has also chosen to be a
money boy Xiao Jian appears earnest He asks ldquoDo you think Jesus would
like that I mean would he like the fact that men and women and men and
men and women and women have sexrdquo Dabin responds ldquoMen and menand women and men have sexual relationships That means that God gave
them their sexual desires and afterwards even gave them the ability to have
sex So who gave men and women the ability to have sex God did The
fact that God gave us this ability proves that he allows us to do itrdquo But the
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 451
young man persists ldquoYou said men and women do it for procreation If men
have sex with men they canrsquot procreate How do you explain thisrdquo Dabin
is stumped ldquoI have to turn to the Bible again for this questionrdquoThe moral inconclusiveness of the Bible and the ability to glean multiple
interpretations of desire from it leads the viewer to understand that there is
a distinction between heteronormativity and the normalization of desire
Strikingly Dabin does not condemn these young men for having sex with
other men He does not in other words condemn sexual desire tout court
or even homoerotic desire What he condemns is the exchange of sex for
money
Dabin is passionate in his missionary work In one scene we see him
standing on the bridge where money boys gather Christian Bible held up
high intoning his plea to them ldquoThe end of the world is near and you still
sell your bodiesrdquo No one speaks to him his travails seem fruitless Dabin on
the bridge recalls by contrast the money boys on the bridge But whereas
the money boys were shot in mid-range at wide angle Dabin is shot from
below with a zoom lens that makes him appear more distant as if he is high
up on a pulpit or a cross
Somewhat unexpectedly Dabin takes seriously ill and dies His death
recalls that of Jesus of course dying for othersrsquo sins but there is a distinct
ambiguity in Dabinrsquos death Does he die for othersrsquo sins or has he suffered
under his own illusions Is his the work of a savior or do normalized people
with judgments of others suffer because of their judgmental values Thefilm never resolves this ambiguity
On his deathbed Dabin pleads with his girlfriend to take over his work
to preach the gospel and save male prostitutes She promises to do so and
indeed in the next scene we see her standing on the same bridge holding
up the same Bible intoning monotonously ldquoDonrsquot sell anymorerdquo In the end
the girlfriend also ends up exhausted and sick in bed having similarly sacri-
ficed herself to a hopeless cause
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
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positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 447
of the money boys says ldquoWe need structure We have to become profes-
sionalsrdquo Pointing to a gay bar behind him he says ldquoThis is our interna-
tional head officerdquo Another money boy repeats virtually the same wordsbut this time points to a twenty-story high rise building The film shifts to
an eerie scene of colorful masks then quickly to what looks to be a confer-
ence meeting in a bar Someone presumably their boss is taking roll call
They all stand to attention some of them wearing name tags as if at an aca-
demic meeting In this manner Cui Zirsquoen calls into question the relationship
between sex work and desire in China He highlights the instabilities in
how neoliberalism in China has produced social inequalities through trans-
national structures of differentially valued labors But he further demon-
strates the inextricability of sexuality bodies desire and labor To labor for
wealth is supposed to be the foremost desire in a neoliberal world Thus
normalization techniques reduce and embed desire in a structured world
of intensive labor extraction one that produces a capitalist-inflected heter-
onormativity (even as it has a nondeterministic relationship to that heter-onormativity) In other words Cui Zirsquoen deconstructs how the whole person
becomes a commodity in a neoliberal world and how that world while it
fosters desires also robs people of their desires for a full humanity Through
this humorous filmic meditation on desire Cui Zirsquoen thus provides biting
queer commentary on the reduction and devaluation of necessary labor in
postsocialist China
This commentary is most explicit in a scene near the end of the filmwhen the missionaryrsquos girlfriend pleadingly asks several money boys why
they do this work One of them responds with ten reasons ldquoOne you donrsquot
have to be president Two you donrsquot have to be a soldier Three you donrsquot
have to be a farmer and work the land Four you donrsquot have to wash dishes
Five you donrsquot have to marry and have kids Six you donrsquot have to become a
movie star Seven you donrsquot have to be a movie director Eight you donrsquot get
fat Nine you are exploited by others but donrsquot exploit others And ten youdonrsquot die because we use our bodies to satisfy both good and bad peoplersquos
desiresrdquo Through arguments with and about money boys the film thus
creates commentary on how neoliberalism in China appropriates not just
labor-power but the laborer as a desiring subject32 The queer commentary
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 448
of Feeding Boys demonstrates how nonnormative alternatives lie outside of
those temporal and spatial markers of respectable Chinese experience mdash
namely marriage reproduction kinship and death The film thus chal-lenges the oppositions of respectability and shame
Image-Theme 2 How to Become a Money Boy
The thread of this image-theme most explicitly mocks normalizing judg-
ments about desire work class and sex Through this image-theme the
film represents gay male hustling as a profession as honorable as becom-
ing a lawyer or computer scientist In perhaps the most iconic scene in this
regard Feeding Boys stages an argument between Xiao Jian and his parents
that crafts a mimicry of family gatherings to decide the childrenrsquos future33
His parents appear to be respectable middle-class intellectuals The mise-
en-scene is a plushly decorated apartment in which the family lives together
The family is all seated there The father states unequivocally that this kindof work leads nowhere They bemoan the fact that they raised their son for
so many years and gave him the opportunity to do many things with his life
They insist they just want the best for him The parents are oddly calm and
though disgusted do not throw him out of the house Indeed in the next
scene he arrives early in the morning to the apartment stating boldly to his
parents that they arrived home from work earlier than him His mother
asks if he isnrsquot supposed to work the night shift and he responds that he willwork any shift The mother turns to the father and makes the pithy com-
ment ldquoSo we failed to discourage him from this line of workrdquo
In another scene in which Xiao Jian defends to Dabin his reasons for
wanting to become a money boy Cui Zirsquoen crafts a doubled-edged mock-
ery of socialist ideals as well by invoking the old socialist honor of learn-
ing from and serving the masses His satire in this regard cuts in multiple
directions It recalls not just the marginalization but the condemnationand punishment under socialism of those with inappropriate desires But
it also uses those socialist ideals to critique the neoliberal normalization of
the appropriate relationship between labor and desire Xiao Jian initiates an
argument with Dabin when he announces that he too wants to become
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 449
a money boy Xiao Jian is insistent ldquoI want to sell my body like Xiao Bao
[Dabinrsquos brother]rdquo He then explains that when Xiao Bao disappeared he
went to check out the male prostitution business ldquoMost of these youngstersare from villages and from very poor family backgrounds I was born into
a happy family I want to join the hustlers and change their social statusrdquo
Dabin retorts ldquoCan you make those people happy Itrsquos all about making
millionaires officials and rich guys happyrdquo ldquoYou told me that we have to
serve the humble Now I want to become one of themrdquo replies Xiao Jian
ldquoI want to become the lowest of the low together with robbers hooligans
petty thieves ex-convicts homosexuals and hustlers I want to stay at the
bottomrdquo Dabin then launches into classical Chinese metaphors ldquoWater
flows downward but man soars heavenwardrdquo Xiao Jian has an answer to
that as well insisting that man is also part of nature and is also capable of
running downhill ldquoItrsquos only natural and makes things more equalrdquo
The visual logics of this scene provide the ironic counter-commentary
During the entire scene Xiao Jian is fully dressed while we watch Dabin halfnaked as he dresses after a shower The viewer becomes engaged in the erot-
ics of watching Dabin slowly lather lotion over his entire body then pull on
tight-fitting underwear The camera lingers on his well built body By the end
of the scene Dabin is still half naked The erotics of the scene are heightened
by the effect of a mirror that stages Xiao Jian in reverse That is Xiao Jian is
seated to the left of Dabin but we only view him through the mirror where
he appears on Dabinrsquos right while Dabin occupies center stage as the half- naked figure of erotic righteousness The mirror clues us in to a split between
the dialogue and the visual logics This split reflects back to the spectator the
hypocritical contradictions in postsocialist enticements of desire
Image-Theme 3 The Trials and Tribulations of Missionary Work
Early in the film we see someone driving through Beijing in a nice carHe is a good looking serious young man It turns out to be Dabin search-
ing for Xiao Bao his younger brother Dabin walks into a bar looking for
him without success He proceeds to follow one of the money boys into the
bathroom and argues with him saying that he doesnrsquot understand why his
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 450
job is so attractive ldquoHow could it attract you How can you enjoy it without
getting tiredrdquo The money boy calmly responds ldquoThe job has three advan-
tages First you earn money Second freedom Third you can fool aroundwith different peoplerdquo When Dabin aggressively asks if there are any dis-
advantages the money boy responds ldquoFirst you get sick easily Second itrsquos
a waste of condoms and KY jelly Third you donrsquot get enough sleeprdquo Dabin
cries ldquoIf you keep doing this you will get AIDSrdquo Thus opens the third
image-theme the heterosexual Christian evangelist who attempts to convert
money boys
Dabinrsquos idea of conversion conflates normative sexual desire and Chris-
tianity Thus in the next major scene in which he appears he argues with
two money boys telling them that birds in the sky donrsquot sell their bodies
but they have food to eat that lotus flowers donrsquot sell their bodies but they
are beautiful that dogs and earthworms donrsquot sell their bodies but they live
vigorous lives so why should they sell their bodies He then offers to give
them the Bible Cui Zirsquoen was raised as a Catholic in the northeast city of
Dalian In his previous films he took a Derek Jarman approach and made
symbolic Jesus figures suffer the slings and arrows of heterosexual rage He
tried to reconcile homoerotic desire with what he viewed as the true essence
of Catholicism In Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen has taken a distinctive approach
Here he asserts that those who use Christianity to suppress nonnormative
desires have a hopeless case on their hands Moreover the true essence of
Christianity is ambiguous Perhaps it really is a source of oppression ratherthan as in his previous films a potential guide for love
This ambiguity is underscored in the next major scene in which Dabin
attempts to win converts among money boys He is reading the Bible together
with his younger ldquoChristian brotherrdquo Xiao Jian who has also chosen to be a
money boy Xiao Jian appears earnest He asks ldquoDo you think Jesus would
like that I mean would he like the fact that men and women and men and
men and women and women have sexrdquo Dabin responds ldquoMen and menand women and men have sexual relationships That means that God gave
them their sexual desires and afterwards even gave them the ability to have
sex So who gave men and women the ability to have sex God did The
fact that God gave us this ability proves that he allows us to do itrdquo But the
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 451
young man persists ldquoYou said men and women do it for procreation If men
have sex with men they canrsquot procreate How do you explain thisrdquo Dabin
is stumped ldquoI have to turn to the Bible again for this questionrdquoThe moral inconclusiveness of the Bible and the ability to glean multiple
interpretations of desire from it leads the viewer to understand that there is
a distinction between heteronormativity and the normalization of desire
Strikingly Dabin does not condemn these young men for having sex with
other men He does not in other words condemn sexual desire tout court
or even homoerotic desire What he condemns is the exchange of sex for
money
Dabin is passionate in his missionary work In one scene we see him
standing on the bridge where money boys gather Christian Bible held up
high intoning his plea to them ldquoThe end of the world is near and you still
sell your bodiesrdquo No one speaks to him his travails seem fruitless Dabin on
the bridge recalls by contrast the money boys on the bridge But whereas
the money boys were shot in mid-range at wide angle Dabin is shot from
below with a zoom lens that makes him appear more distant as if he is high
up on a pulpit or a cross
Somewhat unexpectedly Dabin takes seriously ill and dies His death
recalls that of Jesus of course dying for othersrsquo sins but there is a distinct
ambiguity in Dabinrsquos death Does he die for othersrsquo sins or has he suffered
under his own illusions Is his the work of a savior or do normalized people
with judgments of others suffer because of their judgmental values Thefilm never resolves this ambiguity
On his deathbed Dabin pleads with his girlfriend to take over his work
to preach the gospel and save male prostitutes She promises to do so and
indeed in the next scene we see her standing on the same bridge holding
up the same Bible intoning monotonously ldquoDonrsquot sell anymorerdquo In the end
the girlfriend also ends up exhausted and sick in bed having similarly sacri-
ficed herself to a hopeless cause
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 2934
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3334
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
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positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 448
of Feeding Boys demonstrates how nonnormative alternatives lie outside of
those temporal and spatial markers of respectable Chinese experience mdash
namely marriage reproduction kinship and death The film thus chal-lenges the oppositions of respectability and shame
Image-Theme 2 How to Become a Money Boy
The thread of this image-theme most explicitly mocks normalizing judg-
ments about desire work class and sex Through this image-theme the
film represents gay male hustling as a profession as honorable as becom-
ing a lawyer or computer scientist In perhaps the most iconic scene in this
regard Feeding Boys stages an argument between Xiao Jian and his parents
that crafts a mimicry of family gatherings to decide the childrenrsquos future33
His parents appear to be respectable middle-class intellectuals The mise-
en-scene is a plushly decorated apartment in which the family lives together
The family is all seated there The father states unequivocally that this kindof work leads nowhere They bemoan the fact that they raised their son for
so many years and gave him the opportunity to do many things with his life
They insist they just want the best for him The parents are oddly calm and
though disgusted do not throw him out of the house Indeed in the next
scene he arrives early in the morning to the apartment stating boldly to his
parents that they arrived home from work earlier than him His mother
asks if he isnrsquot supposed to work the night shift and he responds that he willwork any shift The mother turns to the father and makes the pithy com-
ment ldquoSo we failed to discourage him from this line of workrdquo
In another scene in which Xiao Jian defends to Dabin his reasons for
wanting to become a money boy Cui Zirsquoen crafts a doubled-edged mock-
ery of socialist ideals as well by invoking the old socialist honor of learn-
ing from and serving the masses His satire in this regard cuts in multiple
directions It recalls not just the marginalization but the condemnationand punishment under socialism of those with inappropriate desires But
it also uses those socialist ideals to critique the neoliberal normalization of
the appropriate relationship between labor and desire Xiao Jian initiates an
argument with Dabin when he announces that he too wants to become
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 449
a money boy Xiao Jian is insistent ldquoI want to sell my body like Xiao Bao
[Dabinrsquos brother]rdquo He then explains that when Xiao Bao disappeared he
went to check out the male prostitution business ldquoMost of these youngstersare from villages and from very poor family backgrounds I was born into
a happy family I want to join the hustlers and change their social statusrdquo
Dabin retorts ldquoCan you make those people happy Itrsquos all about making
millionaires officials and rich guys happyrdquo ldquoYou told me that we have to
serve the humble Now I want to become one of themrdquo replies Xiao Jian
ldquoI want to become the lowest of the low together with robbers hooligans
petty thieves ex-convicts homosexuals and hustlers I want to stay at the
bottomrdquo Dabin then launches into classical Chinese metaphors ldquoWater
flows downward but man soars heavenwardrdquo Xiao Jian has an answer to
that as well insisting that man is also part of nature and is also capable of
running downhill ldquoItrsquos only natural and makes things more equalrdquo
The visual logics of this scene provide the ironic counter-commentary
During the entire scene Xiao Jian is fully dressed while we watch Dabin halfnaked as he dresses after a shower The viewer becomes engaged in the erot-
ics of watching Dabin slowly lather lotion over his entire body then pull on
tight-fitting underwear The camera lingers on his well built body By the end
of the scene Dabin is still half naked The erotics of the scene are heightened
by the effect of a mirror that stages Xiao Jian in reverse That is Xiao Jian is
seated to the left of Dabin but we only view him through the mirror where
he appears on Dabinrsquos right while Dabin occupies center stage as the half- naked figure of erotic righteousness The mirror clues us in to a split between
the dialogue and the visual logics This split reflects back to the spectator the
hypocritical contradictions in postsocialist enticements of desire
Image-Theme 3 The Trials and Tribulations of Missionary Work
Early in the film we see someone driving through Beijing in a nice carHe is a good looking serious young man It turns out to be Dabin search-
ing for Xiao Bao his younger brother Dabin walks into a bar looking for
him without success He proceeds to follow one of the money boys into the
bathroom and argues with him saying that he doesnrsquot understand why his
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 450
job is so attractive ldquoHow could it attract you How can you enjoy it without
getting tiredrdquo The money boy calmly responds ldquoThe job has three advan-
tages First you earn money Second freedom Third you can fool aroundwith different peoplerdquo When Dabin aggressively asks if there are any dis-
advantages the money boy responds ldquoFirst you get sick easily Second itrsquos
a waste of condoms and KY jelly Third you donrsquot get enough sleeprdquo Dabin
cries ldquoIf you keep doing this you will get AIDSrdquo Thus opens the third
image-theme the heterosexual Christian evangelist who attempts to convert
money boys
Dabinrsquos idea of conversion conflates normative sexual desire and Chris-
tianity Thus in the next major scene in which he appears he argues with
two money boys telling them that birds in the sky donrsquot sell their bodies
but they have food to eat that lotus flowers donrsquot sell their bodies but they
are beautiful that dogs and earthworms donrsquot sell their bodies but they live
vigorous lives so why should they sell their bodies He then offers to give
them the Bible Cui Zirsquoen was raised as a Catholic in the northeast city of
Dalian In his previous films he took a Derek Jarman approach and made
symbolic Jesus figures suffer the slings and arrows of heterosexual rage He
tried to reconcile homoerotic desire with what he viewed as the true essence
of Catholicism In Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen has taken a distinctive approach
Here he asserts that those who use Christianity to suppress nonnormative
desires have a hopeless case on their hands Moreover the true essence of
Christianity is ambiguous Perhaps it really is a source of oppression ratherthan as in his previous films a potential guide for love
This ambiguity is underscored in the next major scene in which Dabin
attempts to win converts among money boys He is reading the Bible together
with his younger ldquoChristian brotherrdquo Xiao Jian who has also chosen to be a
money boy Xiao Jian appears earnest He asks ldquoDo you think Jesus would
like that I mean would he like the fact that men and women and men and
men and women and women have sexrdquo Dabin responds ldquoMen and menand women and men have sexual relationships That means that God gave
them their sexual desires and afterwards even gave them the ability to have
sex So who gave men and women the ability to have sex God did The
fact that God gave us this ability proves that he allows us to do itrdquo But the
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 451
young man persists ldquoYou said men and women do it for procreation If men
have sex with men they canrsquot procreate How do you explain thisrdquo Dabin
is stumped ldquoI have to turn to the Bible again for this questionrdquoThe moral inconclusiveness of the Bible and the ability to glean multiple
interpretations of desire from it leads the viewer to understand that there is
a distinction between heteronormativity and the normalization of desire
Strikingly Dabin does not condemn these young men for having sex with
other men He does not in other words condemn sexual desire tout court
or even homoerotic desire What he condemns is the exchange of sex for
money
Dabin is passionate in his missionary work In one scene we see him
standing on the bridge where money boys gather Christian Bible held up
high intoning his plea to them ldquoThe end of the world is near and you still
sell your bodiesrdquo No one speaks to him his travails seem fruitless Dabin on
the bridge recalls by contrast the money boys on the bridge But whereas
the money boys were shot in mid-range at wide angle Dabin is shot from
below with a zoom lens that makes him appear more distant as if he is high
up on a pulpit or a cross
Somewhat unexpectedly Dabin takes seriously ill and dies His death
recalls that of Jesus of course dying for othersrsquo sins but there is a distinct
ambiguity in Dabinrsquos death Does he die for othersrsquo sins or has he suffered
under his own illusions Is his the work of a savior or do normalized people
with judgments of others suffer because of their judgmental values Thefilm never resolves this ambiguity
On his deathbed Dabin pleads with his girlfriend to take over his work
to preach the gospel and save male prostitutes She promises to do so and
indeed in the next scene we see her standing on the same bridge holding
up the same Bible intoning monotonously ldquoDonrsquot sell anymorerdquo In the end
the girlfriend also ends up exhausted and sick in bed having similarly sacri-
ficed herself to a hopeless cause
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3034
positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3134
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3234
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3334
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3434
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 2534
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 449
a money boy Xiao Jian is insistent ldquoI want to sell my body like Xiao Bao
[Dabinrsquos brother]rdquo He then explains that when Xiao Bao disappeared he
went to check out the male prostitution business ldquoMost of these youngstersare from villages and from very poor family backgrounds I was born into
a happy family I want to join the hustlers and change their social statusrdquo
Dabin retorts ldquoCan you make those people happy Itrsquos all about making
millionaires officials and rich guys happyrdquo ldquoYou told me that we have to
serve the humble Now I want to become one of themrdquo replies Xiao Jian
ldquoI want to become the lowest of the low together with robbers hooligans
petty thieves ex-convicts homosexuals and hustlers I want to stay at the
bottomrdquo Dabin then launches into classical Chinese metaphors ldquoWater
flows downward but man soars heavenwardrdquo Xiao Jian has an answer to
that as well insisting that man is also part of nature and is also capable of
running downhill ldquoItrsquos only natural and makes things more equalrdquo
The visual logics of this scene provide the ironic counter-commentary
During the entire scene Xiao Jian is fully dressed while we watch Dabin halfnaked as he dresses after a shower The viewer becomes engaged in the erot-
ics of watching Dabin slowly lather lotion over his entire body then pull on
tight-fitting underwear The camera lingers on his well built body By the end
of the scene Dabin is still half naked The erotics of the scene are heightened
by the effect of a mirror that stages Xiao Jian in reverse That is Xiao Jian is
seated to the left of Dabin but we only view him through the mirror where
he appears on Dabinrsquos right while Dabin occupies center stage as the half- naked figure of erotic righteousness The mirror clues us in to a split between
the dialogue and the visual logics This split reflects back to the spectator the
hypocritical contradictions in postsocialist enticements of desire
Image-Theme 3 The Trials and Tribulations of Missionary Work
Early in the film we see someone driving through Beijing in a nice carHe is a good looking serious young man It turns out to be Dabin search-
ing for Xiao Bao his younger brother Dabin walks into a bar looking for
him without success He proceeds to follow one of the money boys into the
bathroom and argues with him saying that he doesnrsquot understand why his
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 450
job is so attractive ldquoHow could it attract you How can you enjoy it without
getting tiredrdquo The money boy calmly responds ldquoThe job has three advan-
tages First you earn money Second freedom Third you can fool aroundwith different peoplerdquo When Dabin aggressively asks if there are any dis-
advantages the money boy responds ldquoFirst you get sick easily Second itrsquos
a waste of condoms and KY jelly Third you donrsquot get enough sleeprdquo Dabin
cries ldquoIf you keep doing this you will get AIDSrdquo Thus opens the third
image-theme the heterosexual Christian evangelist who attempts to convert
money boys
Dabinrsquos idea of conversion conflates normative sexual desire and Chris-
tianity Thus in the next major scene in which he appears he argues with
two money boys telling them that birds in the sky donrsquot sell their bodies
but they have food to eat that lotus flowers donrsquot sell their bodies but they
are beautiful that dogs and earthworms donrsquot sell their bodies but they live
vigorous lives so why should they sell their bodies He then offers to give
them the Bible Cui Zirsquoen was raised as a Catholic in the northeast city of
Dalian In his previous films he took a Derek Jarman approach and made
symbolic Jesus figures suffer the slings and arrows of heterosexual rage He
tried to reconcile homoerotic desire with what he viewed as the true essence
of Catholicism In Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen has taken a distinctive approach
Here he asserts that those who use Christianity to suppress nonnormative
desires have a hopeless case on their hands Moreover the true essence of
Christianity is ambiguous Perhaps it really is a source of oppression ratherthan as in his previous films a potential guide for love
This ambiguity is underscored in the next major scene in which Dabin
attempts to win converts among money boys He is reading the Bible together
with his younger ldquoChristian brotherrdquo Xiao Jian who has also chosen to be a
money boy Xiao Jian appears earnest He asks ldquoDo you think Jesus would
like that I mean would he like the fact that men and women and men and
men and women and women have sexrdquo Dabin responds ldquoMen and menand women and men have sexual relationships That means that God gave
them their sexual desires and afterwards even gave them the ability to have
sex So who gave men and women the ability to have sex God did The
fact that God gave us this ability proves that he allows us to do itrdquo But the
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 451
young man persists ldquoYou said men and women do it for procreation If men
have sex with men they canrsquot procreate How do you explain thisrdquo Dabin
is stumped ldquoI have to turn to the Bible again for this questionrdquoThe moral inconclusiveness of the Bible and the ability to glean multiple
interpretations of desire from it leads the viewer to understand that there is
a distinction between heteronormativity and the normalization of desire
Strikingly Dabin does not condemn these young men for having sex with
other men He does not in other words condemn sexual desire tout court
or even homoerotic desire What he condemns is the exchange of sex for
money
Dabin is passionate in his missionary work In one scene we see him
standing on the bridge where money boys gather Christian Bible held up
high intoning his plea to them ldquoThe end of the world is near and you still
sell your bodiesrdquo No one speaks to him his travails seem fruitless Dabin on
the bridge recalls by contrast the money boys on the bridge But whereas
the money boys were shot in mid-range at wide angle Dabin is shot from
below with a zoom lens that makes him appear more distant as if he is high
up on a pulpit or a cross
Somewhat unexpectedly Dabin takes seriously ill and dies His death
recalls that of Jesus of course dying for othersrsquo sins but there is a distinct
ambiguity in Dabinrsquos death Does he die for othersrsquo sins or has he suffered
under his own illusions Is his the work of a savior or do normalized people
with judgments of others suffer because of their judgmental values Thefilm never resolves this ambiguity
On his deathbed Dabin pleads with his girlfriend to take over his work
to preach the gospel and save male prostitutes She promises to do so and
indeed in the next scene we see her standing on the same bridge holding
up the same Bible intoning monotonously ldquoDonrsquot sell anymorerdquo In the end
the girlfriend also ends up exhausted and sick in bed having similarly sacri-
ficed herself to a hopeless cause
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
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positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 2934
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3034
positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3134
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3234
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3334
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3434
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 2634
positions 182 Fall 2010 450
job is so attractive ldquoHow could it attract you How can you enjoy it without
getting tiredrdquo The money boy calmly responds ldquoThe job has three advan-
tages First you earn money Second freedom Third you can fool aroundwith different peoplerdquo When Dabin aggressively asks if there are any dis-
advantages the money boy responds ldquoFirst you get sick easily Second itrsquos
a waste of condoms and KY jelly Third you donrsquot get enough sleeprdquo Dabin
cries ldquoIf you keep doing this you will get AIDSrdquo Thus opens the third
image-theme the heterosexual Christian evangelist who attempts to convert
money boys
Dabinrsquos idea of conversion conflates normative sexual desire and Chris-
tianity Thus in the next major scene in which he appears he argues with
two money boys telling them that birds in the sky donrsquot sell their bodies
but they have food to eat that lotus flowers donrsquot sell their bodies but they
are beautiful that dogs and earthworms donrsquot sell their bodies but they live
vigorous lives so why should they sell their bodies He then offers to give
them the Bible Cui Zirsquoen was raised as a Catholic in the northeast city of
Dalian In his previous films he took a Derek Jarman approach and made
symbolic Jesus figures suffer the slings and arrows of heterosexual rage He
tried to reconcile homoerotic desire with what he viewed as the true essence
of Catholicism In Feeding Boys Cui Zirsquoen has taken a distinctive approach
Here he asserts that those who use Christianity to suppress nonnormative
desires have a hopeless case on their hands Moreover the true essence of
Christianity is ambiguous Perhaps it really is a source of oppression ratherthan as in his previous films a potential guide for love
This ambiguity is underscored in the next major scene in which Dabin
attempts to win converts among money boys He is reading the Bible together
with his younger ldquoChristian brotherrdquo Xiao Jian who has also chosen to be a
money boy Xiao Jian appears earnest He asks ldquoDo you think Jesus would
like that I mean would he like the fact that men and women and men and
men and women and women have sexrdquo Dabin responds ldquoMen and menand women and men have sexual relationships That means that God gave
them their sexual desires and afterwards even gave them the ability to have
sex So who gave men and women the ability to have sex God did The
fact that God gave us this ability proves that he allows us to do itrdquo But the
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 2734
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 451
young man persists ldquoYou said men and women do it for procreation If men
have sex with men they canrsquot procreate How do you explain thisrdquo Dabin
is stumped ldquoI have to turn to the Bible again for this questionrdquoThe moral inconclusiveness of the Bible and the ability to glean multiple
interpretations of desire from it leads the viewer to understand that there is
a distinction between heteronormativity and the normalization of desire
Strikingly Dabin does not condemn these young men for having sex with
other men He does not in other words condemn sexual desire tout court
or even homoerotic desire What he condemns is the exchange of sex for
money
Dabin is passionate in his missionary work In one scene we see him
standing on the bridge where money boys gather Christian Bible held up
high intoning his plea to them ldquoThe end of the world is near and you still
sell your bodiesrdquo No one speaks to him his travails seem fruitless Dabin on
the bridge recalls by contrast the money boys on the bridge But whereas
the money boys were shot in mid-range at wide angle Dabin is shot from
below with a zoom lens that makes him appear more distant as if he is high
up on a pulpit or a cross
Somewhat unexpectedly Dabin takes seriously ill and dies His death
recalls that of Jesus of course dying for othersrsquo sins but there is a distinct
ambiguity in Dabinrsquos death Does he die for othersrsquo sins or has he suffered
under his own illusions Is his the work of a savior or do normalized people
with judgments of others suffer because of their judgmental values Thefilm never resolves this ambiguity
On his deathbed Dabin pleads with his girlfriend to take over his work
to preach the gospel and save male prostitutes She promises to do so and
indeed in the next scene we see her standing on the same bridge holding
up the same Bible intoning monotonously ldquoDonrsquot sell anymorerdquo In the end
the girlfriend also ends up exhausted and sick in bed having similarly sacri-
ficed herself to a hopeless cause
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 2834
positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 2934
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3034
positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3134
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3234
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3334
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3434
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 2734
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 451
young man persists ldquoYou said men and women do it for procreation If men
have sex with men they canrsquot procreate How do you explain thisrdquo Dabin
is stumped ldquoI have to turn to the Bible again for this questionrdquoThe moral inconclusiveness of the Bible and the ability to glean multiple
interpretations of desire from it leads the viewer to understand that there is
a distinction between heteronormativity and the normalization of desire
Strikingly Dabin does not condemn these young men for having sex with
other men He does not in other words condemn sexual desire tout court
or even homoerotic desire What he condemns is the exchange of sex for
money
Dabin is passionate in his missionary work In one scene we see him
standing on the bridge where money boys gather Christian Bible held up
high intoning his plea to them ldquoThe end of the world is near and you still
sell your bodiesrdquo No one speaks to him his travails seem fruitless Dabin on
the bridge recalls by contrast the money boys on the bridge But whereas
the money boys were shot in mid-range at wide angle Dabin is shot from
below with a zoom lens that makes him appear more distant as if he is high
up on a pulpit or a cross
Somewhat unexpectedly Dabin takes seriously ill and dies His death
recalls that of Jesus of course dying for othersrsquo sins but there is a distinct
ambiguity in Dabinrsquos death Does he die for othersrsquo sins or has he suffered
under his own illusions Is his the work of a savior or do normalized people
with judgments of others suffer because of their judgmental values Thefilm never resolves this ambiguity
On his deathbed Dabin pleads with his girlfriend to take over his work
to preach the gospel and save male prostitutes She promises to do so and
indeed in the next scene we see her standing on the same bridge holding
up the same Bible intoning monotonously ldquoDonrsquot sell anymorerdquo In the end
the girlfriend also ends up exhausted and sick in bed having similarly sacri-
ficed herself to a hopeless cause
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 2834
positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 2934
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3034
positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3134
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3234
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3334
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3434
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 2834
positions 182 Fall 2010 452
Image-Theme 4 Others Representing Money Boys
The final image-theme is a minor chord threaded through the film Thisis the filmmaker trying to represent money boys As discussed earlier he
is repeatedly shown sitting in his study talking to one of the money boys
Zaizai Dressed as an intellectual artist he pompously pronounces that the
theme music he has chosen for the film is for Zaizai But in a later scene
Zaizai now standing directly behind the filmmaker asks if this theme music
is just for him or one he can share with his girlfriend The filmmaker gets
annoyed implying that Zaizairsquos request will disrupt his own ideas The nexttime we see them the filmmaker complains that the theme is now all wrong
and ldquois not mine anymorerdquo When we see them together yet again Zaizai is
forthright The filmmaker says the theme music was created especially for
Zaizai but Zaizai responds that he does not want it He insists that he be
the one to choose the music The filmmaker says there is only this one theme
that fits but Zaizai insists again Their disagreement is left unresolved
With this fourth image-theme Cui Zirsquoen reminds us that his film partici-pates in rather than stands apart from the dialogue about how to represent
money boys Filmic representation does not establish unmediated truth At
one level the opposition between the filmmaker in front of the camera and
the one behind it mdash Cui Zirsquoen mdash seems obvious as Cui Zirsquoen clearly dis-
tances himself in his own film from the kind of condescension he portrays
in the filmmaker character Yet curiously Feeding Boys threads the very
theme music the filmmaker character had written for his filmrsquos money boycharacter throughout the film This final blurring of boundaries forces us to
ponder yet again the question of representation The consistent use of mir-
rors throughout the film in which the various characters view their reflec-
tions further pushes us to reflect on how money boys are seen versus how
they see themselves The sparse but telling dialogue between Zaizai and
the filmmaker alludes to the fact that even seemingly sympathetic cultural
producers can also exploit their subjects
The two ldquoscenesrdquo I have presented in this essay exemplify the instabilities
in establishing the proper kind of desiring subject who can carry forth a
neoliberal future for China These instabilities make it difficult to draw
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 2934
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3034
positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3134
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3234
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3334
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3434
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 2934
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 453
effective exclusionary boundaries They make it difficult to create a clear
ldquooutsiderdquo in which particular subjects are deemed incapable of embodying
desires properly or are condemned for displaying passions that turn theminto persons with low quality ( suzhi)34 Neoliberalism has created powerful
and murderous exclusions But in China it has also opened up an imagina-
tive field in which people are encouraged to experiment with desire ldquoDesirerdquo
has been given the weighty task of ridding China of historical constraints
and of creating a new cosmopolitan human nature To be successful the
social practices of desire cannot be fully confined in advance The figure of
the money boy captures this ambivalence and instability This figure mdash we
might say the money boy as signifier mdash blurs the line between sex for money
and sex for love Do money boys pervert what otherwise should be the per-
fectly acceptable desire to have an erotic interchange with men by bringing
it into the impure world of commodification and money The discourse
among gay men about money boys locates an anxiety about the ldquomoney boyrdquo
as a production of the market economy Instead of positing an economy pro-
duced to serve the various desires and needs of individuals the money boy
makes visible the possibility that this is an economy that produces individu-
als to serve the needs of capital accumulation In this regard the figure of
the money boy reveals the prospect that the so-called respectable gay identity
has actually been subjectified with the meanings and effects of the domi-
nant neoliberal order of signification That is perhaps the respectable gay
identity has been misrecognized and is actually more intricately embeddedin a commodified world of labor and desire than that of the money boy In
one of the final lines of Feeding Boys one of the money boy characters com-
ments laconically ldquoIf we fart the black clouds of history are blown away
One ejaculation and the earth tremblesrdquo In this manner queer cultural pro-
ductions such as Cui Zirsquoenrsquos Feeding Boys Ayaya and self-reflective narratives
like that of Ah Pei seek other routes to freedom in our desires
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3034
positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3134
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3234
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3334
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3434
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3034
positions 182 Fall 2010 454
Notes
My deep appreciation goes to Petrus Liu for his brilliant work on this special issue and to
the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my essay and incisive suggestions
for revision I would also like to thank those who gave me the opportunity to present ver-
sions of this essay the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California ndash Santa
Cruz and Matthew Sommer Stanford University at his conference ldquoSame-Sex Desire and
Union in Chinardquo
I honor the brilliance of Gayle Rubinrsquos classic essay in paraphrasing her title in mine See
Gayle Rubin ldquoThe Traffic in Women Notes on the lsquoPolitical Economyrsquo of Sexrdquo in Toward
an Anthropology of Women ed Rayna Reiter (New York Monthly Review Press 983089983097983095983093)983089983093983095 ndash 983090983089983088
983089 See Wang Hui Chinarsquos New Order Society Politics and Economy in Transition (Cambridge
MA Harvard University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983090 See Wendy Brown ldquoNeo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracyrdquo Theory and Event
983095 no 983089 (983090983088983088983091) musejhuedujournalstheory_and_eventv983088983088983095983095983089brownhtml David Har-
vey A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York Oxford University Press 983090983088983088983093) Aihwa
Ong Neoliberalism as Exception (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) and Nikolas
Rose ldquoGoverning lsquoAdvancedrsquo Liberal Democraciesrdquo in Foucault and Political Reason edAndrew Barry Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983097983094) 983091983095 ndash 983094983092
983091 The pressure to visibly express onersquos desires also reflects the traces of colonial history in
which Chinese people have been represented as too repressed by first Chinese culture and
then Chinese communism to have the ability to express desire
983092 Here I refer to Deng Xiaopingrsquos adaptation of Maoism in his introduction of a market econ-
omy in China and to the ensuing inequalities that have resulted from these transformations
983093 I do not have the space here to enter the rather large debates about the relationship of
sexual identities to globalization cosmopolitanism and culture See Lisa Rofel ldquoQuali-
ties of Desire Imagining Gay Identitiesrdquo in Desiring China Experiments in Neoliberalism
Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983095) 983096983093 ndash 983089983089983088 See also
Elizabeth A Povinelli and George Chauncey eds ldquoThinking Sex Transnationallyrdquo spe-
cial issue GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 983093 no 983092 Fran Martin offers a useful
mapping of these debates in relation to Asian queerlesbian and gay identities in Situating
Sexualities Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction Film and Public Culture (Hong KongHong Kong University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983094 For an important exception see Elizabeth A Povinelli The Empire of Love Toward a The-
ory of Intimacy Genealogy and Carnality (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094)
983095 See Rofel Desiring China for a fuller discussion
983096 See for example Donald Morton ldquoChanging the Terms (Virtual) Desire and (Actual) Real-
f ffi
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3134
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3234
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3334
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3434
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3134
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 455
ityrdquo in The Material Queer A LesbiGay Cultural Studies Reader ed Donald Morton (Boul-
der CO Westview Press 983089983097983097983094) 983089 ndash 983091983092 and Carla Freccerorsquos response to Morton in chapter 983090
of QueerEarlyModern (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983094) See also Judith ButlerldquoMerely Cultural (Non-Material Leftist Movements)rdquo New Left Review 983090983090983095 (983089983097983097983096) 983091983091 ndash 983092983093
and Nancy Fraser ldquoHeterosexism Misrecognition and Capitalism A Response to Judith
Butlerrdquo New Left Review 983090983090983096 (983089983097983097983096) 983089983092983088 ndash 983092983097
983097 Morton ldquoChanging the Termsrdquo
983089983088 Marshall Sahlins Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago University of Chicago Press
983089983097983095983094)
983089983089 For an elaboration of this allegory see Dai Jinhua Xingbie Zhongguo (Gendering China)
(Taipei Mai Tian Publishers 983090983088983088983094) and my explication of it in Other Modernities GenderedYearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983097)
983089983090 Perhaps I need to state the obvious I do not mean that people in China never felt any
longings or passions prior to the end of socialism But those socialist-inflected desires were
expressed through struggles to embody an appropriate class subjectivity which defined
onersquos humanity
983089983091 See also Tze-lan Deborah Sang The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern
China (Chicago University of Chicago Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983092 Neferti Xina M Tadiar Fantasy- Production Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Conse-
quences for the New World Order (Manila Ateneo de Manila University Press 983090983088983088983092)
983089983093 For the classic statements see Judith Butler Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York Routledge 983089983097983096983097) Gayle Rubin ldquoThinking Sex Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexualityrdquo in Pleasure and Danger Exploring Female Sexuality
ed Carol Vance (London Routledge and Kegan Paul 983089983097983096983092) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley University of California Press 983089983097983097983088)
983089983094 See especially David L Eng Racial Castration Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983089) Gayatri Gopinath Impossible Desires Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham NC Duke University Press 983090983088983088983093) and
Martin F Manalansan IV Global Divas Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham NC
Duke University Press 983090983088983088983091)
983089983095 My argument echoes Hans Tao-Ming Huang in this volume in his delineation of how
gay subjectivity in Taiwan is founded on the normative exclusion of the gendered pros-
titute subject and thus is complicit with the dominant moral-sexual order Huang builds
his argument on the feminist insights of Ding Naifei about the ldquonormingrdquo of heterosexual
women See Ding Naifei ldquoFeminist Knots Sex and Domestic Work in the Shadow of the
Bondmaid-Concubinerdquo Inter- Asia Cultural Studies 983091 no 983091 (983090983088983088983090) 983092983092983097 ndash 983094983095 For a thorough
discussion of how female prostitution was the object of political discourses and knowledge
making in China from the late nineteenth century to the present see the inspiring work
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3234
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3334
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3434
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3234
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3334
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3434
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3334
Rofel The Traffic in Money Boys 457
Sexuality vol 983089 An Introduction trans Robert Hurley (New York Random House 983089983097983095983096)
See also David Halperin ldquoForgetting Foucault Acts Identities and the History of Sexual-
ityrdquo Representations 983094983091 (983089983097983097983096) 983097983091 ndash 983089983090983088 and Carla Freccerorsquos critique of Halperin and callfor expansion of the debate to recognize that contradictory discourses coexist historically
Carla Freccero ldquoActs Identities and Sexualityrsquos (Pre)Modern Regimesrdquo Journal of Womenrsquos
History 983089983089 no 983090 (983089983097983097983097) 983089983096983094 Within the literature on sexuality in China the acts versus
identities debate has been imbricated with a debate about the role of colonialism in foster-
ing homophobia in China See Wu Cuncun Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China
(New York RoutledgeCurzon 983090983088983088983092) for a nuanced framing of these sensibilities within
elite menrsquos aesthetic philosophy and cultural tastes which by distinguishing these practices
from a sexual identity displaces any simple notion of a presumed period of acceptance ofhomosexuality prior to colonialism See also Kang (this volume) for an insightful displace-
ment of this hoary debate for the early twentieth century in China
983090983094 Here I mean entrepreneurialism in a broad sense precisely to indicate how the activities of
creating surplus value through capitalist investments is seen to seep into the realm of the
intimate
983090983095 One need only contrast Ah Zhuangrsquos condemnation of Ah Pei as a money boy with the
quite different role of male prostitution in late imperial China to discern the radical discon-
tinuities with modernity in China in evaluations of sex between men of different statuses
See Wu Homoerotic Sensibilities for an insightful historical study of homoeroticism in late
imperial China
983090983096 This film made in 983090983088983088983091 was also given the title Money boy riji ( Money Boy Diaries) by the
Hong Kong distributor of the film Cui Zirsquoen is a prolific independent filmmaker He has
made over eighteen films including the better known Man Yan (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter) Nar-
row Path (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Night Scene (983090983088983088983092) (screenwriter director) Welcome
to Destination Shanghai (983090983088983088983091) (director) Jiu Yue (983090983088983088983091) (screenwriter director) Choujue Dengchang ( Enter the Clowns) (983090983088983088983090) (book author producer screenwriter director) and
Man Man Woman Woman (983089983097983097983097) (screenwriter)
983090983097 Judith Halberstam In a Queer Time and Place Transgender Bodies Subcultural Lives (New
York New York University Press 983090983088983088983093) 983089
983091983088 Gayatri Spivak ldquoCan the Subaltern Speakrdquo in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ed
Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago University of Illinois Press 983089983097983096983096) 983090983095983089 ndash 983091983089983091
This method of deconstruction that Spivak adopts addresses not only the explicit represen-
tations of subalterns that appear in texts but also those symptomatic silences lacunae andblank spaces in the texts mdash what the writers do not directly address and what they proclaim
they will not be discussing that is the silences they speak voluminously about See also Gail
Hershatter ldquoThe Subaltern Talks Back Reflections on Subaltern Theory and Chinese His-
toryrdquo positions east asia cultures critique 983089 (983089983097983097983093) 983089983088983091 ndash 983091983088 for a nuanced approach that finds
possibilities for subaltern discourse
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3434
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091
8182019 Rofel China Money Boy
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullrofel-china-money-boy 3434
positions 182 Fall 2010 458
983091983089 Hayden White The Content of the Form Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore John Hopkins University Press 983089983097983096983095)
983091983090 See Tadiar Fantasy- Production for a beautiful elaboration of this issue983091983091 For an elaboration of the concept of mimicry in which he demonstrates how mimicry both
puts colonial domination in relief but also dislocates it see Homi Bhabha ldquoOf Mimicry
and Man The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourserdquo in The Location of Culture (London
Routledge 983089983097983097983092) 983090983091983094 ndash 983093983094
983091983092 For more on suzhi see Ann Anagnost ldquoThe Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)rdquo Pub-
lic Culture 983089983094 no 983090 983089983096983097 ndash 983090983088983096 and Yan Hairong ldquoNeoliberal Governmentality and Neo-
humanism Organizing SuzhiValue Flow through Labor Recruitment Networksrdquo Cul-
tural Anthropology 983089983096 no 983092 983092983097983091 ndash 983093983090983091