Blogging Chinese new masculinities: An analysis of a Chinese A-list personal blog

Abstract

The discourse of Chinese new men and masculinities in the social media sphere has become visible in the past ten odd years but has largely remained unexplored. The analysis reported in this article presents a case of masculine performances in Chinese personal blogs. The data were collected from Acosta's blogsite and blog entries published between March and June 2006. Acosta's blog was the third most visited blog on the Xinlang blog service provider in 2006 and a well-regarded grassroots blog in contrast with celebrity blogs in Mainland China. The analysis revealed that Acosta's blogging, seemingly irrelevant to gender and sexuality, orchestrates various lifestyle resources to enact particular Chinese masculine performances in response to the mainstream/official ideological construct of Mainland China. It is argued in this article that Acosta's young man, ostentatiously a revival and remix of traditional Confucius male images and norms with the globalized imagination of men, may help establish a new masculine order for the younger generations in China.