A Coffin for Old Norms: Gender as Represented in Grave-Robbing Fiction and Zhang Muye's Gui chui deng

Grave-robbing fiction is a type of contemporary Chinese literature that emerged on the Internet in the mid-‘00s, pioneered by a novel called Gui chui deng, or Ghost Blows Out the Light. The genre of literature that is the... [ view full abstract ]

Grave-robbing fiction is a type of contemporary Chinese literature that emerged on the Internet in the mid-‘00s, pioneered by a novel called Gui chui deng, or Ghost Blows Out the Light. The genre of literature that is the most obvious ancestor of grave-robbing fiction is adventure fiction, its influences both stylistic and structural. However, grave-robbing fiction is an entity distinct from straightforward adventure fiction, as it melds elements and influences from a myriad of other sources, such as ghost stories, horror fiction, chuanqi and zhiguai literature, and fantasy fiction. This paper aims to analyze the way in which Gui chui deng both subverts and upholds traditional gender roles. Though the author, Zhang Muye, is of the opinion that “tomb-robbing fiction only cares about robbing tombs,” Gui chui deng nevertheless expresses various critiques of gender as it exists in Chinese society, while also still transmitting and embodying oppressive ideas about masculinity and femininity. Insofar as Gui chui deng can be classified among various genres that have ingrained tropes and traditions regarding how male and female characters ought to act – ghost, adventure, suspense, and horror fiction, specifically – the novel, by necessity, has much more to discuss than simply “robbing tombs.”