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Beyond the “Fragile Woman”: Identity, Modernity, and Musical Gay Icons in Overseas Chinese Communities

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Popular Culture in Asia

Abstract

Chinese songstress Faye Wong’s “Fragile Woman” (“Rongyi shoushang de nüren, 容易受伤的女人”) is a sentimental tune coded with musico-textual messages of yearning and anguish. A 1992 hit in mainstream circuits of the Chinese-speaking world, the song has also come to be celebrated, as well as denigrated, by increasingly vocal gay communities in several overseas majority-Chinese territories. What are the qualities of this song, Wong’s voice, and her persona that have rendered the ballad so (debatably) favored? Where is Wong’s place in the construction of a growing canon of musical icons in the gay Chinese world? What does being an icon entail in such a context?

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Authors
  1. Shzr Ee Tan
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. California State University, Dominguez Hills, USA

    Lorna Fitzsimmons (Associate Professor of Humanities) (Associate Professor of Humanities)

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© 2013 Shzr Ee Tan

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Tan, S.E. (2013). Beyond the “Fragile Woman”: Identity, Modernity, and Musical Gay Icons in Overseas Chinese Communities. In: Fitzsimmons, L., Lent, J.A. (eds) Popular Culture in Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137270207_9

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