This book examines male dan, a male actor who performs female roles in Chinese theatre. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of East Asian/Chinese studies across the fields of theatre, history, culture, and literature.

Guo Chao is an Assistant Professor of Chinese at Sun Yat-sen University, China. He publishes extensively on Chinese history, culture and society in journals such as Asian Theatre Journal, Asian Studies Review, Journal of Gender Studies and Cambridge Opera Journal.

1. Introduction: Chinese traditional theatre and male dan 2. Imaginary romance: The rise of male dan and their connections to the scholar-elite in the Ming dynasty 3. Commodified intimacy: Male dan, boy courtesans and well-off patrons in the Qing dynasty 4. At the dawn of a modern nation: Three keys in male dan 5. Between scholar-intellectuals and theatrical aficionados: Male dan under siege 6. Reinventing disciplinary femininity: Technical innovations of male dan 7. Reconstructing femininity through masculinity: The prohibition of male dan in socialist China 8. The mythopoeia of homosexuality: Aesthetic representations of male dan in contemporary culture 9. A millennial predicament: Male dan in a homophobic country 10. Coda: Male dan and Chinese society in transition