Beijing's culture war over masculinity

Why has the government not been able to tackle the 'sissy men'?

Over the last few days I’ve been immersing myself in the world of Chinese ‘micro-dramas’. These are shows told in one to three minute long episodes, designed to make you addicted and, after a handful of free episodes, you have to pay to keep watching. This is the TikTokification of television, and I’d resisted for some time.

But it was ‘for research’, I told myself; and that was also why I had to binge all 62 episodes of a stupid period plot about a jilted wife who takes revenge on her husband and his new concubine. Because the micro-drama is one of the richest hunting grounds for a Chinese cultural phenomenon that I’ve been fascinated with for years: that of the xiaoxianrou, ‘little fresh meat’ (小鲜肉).

Zhang Linghe is a textbook xiaoxianrou. Here he portrays General Xie Zheng in the show, Pursuit of Jade.

This is the name that the Chinese give to the pinnacle of male beauty in the eyes of many young (and older) Chinese women today. The clue is in the name: these men are delicate, pale, pretty, their handsomeness a boyish teenage twinkish sort. And yet they have become such popular ideals of masculinity that they dominate the Chinese entertainment output, whether it’s in micro-dramas or longer form TV, film, or music. The photo above is of the 28 year old actor Zhang Linghe, who is the protagonist for this year’s hottest C-drama, Pursuit of Jade (I’m also quite a few episodes into that for, uh, research).

It’s always been curious to me that this is the kind of masculinity that so many women yearn for – not broad, tanned alphas who might protect you, but men who are genteel, soft, ‘girly’. In fact, in Pursuit of Jade and other shows, this allows, or leaves, the female protagonist to take the lead in the pursuit of their romance.

Anyway, the phenomenon is hardly new – any fans of Japanese manga and K-pop will know that this aesthetic has been popular for years. But almost as long-lasting has been the Chinese state’s disapproval of this androgynous type of masculinity. As early as 2018, Xinhua blasted the ‘sissy men’, niangpao 娘炮.

Since then, every year or so something will happen to confirm the state’s continued disapproval. Lately, it was the People’s Daily that hit out at a fresh-faced young actor in a touristy historical village in Jiangxi province, ‘Little Yellow Fish’ Xiao Huangyu，小黄鱼, who took his fresh meat aesthetics one step further – his gimmick was flirting with tourists, feeding them lollipops with his mouth. ‘Crass’ and ‘lacking in cultural value’, the People’s Daily said.

So this is the central question of my latest Times column: why, despite the state’s anxieties about its young people not sticking to gender norms, are the xiaoxianrou still everywhere to be seen?

In the column I explore reasons such as how this softer ideal of masculinity is less threatening to women, especially those who already live in a patriarchal society (as much of East Asia still is). Also grateful to have given Leta Hong Fincher, the authority on Chinese feminism, a call about it all.

I hope you enjoy the piece. I certainly enjoyed the ‘research’.

What I’ve been reading/listening to:

• Will Taiwanese accept Xi Jinping’s version of ‘One China’? Lev Nachman and Wei-Ting Yen for Brookings. Interesting analysis featuring new polling data on Taiwanese public opinion about the 1992 consensus and the idea of Beijing ruling Taiwan via ‘one country, two systems’. Particularly standout to me was that ‘almost half of Taiwanese voters (47%) say they are unclear about the meaning of the 1992 Consensus’.

• 从小粉红到普利策获奖记者，一位美国记者在中国的经历 – 不明白播客. For Mandarin speaking readers, if you haven’t come across Bumingbai Podcast 不明白播客 then you’re missing out. It is the best Mandarin-language political podcast out there, hosted by New York Times’s Li Yuan. On this episode she interviews Associated Press’s Dake Kang, whose team has just won a Pulitzer prize for their reporting on Chinese surveillance.

Picture of the Stack:

I don’t always have good photos to share with you, but this one was a no-brainer. It’s a photo of Jiang Zemin in a sombrero. Enough said. (And if you click through to the X post and follow the quoted tweets, you will see more pictures of Jiang in different hats).

ᡏᠠᡅᡆᡛᡄᠴ Mayo-Mainz@MayoMainz

Sombrero Jiang is one of the more underdiscussed hat-wearing Jiangs

Jakabfi Károly (霸王最忠之臣子) @JakabfiK

He had stuff going on https://t.co/HzsC9TK11n

4:10 AM · May 20, 2026 · 1.6K Views

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