Meng Li
Abstract: This article studies the tension between post-Mao Chinese intellectual women and their dilemma in post-2000s Chinese popular media. TV dramas, films, songs and reality shows in which Chinese intellectual women and their dilemmas are identified, mis/represented, mis/understood and addressed are the research objects of this article. By foregrounding the two motifs of estrangement and escape in understanding and characterising post-Mao Chinese intellectual women, the article seeks to answer the following questions: In what ways are well-educated Chinese women consistently stigmatised under the unsympathetic limelight of the public? And for what reason are Chinese intellectual women identified as the être particulières in the popular context?
Keywords: intellectual women; dilemma; estrangement; escape; popular cultural context.