Nie Huaisang and masculinity

[superborb]

aka NHS is not particularly coded feminine in MDZS/CQL and I'd like to provide some context why!

I'm sure this has been pointed out before, but I'm not like, really ~with the youth~ aka how do people find meta post-LJ? So I don't know how redundant this post is... First, the caveat that obviously anyone can do what they want and headcanon whatever they want! These are just my thoughts!

I think people are mistaking NHS's love of art and fans as particularly feminine traits, which conflates Western ideals of femininity with what is happening. For reasons beyond the scope of this post, ancient China's ideals of masculinity rest on the ideal of a scholar -- the highest social class for much of imperial Chinese history served as officials and bureaucrats. (Of course, the perfect man was both martially AND academically inclined.) As a result, poetry, painting, these are /not/ coded feminine, because any true gentleman is a master of these arts. 

On the topic of fans, folding fans were commonly used as canvases, and so scholars would gift fans etc etc until decorated folding fans were a Big Deal. Some of the aesthetic hanfu blogs say folding fans are masculine and the stiff round fans are feminine, but I don't think this is broadly true through much of history? Like, yes, that is the association NOW, because a lot of dramas will give the young women the round fans and we see men with folding fans. But also there are lots of examples of historical folding fans that were designed to be carried by women, and the round fans predate the existence of folding fans. In any case, folding fans are not coded feminine and may even be a masculine accessory.

In conclusion, I have and will continue to happily read f!NHS and related fics, but mmm how to put it? If you're taking a textual reading of the canon, you need to do a bit more work to explain it?

Comments

[elwendell]

Thanks for this. I remember reading somewhere that any respectable gentleman was expected to be good at music and painting (there was another 'art' but I can't remember it), so Nie's love of a good painted fan would definitely not be seen as 'female' in the period the story is purportedly set. I think we also have to take into account the fact that the story was written in this century, however, and the author may have been coloured by modern society as well. So either interpretation could be valid.

Thanks for sharing. This Brit. is interested in anything that will make her fanfic. more 'authentic' sounding.

[superborb]

The other two are calligraphy and chess (weiqi/go).

These standards of what is considered a gentleman are largely still accepted and known, especially in any kind of period drama, so there's basically no way the author would have meant them in any kind of feminine way.