Ways of seeing transgender in independent Chinese cinema

This article examines the history of representing transgender people in independent films produced in mainland China from the 1990s to present. Tracing a brief history of the transgender representation on Chinese screen, this article illustrates the multiplicity and porousness of transgender cinematic representations in postsocialist China. It identifies five ways of representing trans people on Chinese screen, roughly corresponding to five historical periods and modes of representation. These diverse representations result from a contingent assemblage of factors including the film genre, the filmmaker's subjectivity, the relationship between the filmmaker and the filmed subjects, the discourses in which the representations are situated, and the development of the trans subjectivities and communities. Recognising the crucial role of films in identity construction and community formation, this article contends that these 'trans' films construct the Chinese transgender subject as contingent