Read more
In SARS Stories, Belinda Kong delves into the cultural archive of the 2003 SARS pandemic, examining Chinese-language creative works and social practices at the epicenters of the outbreak in China and Hong Kong. As the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted issues of anti-Asian racism and sinophobia, Kong traces how Chinese people navigated the SARS pandemic and created meaning amid crisis through cultures of epidemic expression. From sentimental romances and Cantopop songs to raunchy sex comedies and crowdsourced ghost tales, unexpected and minor genres and creators of Chinese popular culture highlight the resilience and humanity of those living through the pandemic. Rather than narrating pandemic life in terms of crisis and catastrophe, Kong argues that these works highlight Chinese practices of community, care, and love amid disease. She also highlights the persistence of orientalism in anglophone accounts of SARS index patients and global reporting on COVID-era China. Kong shows how the Chinese experiences of living with SARS can reshape global feelings toward pandemic social life and foster greater fellowship in the face of pandemics.
List of contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1. Pandemic Ordinariness: Epidemic Romances and Female Sentiments 33
2. Pandemic Humor: Digital Prosociality for the Epidemic Socius 77
3. Pandemic Resilience: Deextinction and the Hong Kong Cantophone 112
4. Pandemic First Patients: Deperilizing the Anglophone SARS Archive 180
Afterword 238
Notes 241
Bibliography 267
Index 285
About the author
Belinda Kong is Professor of Asian Studies and English at Bowdoin College and author of
Tiananmen Fictions Outside the Square: The Chinese Literary Diaspora and the Politics of Global Culture.
Summary
Belinda Kong examines the Chinese popular culture archive of the 2003 SARS pandemic, from music to television to humor, to show how Chinese people survived the pandemic through practices of community, care, and love rather than solely narrating pandemic life in terms of crisis.
