A young woman browses online BL cartoons. Photo: Tang Tengfei/GT
A middle school student in her mid-teens, she wears a pigtail and looks fresh-faced. When she gets home from school, she goes online, browsing forums to find "boy love" stories, involving two male characters, many with sexually explicit depictions.
Her parents have no idea that their little girl is obsessed with gay erotic tales, something many parents are not even aware exists.
This is a typical image of funü, women who have a special affection for gay love, a passion they keep hidden from the public eye and their families. This group, largely comprised of teenage girls and young women, read Japanese gay cartoons and stories about homosexual men. They have formed an active "underground" community online, although the readers themselves are usually straight.
Literally meaning "decaying women," the term funü is a Japanese loanword indicating a way of life solidly based in the ACG (animation, cartoon and game) industry. This industry has been highly prosperous in Japan and has spawned a wealth of characters admired by millions.
Cartoonish love
Funü are particularly avid fans of the "boy love" category, referred to as BL, gobbling up series, films and cartoons. They follow these closely, either for engaging stories or beautiful artwork.
The reasons for a girl joining this community are complicated to understand for those who first hear the word. One girl, going by the name Weiyu Choumou online, said most funü became so due to an obsession with men.
Weiyu said she fantasizes about two handsome men without the involvement of other women. She says this is because she could be envious of other women, as none can match the men she fantasizes about. "Who don't like good-looking guys anyway?" she said.
Yaoyao Zhiran, 32, with more than 15 years behind her as a funü, interprets this community via psychological analysis. She believes funü are basically libertines in affairs of the heart. As homosexual love is still largely a taboo in China and such relationships often have to bear much difficulty, funü deem them more pure and precious than mundane relationships between man and woman, according to her.
"Many women relish gay love because they believe it to be free of traditional restrictions of marriage. It doesn't consider the match-up of social status, nor is it about houses or cars or money," she said.
As a "senior citizen" in this "decaying republic" and holding a master's degree in psychology, she continues to explain the essence of funü's thoughts. "Funü unconditionally advocate love, regardless of gender, race or even species."
It has been joked that funü have developed their own world view. Funüism believes there is a potential Brokeback Mountain situation in every man and views everything in existence as being on top or on the bottom.
Strange fan-fiction
The gay-oriented imagination of funü isn't restricted to cartoons or online BL stories. Any men could be part of their fantasies. For example, the latest Sherlock Holmes movies have sparked their imagination with the pairing of Holmes and Dr. Watson. But some prefer the denizens of Hogwarts to the Great Detective of 221b Baker Street.
"I like the relationship between Harry Porter and Draco Malfoy," said Han Xi. "They've been entangled for years. From entering Hogwarts school until graduation, they see each other as rivals, but not enemies. It's a very subtle relationship," she continued, followed by detailed scenarios of the personal encounters she imagines based on the story.
They even have their own language system. Both Yaoyao and Han talk openly and honestly, but they seem to be speaking a different language at times, often unintentionally using jargon derived from Japanese ACG works.
For most people, this funü community is invisible from the public, where the gay community has yet to earn full public recognition. Most funü activities online stick to some specific websites, like underground interest groups, downloading BL cartoons or sharing gay love fictions.
A selected few contribute by writing and posting their original works to keep this online community prosperous. The readers are so enthusiastic that every update to a series draws abundant comments and encouragement.
Mainstream society only started to learn about funü when reports about police busting such websites went viral. Media reports show that dozens of funü websites have been busted in anti-pornographic campaigns over the past three years, along with many other websites deemed to be pornographic. More than a dozen funü who wrote and published BL stories containing erotic materials were detained and sentenced for spreading pornographic material.
People were amazed to learn that these so-called criminals are actually young women in their teens and 20s. Besides a broad community of readers, only those who have indulged more deeply write BL stories, including both innocent love stories and those with more graphic content.
Funü refer to BL stories that contain erotic contents as being "Hentai" or "h", a broader Japanese term used to refer to drawn or animated erotica. "The readers choose reading materials according to their interests, but most won't shy away from sexual content, which they believe is a necessary part of the storyline," said Yaoyao, also a veteran writer who, like most other funü, would only be referred to by her online ID.
It is not uncommon for funü to have several online identities to publish different styles of works and keep their real selves hidden. As a result, writers may be well-known in the funü sphere but remain anonymous in the outside world.
Future as writers
Those who write are considered senior funü, Yaoyao announced proudly. She hails from the first generation of funü writers that started before 2000 when the Internet just became popular in China.
Now a senior manager with a foreign company in Shanghai, Yaoyao used to be a flagship writer with thousands of followers, famous for her signature S&M stories. Gifted in literature and benefiting from her studies in psychology, her works of fiction excelled and were popular for their subtle sentimental details.
She quit writing S&M stories about 10 years ago when she went abroad to study, but soon came back to the community by writing more innocent pieces. Though Yaoyao has found publishers in both the mainland and Taiwan to distribute her fiction in several books, most BL writers can only publish their works online within the funü community due to the subject matter.
Some funü websites charge registered readers for serial fictions and pay royalty fees to the writers. However, these royalties are hardly enough to live on, so most funü writers write only as a hobby, said Han Xi.
The 22-year-old college graduate started writing BL back in junior high school. She has not landed a job since graduating and currently has abundant time to write. She used to sell her stories to websites and underground magazines catering to the funü community, but would not contemplate making it a full-time job.
Hardly criminals
Though the community only operates within certain specialized forums, it has been targeted by the police for spreading porn. Most erotic stories on these sites are only available for registered users who pay a fee. In a raid in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, early last year, police cracked down on a funü website full of "erotic fictions and advocates gay love, violence and bloodiness," the police told media.
Yaoyao said it's hard to say whether erotic stories are reasons to punish writers. For her, "h" stories are different from normal pornography, as they focus on storylines. "The difference between them is like that between Italian sensual movies and Japanese AV," she said.
Last month, China's most prominent sexologist Li Yinhe came to the defense of funü writers. She published a post on her blog in support of their legitimate rights to free speech and publication.
A member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Li wrote that the law that bans publishing erotic materials in China belongs to the Middle Ages in Europe and is a legacy of China's Cultural Revolution (1966-76). She called for the abolition of this "living dinosaur."
Though not fully understanding the funü community, Li said she believes that they deserve fair treatment and not discrimination. "It (reading BL stories) is kind of a special hobby, but for now, I think it's nothing worse than reading detective novels," Li told the Global Times.
There has been little in-depth research into the funü community in China, but Yaoyao and Weiyu and others have all seen a rapid and steady climb in the members of this community. Yaoyao said that their readership is now dramatically larger than when she started writing in 1997. The website that was shut down by police in Zhengzhou had more than 600,000 registered members.
It remains to be seen if this hobby would affect the lifestyle and personal development of funü, but those interviewed by the Global Times all denied their love lives with men were affected or that they are any different from their non-funü friends.
"If there is any negative impact on me... it's that it is too time-consuming to read comics so I don't have much time to look for a boyfriend," Han joked. Most funü don't intend to hide this hobby from their boyfriends, and would never expect their boyfriends to have affairs with other men. "If he is gay, why would he marry me?" said Yaoyao. "If my man dares to have affairs with another man, I would break his legs and leave."
For Li Yinhe, "at least funü contribute to promoting tolerance to homosexuals," a cause that she has worked on for decades.