Chinas Unlimited: Making the Imaginaries of China and Chineseness

Mr. Wu the laundryman, the evil Fu Manchu, the sex maniac, the opium addict, the docile immigrant worker: These stereotypes applied to Chinese people stretch back to the Victorian era, yet resurface with regularity in today’s media. In China itself the way the Chinese perceive and project themselves and their ethnicity has evolved over recent years, with discordant and unofficial voices challenging normative ideas of Chinese identity. In order to understand the numerous ways of seeing and being Chinese, Chinas Unlimited analyzes Chinese literary and cultural texts, such as television soap serials, as well as popular cultural representations of the Chinese.