Platinum Bible of the Public Toilet is the first English-language collection of short stories by Cui Zi’en, China’s most famous and controversial queer filmmaker, writer, scholar, and LGBTQ rights activist. Drawing on his own experiences growing up in socialist and postsocialist China, Cui presents ten queer coming-of-age stories of young boys and men as they explore their sexuality and desires. From a surreal fairytale depicting a ragtag crew of neighborhood boys in the throes of sexual awakening to a chronicle of the gender-bending and homoerotic entanglements of university students to romantic love triangle erotica to a story that examines teacher-student love and the norms of sex and age, Cui centers queer sexuality as a core part of human experience. Richly imaginative and vividly written, Platinum Bible of the Public Toilet portrays the emergence of queer cultures in postsocialist China while foregrounding the commitments to one’s erotic and passionate attractions even as they lead to cultural transgressions. This volume includes a foreword by and an interview with the author.

Platinum Bible of the Public Toilet is the first English-language collection of short stories by Cui Zi’en, China’s most famous and controversial queer filmmaker, writer, scholar, and LGBTQ rights activist. Drawing on his own experiences growing up in socialist and postsocialist China, Cui presents ten queer coming-of-age stories of young boys and men as they explore their sexuality and desires. From a surreal fairytale depicting a ragtag crew of neighborhood boys in the throes of sexual awakening to a chronicle of the gender-bending and homoerotic entanglements of university students to romantic love triangle erotica to a story that examines teacher-student love and the norms of sex and age, Cui centers queer sexuality as a core part of human experience. Richly imaginative and vividly written, Platinum Bible of the Public Toilet portrays the emergence of queer cultures in postsocialist China while foregrounding the commitments to one’s erotic and passionate attractions even as they lead to cultural transgressions. This volume includes a foreword by and an interview with the author.

In recent years, queer theory appears to have made a materialist turn away from questions of representation and performativity to those of dispossession, precarity, and the differential distribution of life chances. Despite this shift, queer theory finds itself constantly reabsorbed into the liberal project of diversity management. This theoretical and political weakness, Petrus Liu argues, stems from an incomplete understanding of capitalism's contemporary transformations, of which China has been at the center. In The Specter of Materialism Liu challenges key premises of classic queer theory and Marxism, turning to an analysis of the Beijing Consensus-global capitalism's latest mutation-to develop a new theory of the political economy of sexuality. Liu explores how relations of gender and sexuality get reconfigured to meet the needs of capital in new regimes of accumulation and dispossession, demonstrating that evolving US-Asian economic relations shape the emergence of new queer identities and academic theories. In so doing, he offers a new history of collective struggles that provides a transnational framework for understanding the nexus between queerness and material life.

In recent years, queer theory appears to have made a materialist turn away from questions of representation and performativity to those of dispossession, precarity, and the differential distribution of life chances. Despite this shift, queer theory finds itself constantly reabsorbed into the liberal project of diversity management. This theoretical and political weakness, Petrus Liu argues, stems from an incomplete understanding of capitalism’s contemporary transformations, of which China has been at the center. In The Specter of Materialism Liu challenges key premises of classic queer theory and Marxism, turning to an analysis of the Beijing Consensus—global capitalism’s latest mutation—to develop a new theory of the political economy of sexuality. Liu explores how relations of gender and sexuality get reconfigured to meet the needs of capital in new regimes of accumulation and dispossession, demonstrating that evolving US-Asian economic relations shape the emergence of new queer identities and academic theories. In so doing, he offers a new history of collective struggles that provides a transnational framework for understanding the nexus between queerness and material life.

In Queer Marxism in Two Chinas Petrus Liu rethinks the relationship between Marxism and queer cultures in mainland China and Taiwan. Whereas many scholars assume the emergence of queer cultures in China signals the end of Marxism and demonstrates China's political and economic evolution, Liu finds the opposite to be true. He challenges the persistence of Cold War formulations of Marxism that position it as intellectually incompatible with queer theory, and shows how queer Marxism offers a nonliberal alternative to Western models of queer emancipation. The work of queer Chinese artists and intellectuals not only provides an alternative to liberal ideologies of inclusion and diversity, but demonstrates how different conceptions of and attitudes toward queerness in China and Taiwan stem from geopolitical tensions. With Queer Marxism in Two Chinas Liu offers a revision to current understandings of what queer theory is, does, and can be.

In Queer Marxism in Two Chinas Petrus Liu rethinks the relationship between Marxism and queer cultures in mainland China and Taiwan. Whereas many scholars assume the emergence of queer cultures in China signals the end of Marxism and demonstrates China's political and economic evolution, Liu finds the opposite to be true. He challenges the persistence of Cold War formulations of Marxism that position it as intellectually incompatible with queer theory, and shows how queer Marxism offers a nonliberal alternative to Western models of queer emancipation. The work of queer Chinese artists and intellectuals not only provides an alternative to liberal ideologies of inclusion and diversity, but demonstrates how different conceptions of and attitudes toward queerness in China and Taiwan stem from geopolitical tensions. With Queer Marxism in Two Chinas Liu offers a revision to current understandings of what queer theory is, does, and can be.

Known in the West primarily through poorly subtitled films, Chinese martial arts fiction is one of the most iconic and yet the most understudied form of modern sinophone creativity. Current scholarship on the subject is characterized by three central assumptions against which this book argues: first, that martial arts fiction is the representation of a bodily spectacle that historically originated in Hong Kong cinema; second, that the genre came into being as an escapist fantasy that provided psychological comfort to people during the height of imperialism; and third, that martial arts fiction reflects a patriotic attitude that celebrates the greatness of Chinese culture, which in turn is variously described as the China-complex, colonial modernity, essentialized identity, diasporic consciousness, anxieties about globalization, or other psychological and ideological difficulties experienced by the Chinese people.

Known in the West primarily through poorly subtitled films, Chinese martial arts fiction is one of the most iconic and yet the most understudied form of modern sinophone creativity. Current scholarship on the subject is characterized by three central assumptions against which this book argues: first, that martial arts fiction is the representation of a bodily spectacle that historically originated in Hong Kong cinema; second, that the genre came into being as an escapist fantasy that provided psychological comfort to people during the height of imperialism; and third, that martial arts fiction reflects a patriotic attitude that celebrates the greatness of Chinese culture, which in turn is variously described as the China-complex, colonial modernity, essentialized identity, diasporic consciousness, anxieties about globalization, or other psychological and ideological difficulties experienced by the Chinese people.