Overview
Love and Romance in China examines love, affection, and emotions in China from Maoist to contemporary China, focusing on the intersections with politics, economics, gender, class, race and technology. From the founding of the People’s Republic of China to the end of the Cultural Revolution, political ideology and class struggle dominated everyday life, and love was subordinated to the communist revolution and socialism. During the Cultural Revolution, this turbulent period witnessed the paradoxical existence of self-abstinence and self-indulgence. Since China changed its political ideology in 1979 and shifted to a market-oriented economy, the country embraced the idea of romantic love. This “emotional turn” fostered opportunities for diverse intimate relationships characterized by the growth of cross-cultural love, LGBTQI+ love, and the emergence of a “sexual revolution” (Zhang 2011; Jeffreys and Yu 2015). The new dynamic was linked to contested discourses of (fantasised, eroticized, and racialized) foreign love intertwined with nationalist sentiments and ongoing tensions between sexual minorities and the government. The new millennium has witnessed love crises characterised by growing concerns about “leftover” men and women, high divorce rates, declining marriage and birth rates, and other relationship problems. The deepening of the market economy and technological advances have turned love into a “fast food” commodity for mass consumption, manifested in dating shows, digital platforms and intimacy between humans and AI/dolls. Wang draws on a wide range of texts, including government statistics on marriages and divorces, legal documents, Maoist folk songs, poems, posters, love letters, media texts, popular discourses, online dating websites, and ethnographic observations and interviews.
Full Product Details
Author: Pan Wang (University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia)
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic
Dimensions:
Width: 16.20cm
, Height: 1.80cm
, Length: 23.60cm
Weight: 0.960kg
ISBN: 9781350511804
ISBN 10: 1350511803
Pages: 216
Publication Date: 02 October 2025
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
College/higher education
,
Professional & Vocational
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Manufactured on demand
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Reviews
The book combines diverse texts and methodologies to examine intimate relationships as a public discourse shaped through an evolution of institutional regulations and values, dis-institutional responses and practices, and emotional expressions and desires in contemporary China and beyond. Anybody who wants to expand their views about love and emotions can benefit from this reading. * Huike Wen, Willamette University, USA *
Author Information
Pan Wang is Associate Professor in Chinese and Asian Studies at the University of New South Wales, Australia. She is the author of Love and Marriage in Globalising China (2015).
