In the previous chapter I mapped out the dissemination of mass camp impulse in Hong Kong from the 1960s, and its discursive formation from the late 1970s. I pointed out that while camp in Hong Kong has been mainly understood as a penchant for excessive stylizations and the overly conventionalized, denotations of gender parody – alongside their homosexual connotations – somehow did not constitute a salient dimension of that local camp discourse in its early stage. A notable change, however, took place during the second half of the 1980s, when Chow Yun-fat's star vehicle The Eighth Happiness (1988) played a crucial part in bringing into public awareness a camp appreciation accentuated by gender bending and gender parody. Since the late 1980s, Hong Kong people would often simply use the English word “camp” to describe effeminate men with strong homosexual overtones.

Responding to this tendency to equate sissies and gay men through camp, Xiaomingxiong (a.k.a. Samshasha, 1954-2006), a Hong Kong-based cultural critic and pioneering gay historian, published four essays in late 1988 in his column on gay film culture (“xiong ying ji”) in the popular Film Biweekly (Dianying shuang zhoukan). His essays compounded the issue of camp in a number of ways. First, he discussed the historical figure Qu Yuan (338-278 BC), a revered official and poet best known for his Li sao (Encountering Sorrow), an epic written before his suicide that exhorts the king to distance himself from those maneuvering deviously in his court.