Since the new millennium, the television industry in China has witnessed a flourishing of television series addressing the aspirations, struggles and gender expectations of the urban middle class. Nevertheless, with few exceptions, little scholarly attention has been devoted to the televisual construction of masculine ideals in the contemporary era. Taking as a case study Best Time (最美的时光), one of the most popular idol dramas of 2013, this article fills a lacuna in current scholarship and addresses the televisual construction of cosmopolitan masculinities by focusing on the tension between two prominent social groups: overseas returnees and indigenous talents. Through analysis of the construction of competing masculinities in Best Time, this article argues that this drama is as much about an undertone of national rejuvenation, and the desire for China’s rise and global dominance, as it is about unrequited love. In pursuing this argument, a critical reading of a youth idol drama opens new avenues for understanding cosmopolitanism through the lenses of gender dynamics and nationalism.
BaiRuoyunSongGeng (eds) (2015) Chinese Television in the Twenty-First Century: Entertaining the Nation. London and New York: Routledge.
2.
BalajiMuraliHughsonKhadeem (2014) (Re)producing borders and bodies: Masculinity and nationalism in Indian cultural texts. Asian Journal of Communication24(3): 207–21.
3.
BaranovitchNimrod (2003) China’s New Voices: Popular Music, Ethnicity, Gender and Politics, 1978–1997. Berkeley: University of California Press.
4.
《最美的时光》蝉联收视冠军 钟汉良成荧幕热宠 (Best Time tops audience rating: Wallace Chung is extremely popular with audience) (2013) 16December. http://ent.qq.com/a/20131216/009747.htm, accessed 8 February 2016.
5.
《最美的时光》将迎结局台网收视全线飘红 (Best Time will conclude soon: The audience rating for television and the Internet is high) (2013) 20December. http://www.mgtv.com/c/20131220/0828063120.html, accessed 15 December 2016.
6.
BookmanSonia (2013) Branded cosmopolitanisms: ‘Global’ coffee brands and the co-creation of ‘cosmopolitan cool’. Cultural Sociology7(1): 56–72.
7.
CalhounCraig (2002) The class consciousness of frequent travellers: Towards a critique of actually existing cosmopolitanism. In: VertovecStevenCohenRobin (eds) Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context, and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 86–109.
8.
ChenSiyu (2017) Disciplining desiring subjects through the remodeling of masculinity: A case study of a Chinese reality dating show. Modern China43(1): 95–120.
9.
ChoiSusanne Yuk-PingPengYinni (2016) Masculine Compromise: Migration, Family, and Gender in China. Berkeley: University of California Press.
10.
ErwinKathleen (1999) White women, male desires: A televisual fantasy of the transnational Chinese family. In: YangMayfair Mei-Hui(ed.) Spaces of Their Own: Women’s Public Sphere in Transnational China. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 232–57.
11.
HannerzUlf (1990) Cosmopolitans and locals in world culture. In: FeatherstoneMike (ed.) Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity. London: Sage, 237–52.
12.
HirdDerek (2016) Making class and gender: White-collar men in postsocialist China. In: LouieKam (ed.) Changing Chinese Masculinities: From Imperial Pillars of State to Global Real Men. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 137–56.
13.
HongSheng (1997) From nationalism to cosmopolitanism. Chinese Law and Government30(6): 31–42.
14.
LeeHaiyan (2014) The Stranger and the Chinese Moral Imagination. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
15.
LuSheldon H. (2000) Soap opera in China: The transnational politics of visuality, sexuality, and masculinity. Cinema Journal40(1): 25–47.
16.
LuSheldon H. (2001) China, Transnational Visuality, Global Postmodernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
NotarBeth E. (2008) Producing cosmopolitanism at the borderlands: Lonely planeteers and ‘local’ cosmopolitans in Southwest China. Anthropological Quarterly81(3): 615–50.
20.
OngJonathan Corpus (2009) The cosmopolitan continuum: Locating cosmopolitanism in media and cultural studies. Media, Culture & Society31(3): 449–66.
21.
OsburgJohn (2013) Anxious Wealth: Money and Morality among China’s New Rich. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
22.
QiuChenhui 邱晨辉 (2013) 管敏鑫被‘解聘’追踪: 海归土鳖之争? (Tracking the ‘dismissal’ of Guan Minxin: The fight between overseas returnees and local talents?) 10December. http://edu.people.com.cn/n/2013/1210/c1053-23793482.html, accessed 11 February 2016.
23.
RobbinsBruce (2012) Perpetual War: Cosmopolitanism from the Viewpoint of Violence. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
24.
RobertsonAlexa (2010) Mediated Cosmopolitanism: The World of Television News. Cambridge: Polity Press.
25.
RofelLisa (2007) Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
26.
RofelLisa (2012) Between tianxia and postsocialism: Contemporary Chinese cosmopolitanism. In: DelantyGerard (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Cosmopolitanism Studies. London and New York: Routledge, 443–51.
27.
SimonDenis FredCaoCong (2009) China’s Emerging Technological Edge: Assessing the Role of High-End Talent. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
28.
SongGeng (2004) The Fragile Scholar: Power and Masculinity in Chinese Culture. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
29.
SongGeng (2010) Chinese masculinities revisited: Male images in contemporary television drama serials. Modern China36(4): 404–34.
30.
SongGeng (2016) All dogs deserve to be beaten: Negotiating manhood and nationhood in Chinese TV dramas. In: LouieKam (ed.) Changing Chinese Masculinities: From Imperial Pillars of State to Global Real Men. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 204–19.
31.
SongGengHirdDerek (2013) Men and Masculinities in Contemporary China. Boston: Brill.
32.
SongGengLeeTracy (2012) ‘New Man’ and ‘New Lad’ with Chinese characteristics? Cosmopolitanism, cultural hybridity and men’s lifestyle magazines in China. Asian Studies Review36(3): 345–67.
33.
SunWanning (2001) A Chinese in the new world: Television dramas, global cities, and travels to modernity. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies2(1): 81–94.
34.
SzerszynskiBronislawUrryJohn (2002) Cultures of cosmopolitanism. The Sociological Review50(4): 461–81.
TsangLai Chun 曾丽珍 (2013) 最美的时光 (Best time). Hangzhou: 浙江梦幻星生园影视文化有限公司 (Zhejiang Menghuan Xingshengyuan Film & Television Culture Co., Ltd).
37.
VertovecStevenCohenRobin (2002) Introduction: Conceiving cosmopolitanism. In: VertovecStevenCohenRobin (eds) Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context, and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 8–14.
38.
WangJing (2005) Bourgeois bohemians in China? Neo-tribes and the urban imaginary. The China Quarterly183: 532–48.
39.
WenHuike (2013) ‘Diversifying’ masculinity: Super girls, happy boys, cross dressers, and real men on Chinese media. ASIANetwork Exchange21(2): 1–11.
40.
WoodwardIanSkrbisZlatko (2012) Performing cosmopolitanism. In: DelantyGerard (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Cosmopolitanism Studies. London and New York: Routledge, 127–38.
ZhengTiantian (2011) Karaoke bar hostesses and Japan–Korea Wave in postsocialist China: Fashion, cosmopolitanism and globalization. City & Society23(1): 42–65.
43.
ZhengTiantian (2012) Female subjugation and political resistance: From literati to entrepreneurial masculinity in the globalizing era of postsocialist China. Gender, Place and Culture19(5): 652–69.
ZweigDavidChenChuangguiRosenStanley (2004) Globalization and transnational human capital: Overseas and returnee scholars to China. The China Quarterly179: 735–57.
