... on Zeng Qiuhuang, arguably the most famous renyao in the 1950s, reveals and captures a reciprocal chimera effect whereby the margins of sexuality and the periphery of “China” and “Chineseness” converge into the mimetic recalcitrant traces of the past. The prodigy of the human— renyao —configures the basis...

... concept of transgenderism that is perhaps best translated as “human prodigy” (206). Chiang links the scholarship on renyao in extant historiography to the story of Zeng Qiuhuang, the most highly publicized renyao in 1950s Taiwan. Connecting the illegibility of Taiwan in Anglophone scholarship...