University of Heidelberg

- To study the emergence of the Chinese star culture within the framework of asymmetrical cultural flow. In particular, to investigate the emergence of a new type of public personality outside the traditional social structure in the context of a dramatic transformation of the Chinese public sphere as a way of coping with a perceived asymmetry that reflects China’s position in the world.

- To investigate how this cultural phenomenon, which took shape in the early 1920s, was a transcultural event.

The rise of the dan from ‘call boy’ to iconic status and emblem of China and her culture during the first decades of the Republic is well-known, but is generally reduced not only to being an internal Chinese affair but also to being a merely artistic phenomenon. The study of this process hopes to shed light on the international implications of a new gendered image of China; and promises new insights into the role of entertainment in international “soft” politics and the social transformation of modern China.