Between Parody and Pleasure: Performance and Mediation in Shange Videos in Southwestern China

Abstract: In recent decades, extensive research has explored gender and sexual performances, though much of it has focused on urban Western contexts. This essay redirects scholarly attention to rural Yunnan, a province in Southwestern China, specifically examining commercialized shange (mountain songs) VCDs produced in the early 2000s. These videos feature parodic performances of gender and sexual transgressions and have gained a cult following in China and across East Asia. Using a scavenging methodology, I argue that representations of femininity in these videos, either by cis women or bian zhuang (cross-dressing) performers, can be interpreted as performative commentaries on the shifting gender and sexual propriety amidst rural-urban inequality intensified by China’s economic reform. These parodic performances portray the perceived sexual and gender improprieties as dangerous symptoms of capitalist expansion into rural Yunnan villages. At the same time, they reveal a performative excess: a liminal pleasure in embodying the perverse.