605964

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DAS0010.1177/0957926515605964Discourse & SocietyGong

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Discourse & Society

Online discourse of 1 ­–18

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DOI: 10.1177/0957926515605964
football fandom: Chinese das.sagepub.com

Arsenal fans’ talk around

‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’

Yuan Gong
University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA

Abstract
This study examines the constructions of masculine discourse by Chinese fans of European football
through online discussions. A critical discourse analysis of 50 online discussions by Chinese Arsenal
fans shows how these fans use ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’ to reproduce, contest, and racialize the
dominant masculine order originally embedded in these two masculine terms. It also discovers
these fans’ enactment of fluid gender identities in their self-reference to the terms during
interactions. Yet the patriarchal assumption still prevails in their discursive struggles, forming
football and its fandom as completely gendered practices. This complex process is seen as the
negotiation between the globalized European football culture and the local cultural meanings for
Chinese masculinities. It offers implications for how the cyberspace of transnational sports fandom
can form a site for discursive struggles over the hegemonic masculinity in contemporary China.

Keywords
Chinese masculinities, critical discourse analysis, ‘diaosi’, ‘gaofushuai’, online discussions,
transnational football fandom

Introduction
This study examines the constructions of masculine discourse by Chinese fans of
European football in online discussions. It focuses on the Chinese fandom of Arsenal FC
and its talk around ‘gaofushuai’ (高富帅) and ‘diaosi’ (屌丝), the most famous terms for

Corresponding author:
Yuan Gong, Department of Communication, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Office N331, Integrative
Learning Center, 650 North Pleasant Street, Amherst, MA 01003, USA.
Email: yuang@comm.umass.edu

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2 Discourse & Society 

contemporary Chinese masculinities. Taking the approach of Critical Discourse Analysis

(CDA), I explore the discursive struggles of Chinese Arsenal fans over the masculine
order embedded in the discourse of ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’. ‘Gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’
are dichotomous nouns emerging from Chinese cyberspace that describe two distinct
types of men based on their economic power and class positions. Composed of three
Chinese characters meaning tall, rich, and handsome, respectively, ‘gaofushuai’ primar-
ily refers to those middle- to upper-class Chinese males with considerable financial
resources and consumerist power. ‘Diaosi’ literally means the hairs on the penis and con-
notes the lower-class, grassroots males from more ordinary Chinese families. It has been
widely used to denote and denigrate ‘aicuoqiong’, the literal antonym of ‘gaofushuai’,
which consists of three characters meaning short, ugly, and poor. ‘Gaofushuai’ and ‘dia-
osi’ are often used together to represent an explicit masculine hierarchy. Although the
original meanings of the terms touch on body and appearance, this dichotomy now
mainly signifies the economic disparity among Chinese men. Indeed, ‘gaofushuai’ and
‘diaosi’ have become the most frequently used masculine terms in both cyberspace and
mainstream media in the country.
I aim to explore how ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’ are used in one of the key domains
in relation to masculine constructions – the European football fandom in China.
Researchers have considered football fandom as cultural processes through which cer-
tain masculine styles are formed, reinforced, and challenged (Haynes, 1993; Kennedy,
2004; King, 2004; Redhead, 2003). However, with the rise of online football fandom
on a global scale, there is still a dearth of research investigating transnational football
fans’ discursive constructions of masculinities through online interactions. Almost no
attention has been paid to the emergence of this phenomenon in East Asia. In fact, as
Gibbons and Dixon (2010) have argued, football fans have articulated and formed
particular social identities and relationships by regularly contributing to online discus-
sions. This study thus contributes to the research on online football discussions from
the perspective of gender and masculinity and locates it in the specific context of
reforming China.
I explore three research questions in this essay. First, how do Chinese fans negotiate
the meanings and structures of the discourse of ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’ in their online
discussions of European football? Second, what types of social identities do these fans
produce in their discursive practices around the masculine discourse? Third, how are
these fans’ discursive struggles over the masculine order of ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’
situated at the intersection of the globalization of European professional football and
China’s local economic and social reforms?

Theoretical background
This study uses CDA to examine Chinese Arsenal fans’ online use of ‘gaofushuai’ and
‘diaosi’ (Chouliaraki and Fairclough, 1999; Fairclough, 1992; Van Dijk, 1993, 1998,
2008; Van Leeuwen, 1993). CDA conceptualizes discourse as socially constitutive as
well as socially conditioned (Blommaert and Bulcaen, 2000). As part of wider social
practices, discourses are embedded in, and naturalize, particular power relations and

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Gong 3

ideologies. CDA claims a dialectical relation between social structure and discursive
practices. Linguistic-communicative events are not only reflections of, but also consti-
tutive of, larger social processes, relations, and identities in relation to class, racial, and
gender formations. The orders of discourses are the discursive facets of social orders,
but they are always open to contradictions, struggles, and changes in different social
fields. As one of its key focuses, the discursive constructions of gender have been
explored by CDA in many different contexts (e.g. Lazar, 1993, 2000; Remlinger, 2007;
Talbot, 1998). In particular, feminist CDA concerns how gender ideology and gen-
dered relations of power are (re)produced, negotiated, and contested in texts and talk
of everyday life (Lazar, 2007). Feminist scholars have also taken the post-structuralist
approach to see gender identities as fluid, performative, and discursively enacted
(Butler, 2006).
Influenced by such an idea, the study of language and masculinity is increasingly
recognized as a worthwhile feminist project (Benwell, 2014; Johnson, 1997; Johnson
and Ulrike, 1997; Milani, 2014a). In order to unmark the status of men’s language as
unproblematic norms, this area deconstructs the essentialist notion of a single, distinctive
form of masculinity and challenges the structuralist definition of masculinity/femininity
as binary oppositions upon which linguistic differences are based. As Johnson (1997) has
argued, language plays a significant role in the social constructions of fluid and varied
masculine identities in relation to race, class, and sexualities. Subsequent studies have
offered empirical accounts for how men’s talk negotiates with contradictory value sys-
tems and constitutes highly contextualized, sometimes troubled masculine identities
across a broad range of settings such as gossiping (Cameron, 1997), fraternity interac-
tions (Kiesling, 2005), and basketball commentary (Lavelle, 2010).
One concept central to recent linguistic and discourse study of masculinity is that of
‘hegemonic masculinity’. According to Connell and Messerschmidt (2005), ‘masculini-
ties are configurations of practice that are accomplished in social action and, therefore,
can differ according to the gender relations in a particular setting’. It follows that there is
a hierarchy among masculinities that become hegemonic, subordinate, and marginalized.
Hegemonic masculinity is less a specific type than a socio-cultural investment in an ide-
alized masculinity in a given time and place (Connell, 2005). Marginalized and subordi-
nated masculinities are constructed through the interplay of gender with other structures
of inequality such as race and class (Grindstaff and West, 2011). Previous studies have
found several ways in which hegemonic masculinity is reproduced and contested during
men’s interactions. For example, men tend to employ discursive strategies to affirm their
dominant manliness, but simultaneously avoid being categorized as sexist or homopho-
bic (e.g. Korobov and Bamberg, 2004; Speer and Potter, 2002). On the other hand, Milani
(2014b) has argued that discursive practices allow for the performance of alternative,
queer masculine subjectivities in resistance to hegemonic masculinity.
Inspired by these explorations of language and masculinity, I understand online foot-
ball discussion as a site for the competing constructions of masculinity. Unlike other
scholars’ emphasis on men as a group of speakers who form their own identities, this
study focuses on the communicative actions of Chinese football fans whose gender iden-
tities become more flexible and uncertain on the Internet. I intend to find out the ways in

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4 Discourse & Society 

which different forms of masculinity are produced and negotiated in the virtual sports
fandom.
In fact, the literature on sports sociology has provided rich accounts for the affinity
between the development of various masculine identities and the structure of sport as a
social institution (Messner, 1995; Messner and Sabo, 1990). Messner (1995) observed
three factors that challenged sports’ ability to construct a single dominant conception of
masculinity: the ‘cost’ of athletics to men; men’s different experiences with athletic
careers according to social class, race, and sexual orientation; and the rise of women’s
athletics. Scholars have also specifically examined how football fan consumption shapes
diverse masculinities through the examination of such phenomena as football hooligan-
ism (Dunning et al., 1988), male-dominated fanzines (Haynes, 1993), and football’s met-
rosexual influence (Coad, 2005). In the British context, (male) football fans often
struggle over their subordinated subjectivities and redefine their own ideas of masculin-
ity through textual production and organized actions (Haynes, 1993; King, 1997). This
line of research offers illuminating directions for me to look at the possible constructions
of multiple masculinities in football fandom. But it has not focused on football fans’
online discursive practices, which might play an important role in identity formations in
the digital era. Neither have those studies thoroughly explored the transnational con-
sumption of European football in the non-Western settings. To make up for such gap in
the literature, I investigate how Chinese fans of European football produce and contest
the existing masculine structures in China through the use of the discourse of ‘gaofush-
uai’ and ‘diaosi’.
Given this purpose, it is necessary to trace the evolution of Chinese masculinities and
conceptualize the contemporary hegemonic masculinity at the historical moment of
radical economic reform, social stratification, and cultural globalization. Although pre-
modern Chinese masculinity was defined around the construct of wen–wu (literary/
martial) (Louie, 2002; Song, 2004), the wen–wu ideal, which masks the contradictions
of class, sex, and race that exist in the society, seems insufficient for depicting the mas-
culine identities in modern China. The Mao era witnessed the destabilization of the
traditional predominance of wen over wu within the dualistic model as working-class
men became central to the de facto master of the state as a status group (Yang, 2010).
However, the neoliberal reform in the Post-Mao era has drastically degraded working
class to a group signifying ‘historical lack’ (Rofel, 1999) and in turn led to a crisis of
masculinity in China. The mass unemployment caused by privatization has alienated
working-class men from their livelihood and normative masculinity associated with
life-tenured employment (Yang, 2010). Instead, the masculine domination has been
reconfigured with the capitalist logic. Song and Lee (2010) have argued that in contem-
porary China, ‘hegemonic masculinity’ defines masculinity primarily in terms of viril-
ity, power, and wealth. Similarly, Louie (2002) has seen the Chinese male ideals are
increasingly those imbued with buying power. More importantly, the expansion of mar-
ketization and privatization has resulted in a real class structure in China, thus forming
plural and diverse masculine subjectivities. With the advent of neoliberal consumer
society, the hierarchy of Chinese masculinities is now constituted around consumerist
power and class distinction (Louie, 2002; Song, 2004; Song and Lee, 2010, 2012). Yet,

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Gong 5

in the context of Post-Mao depoliticization (Wang, 2006), class is downplayed in the

public discourse and often conveyed through other social variables such as profession,
gender, or family concerns (Yang, 2010). In this sense, describing the intensified eco-
nomic disparity among men caused by national capitalist reform, ‘gaofushuai’ and
‘diaosi’ can be seen as substitutes for the taboo term ‘jieji’ (class). The dichotomous
terms discursively constitute and represent the class-based masculine order in contem-
porary China, with the former signifying the hegemonic masculinity and the latter
aligning with one of the subordinated masculinities.
Chinese scholars have specifically looked at the cultural implications of the term
‘diaosi’. Researchers found that this term, with its indelicate denotation, was created by
netizens to manifest and self-mock the material predicaments and economic pressures
the majority of Chinese young men were facing in China’s intensified class polarization
(Liu and Liu, 2013; Wang, 2013). Netizens’ identification with and celebration of ‘dia-
osi’ regardless of its vulgarization is considered as a particular form of subversion and
deconstruction of the dominant and authoritative culture (Dong and Huang, 2013; Li
and Li, 2013; Zhang, 2012). Although these studies cast light on the invention of ‘dia-
osi’ as a cultural phenomenon, few of them have taken ‘gaofushuai’ into consideration
and analyzed the power dynamics these two terms combine to form. Not surprisingly,
almost no research has explored the relationships of these two terms to the masculine
hegemony in Chinese society. I conceptualize ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’ together as a
dominant Chinese discourse of masculinity that rigidly sets the economic disparity and
class distinction among men during the nation’s capitalist reform. I use CDA to reveal
how this masculine discourse is (re)produced, contested, or deconstructed in the local
communicative practices of Chinese fans around the globally produced European male
professional football.

Methodology
My analysis focuses on the discursive use of ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’ by one football fan
community – the Arsenal fans in China. As one of the top European professional football
clubs, Arsenal FC is among the most popular teams that attract a wide range of Chinese
fans. To a large extent, the Arsenal fan community conducts typical communication prac-
tices, including the discursive constructions of masculinities, in Chinese European foot-
ball fandom. I conducted a close reading of 50 entries of fan discussions theoretically
sampled from the message board for Arsenal FC on http://www.baidu.com, one of the
major online platforms for Chinese Arsenal fans. I first input ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’ in
the search engines of the website and retrieved the most recent discussions mentioning
both terms between 2012 and 2014, which generated more than 500 excerpts. After a
preliminary decoding of the titles and themes of these discussions, I intentionally selected
50 entries that were at least two pages in length and characteristic of fans’ discursive
practices. The excerpts of those discussions that best support my arguments were trans-
lated into English and presented in data analysis. To protect those fans’ virtual privacy, I
changed the online names of them in each excerpt to letters of the alphabet according to
the order of their first engagement in each discussion.

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6 Discourse & Society 

Data analysis
Reproduction of masculine order
Some of the discussions unsurprisingly reinforce the masculine hierarchy signified by
‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’. European professional football is discursively constructed as a
masculinized realm with apparent economic stratification. Because ‘gaofushuai’ and
‘diaosi’ arrange the order of masculinities based on economic disparities, Chinese
Arsenal fans’ use of the terms offers a vivid example of the colonization of the economic
discourse in the field of online football fandom. European football clubs, players, and
fans are often stratified by financial resources and monetary power.
Arsenal fans often use ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’ to compare European football clubs.
The local masculine discourse emerges as a metaphor for judging those clubs’ economic
qualities. The hegemonic masculinity of ‘gaofushuai’ is aligned with clubs with consid-
erable revenue and resources, whereas the subordinated ‘diaosi’ describes the financially
limited ones, regardless of their sporting performance. For example, excerpt 1 involves
fans’ explicit comparison between two clubs’ marketing potentials:

Excerpt 1:

[Title] ‘Advertising on the European football giants’ jerseys: Barca ranks the 1st by 30 million
euros, Arsenal ranks the last!’
 1. A: (a news report about advertising on the front of shirts reposted)
2. B: ‘ai, it’s the stories about diaosi and gaofushuai, no wonder we cannot
3.  win the championship’.

These two fans integrate a football club’s advertising value to its signification of certain
masculinity. ‘Gaofushuai’ refers to Barcelona FC whose jerseys have the highest adversing
values whereas Arsenal FC symbolizes ‘diaosi’ because it receives the least revenue from
selling its jerseys’ front. They articulate the class distinction between Barcelona and
Arsenal according to their monetary capacity rather than football performance or club his-
tory. Such discursive practices around football and masculinities articulate the economic
power relations among European clubs regardless of their sporting qualities.
Similarly, ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’ are frequently mentioned in Chinese Arsenal fans’
discussions about their own practices. The terms delineate the class stratification among
Chinese Arsenal fans, who, with distinct consumption capabilities, are devoted to differ-
ent levels of fan practices. The articulation of Chinese fans with these two terms displays
the situation of European football fandom in the economic-based masculine structure in
contemporary Chinese society. Excerpt 2 shows how attending the live match of Arsenal
is seen by fans as the conduct of ‘gaofushuai’ males:

Excerpt 2:

[Title] The ticket I just got!

1. A: (a picture of an Arsenal ticket posted) I’m going to Emirates Stadium this
2.  weekend.

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Gong 7

3. B: You are rich!

4. C: Gaofushuai is incomparable to our diaosi.

A’s display of the live game ticket indicates his/her ability to directly attend Arsenal
games, which involves high cost for international travel and the increasingly expensive
match ticket. This conduct is thus responded to by fan B in line 3 as a signification of
‘you are rich’ and in turn aligned with ‘gaofushuai’ by fan C in line 4. The more costly
practices such as game attendance and merchandise purchase are affordable to a limited
range of Chinese fans. Through the involvement in such exclusive consumption, these
fans claim their ‘gaofushuai’ identity. On the contrary, other fans who conduct low-cost
or even free consumption, including television exposure, fake product purchase, and
online interaction, are usually aligned with the more subordinated masculine identity of
‘diaosi’. The classification of fan consumption depicts the class distinction within this
fan community, which, imagined as masculine, forms a virtual epitome of the increasing
economic polarization of men in the Chinese context. Yet Arsenal fans’ common support
for the club no longer affords them a shared fan identity.
These interactions reproduce the hegemonic ‘gaofushuai’ and the subordinated ‘dia-
osi’ by maintaining the original focus of the terms on economic capitals. Central to the
reproduction of the ‘gaofushuai’/‘diaosi’ structure is the economization of talk about the
production and consumption of European football. Such discursive practices are simul-
taneously conditioned by (and formative for) the accelerating class polarization of
Chinese men and the commodification of European football. On the local level, Chinese
Arsenal fans’ online discourse is deeply embedded in China’s capitalist economic reform
in the Post-Mao era. The class distinction in football fandom is even sharpened and con-
solidated in China given its existing economic disparities. On the global level, the glo-
balization of the English Premier League (EPL) is intertwined with the commercialization
of its operation, bringing such core ideas as fan consumption, clubs’ financial budget,
and players’ big salary to its Chinese fandom. As a result, Chinese fans integrate these
cultural resources to their constructions and redefinitions of masculinities.

Contestation with class-based masculine hierarchy

Although Chinese Arsenal fans recognize the existence of economic hierarchies in vari-
ous facets of European football culture, they constantly rework the textual meanings of
‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’ and contest with the dominant economic discourse in the actual
online discussions. The superiority and inferiority of ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’ based on
economic disparity are sometimes questioned and subverted.
In many discussions, the categorization of clubs, players, and fans to ‘gaofushuai’,
while indicating their economic privileges, does not necessarily equate with their being
respected, embraced, or submitted to by the discussers. Meanwhile, those defined as
‘diaosi’ are often associated with pride, honor, and admirations. Many fans contest the
hegemony of ‘gaofushuai’ through mocking strategies. They emphasize the importance
of other noneconomic recourses for defining masculinities in relation to football. Some
fans display indifference to the ‘gaofushuai’ objects whose superiority relies solely on
financial resources, as excerpt 3 shows:

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8 Discourse & Society 

Excerpt 3:

[Title] ‘Man City plans to sell 10 and buy 10, determined to get van Persie’.
1. A: (a news report about Man City’s purchase reposted)
2. B: An upstart.
3. C: Upstart. Indeed they have too much money and don’t know where to spend …
4. A: You can’t buy class!!!
5. D: Should kneel know to such rich team!
6. E: Gaofushuai sure enough throws away what he finishes playing with.

While they consider Manchester City as ‘gaofushuai’ and recognize that this club is
much richer than Arsenal, these fans do not think the former is more respectable. Both B
(line 3) and C (line 5) describe Manchester City as an ‘upstart’. In China, ‘upstart’ dispar-
agingly indicates the sudden gains of wealth and the lack of history, tradition, taste, and
other cultural and social capitals. This excerpt implies that the ‘gaofushuai’ title Manchester
City gains by its huge funds does not translate as a top and noble club that requires addi-
tional qualifications. Following these lines, A cites a slogan of Arsenal fans from England,
which tells Manchester City money can’t buy class. This line 4 echoes the previous refer-
ence to ‘upstart’ and suggests that the prestigious class only pertains to such clubs as
Arsenal, whose glorious past and accumulation of trophies can never be shadowed by its
current embarrassing financial situation that associates the club temporarily with ‘diaosi’.
Similarly, another group of discourses celebrate and embrace ‘diaosi’ for their tran-
scendence over ‘gaofushuai’ in noneconomic realms. Key virtues in football, including
historical achievements, loyalty, seniority, and football knowledge, become sources of
pride for the ‘diaosi’ clubs, players, and fans. One fan’s comment in a long discussion
where fans bemoan Arsenal’s current ‘diaosi’ status recalls the previous splendid perfor-
mance of Arsenal FC:

Excerpt 4:

The first time I became a fan of Arsenal, I knew it was not gaofushuai, but I just like such young
and dashing diaosi. We have nothing to complain about. Now we are witnessing the seventh
year without any trophy, but we all still remember its (Arsenal’s) glory of ‘the invincible’. That’s
what no gaofushuai has achieved.

This fan states that she/he simply ‘likes’ Arsenal’s identity of ‘diaosi’, and highlights the
exceptionality of the ‘invincible’ Arsenal created during the 2003–2004 EPL season. Such
honor is what cannot be purchased by any ‘gaofushuai’ club that only has money. This trend
is also reflected in some discussions on fans’ own practices, as excerpt 5 shows:

Excerpt 5:

[Title] How many diaosi are watching the match right now?
1. A: I am watching CCTV-5.
2. B: As expected, you are the diaosi who watch the game on television.
3. A: Who owns the money gaofushuai have to go to the live match? But I have

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Gong 9

4. 
continued to watch the games on television for 10 years. How many gaofushuai have
diaosi’s loyalty to our Arsenal?

Here A accepts B’s calling him/her ‘diaosi’ because she/he can only have access to the
games through television. However, she/he values his/her 10-year-long loyalty to Arsenal
as something few ‘gaofushuai’ can accomplish even though they are able to attend the
live matches. Apparently, A is proud of being a loyal fan to Arsenal with the ‘diaosi’
identity.
In summary, Arsenal fans’ constantly negotiate with the masculine hierarchy between
‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’. Interestingly, they do not attempt to repudiate the existence of
economic disparity of masculinities. What they actually contest is the overemphasis of
the ‘gaofushuai’/‘diaosi’ discourse on class in the ranking of masculinities, which is pos-
sibly precipitated by the global football commercialization and China’s inclination to
capitalist economy. By mocking ‘gaofushuai’’s lack of other capitals and embracing ‘dia-
osi’’s alternative strengths, Chinese Arsenal fans enrich the connotations of the mascu-
linities represented by the terms. They borrow such values as history, victory, and loyalty
from the traditional European football culture to challenge and redefine the distinctions
between ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’. In this sense, the predomination of the economic dis-
course in ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’ is intervened with the discourse of football during
these communicative practices. Chinese Arsenal fans problematize and struggle with the
discursive order of Chinese masculinities that primarily speaks to men’s class positions.
Because these fans are situated in the broader gender structures in China, such discourse
might represent their reactions to their own subordination and marginalization in their
broader social experiences.

Racialization of ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’

On the other hand, Chinese Arsenal fans’ reconstruction of and negotiation with the
economic-oriented terms cannot be simply defined as power struggles over the dominant
masculine structure. While these fans redefine masculinities with noneconomic dis-
courses, some discourses have additional ideological effects and thus reinforce the order
between the terms. The most prominent conservative connotation that Chinese fans bring
to the discourse of ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’ is that of race. The terms originally form two
versions of Chinese masculinities that do not explicitly concern racial or ethnic differ-
ences. In Arsenal fans’ online discussions, however, ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’ are often
used to embody a racial hierarchy. White football players are overwhelmingly described
as ‘gaofushuai’ in comparison to racial minorities, while ‘diaosi’ is used to describe non-
white, especially black players despite their high income. Excerpt 6 depicts how these
fans sarcastically compare two racially different players with the ‘gaofushuai’/‘diaosi’
discourse:

Excerpt 6:

[title] This picture of Gervinho and Mertesacker, what do you guys want to say …
 1. A: (posting a picture of Gervinho and Mertesacker as the following)

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10 Discourse & Society 

 2. B: I can immediately tell who is better

 3. C: next step …
 4. D: (they) can close the camp
 5. E: wish them happiness
 6. F: Gervinho’s teeth are so white
 7. G: eat the white pill during the day, you won’t be sleepy. Take the black pill
 8.  at night, you can have a nice sleep.
 9. H: Day doesn’t understand the darkness of the night
10.  X: Such a black pill, you will definitely get ill after taking it.
11.  J: Gaofushuai and diaosi, can easily tell who is better
12.  K: Black and White
13.  L: The story of gaofushuai and heiyouying
14.  M: I can only see Mertesacker and white teeth

In this heated discussion that engages more than 10 fans, each fan contributes only one
comment based on the previous replies. Although the hierarchization of Gervinho and
Mertesacker is initiated by B in line 2, it is not until G makes an explicit metaphor in lines
7 and 8 that these fans start to express racist attitudes and link racial differences to mascu-
linities. G imagines that the white and black players symbolize day and night pills for cold
cure respectively. This is the first comment where the racial difference of Gervinho and
Mertesacker is mentioned. Following this, H reaffirms the racial distinction with another
popular metaphor that ‘Days don’t understand the darkness of the nights’ (line 9). Here,
Mertesacker signifies the light of the days, while Gervinho is described by his skin color
(darkness). Then in line 10, X indirectly responds to G by mocking the low quality of the
black pill Gervinho symbolizes. This is so far the most apparent negative attitude expressed
to blackness. ‘Gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’ emerge in line 11 after such racist expression, and
it is obvious that J considers Mertesacker as “gaofushuai”, who is better than Gervinho as
“diaosi’’. Interestingly, L echoes J by naming this picture as ‘the story of “gaofushuai” and
“heiyouying”’ (line 13). ‘Heiyouying’ in Chinese refers to ‘black and hard’, which is a
disparaging, racist term coined by Chinese football fans to stereotype black players as
physically strong but tactically weak. By contrasting ‘heiyouying’ with ‘gaofushuai’, L
openly categorizes the white player as ‘gaofushuai’. Replacing ‘diaosi’ in the dichotomy,

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Gong 11

‘heiyouying’ becomes a component, or an example, of ‘diaosi’. This excerpt demonstrates

how Arsenal fans’ use of the terms is intertwined with the racist discourse. As the interac-
tion evolves, these fans develop and confirm the necessary connection between race and
the masculine order.
Certainly, the signification of players of color as ‘diaosi’ is not without exception: in
some discussions, fans do assign ‘gaofushuai’ to such successful and famous black play-
ers as Henry and Pele. Similarly, a few white players including Fabregars and Jenkinson
are mocked as ‘diaosi’ for their behaviors in other aspects (e.g. betrayal of the club or
poor performance). Yet in most discussions comparing and ranking white and non-white
players, race plays a key role in determining whether they are ‘gaofushuai’ or ‘diaosi’.
Chinese Arsenal fans even employ ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’ to form a racial/class hierar-
chy between the white football players and themselves. Admittedly, these fans’ self-
identification with ‘diaosi’ in comparison to white ‘gaofushuai’ football players is partly
a result of the income disparity between the two groups. But self-marginalization rarely
emerges in fan discussions about black football players, even though class distinction
exists between players of color and Chinese fans as well.
These fans’ racialization of the discourse of ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’ is closely related
to two facts. First, racism has been a continuous, though implicit, discourse in traditional
Chinese culture and can trace its roots in ancient philosophical texts (e.g. Confucius)
(Johnson, 2007). With its desire to pursue and emulate the superiority of white culture
and Western society in its modernization process, contemporary China tends to strengthen
racist views in which Whiteness functions as the symbol of advancement and success
whereas Blackness signifies backwardness and poverty that China has been struggling to
abandon (Johnson, 2007). In addition, the mass marketing of American and European
consumer goods and media products to China successfully cultivates Western racial ste-
reotypes and symbolic hierarchies in Chinese audiences (Johnson, 2007; Sautman, 1994;
Tan et al., 2009). Consequently, negative attitudes toward black people are often found
among ordinary Chinese citizens (Johnson, 2007; Sautman, 1994; Tan et al., 2009). In
particular, the current Chinese standards of beauty are based upon Caucasian racial char-
acteristics (Johnson, 2007; Tan et al., 2009). Dark skin is perceived by Chinese people to
be ‘not beautiful’ or ‘less beautiful’ than white skin (Tan et al., 2009). As physical attrac-
tiveness is part of the literal meaning of ‘gaofushuai’, it is reasonable that Arsenal fans
align this term with the white player. Second, these fans are likely influenced by the
racist discourse still prevailing in European professional football (Kassimeris, 2008;
King, 2004). By adding the racist discourse to ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’, Chinese Arsenal
fans strengthen the power differences between the masculinities these terms signify.
They discursively construct a transnational masculine order that crosses the racial, geo-
graphical, and national boundaries, with players and fans being incorporated to the same
global masculine continuity. The hegemonic masculinity of ‘gaofushuai’ is thus reworked
into the image of White upper-class men.

Destabilization of masculine identities

The final step of my analysis deals with the identity constitution of Chinese Arsenal fans
in the discussions about ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’. Through their use of the terms, these

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12 Discourse & Society 

fans always identify themselves with these two masculinities but do not stick to either
identity. Their self-identification with ‘gaofushuai’ or ‘diaosi’ is more like gender perfor-
mance which depends on the particular topics and contexts. In three different discus-
sions, I found one particular fan (who I name as P) who expressed himself/herself and
was recognized by others with distinct identities. In one discussion titled ‘I guess the
gaofushuai and diaosi on the Arsenal message board will argue about whether we should
pay to watch the games’, P clearly claims his/her ‘diaosi’ identity by commenting ‘I am
a diaosi. I support the opinion of diaosi. Making the payment should be voluntary. It
should totally depend on the fan themselves’. However, in another conversation about
how many ‘gaofushuai’ are active on the Arsenal message board, P is recognized by two
other fans as ‘gaofushuai’:

Excerpt 7:

[Title] How many gaofushuai does the Arsenal Message Board exactly have?
1.  P: (reply to T) Gaofushuai from Xian Jiaotong University!
2.  T: No I’m not. I get everything through hard work.
3.  P: This is even better. Not like me as diaosi, only knowing typing in front of
4.  the computer.
5.  Q: P, you gaofushuai come to make fun of others again.
6.  T: Let me worship gaofushuai a bit.
7.  P: I am diaosi, I still have a diaosi job. How can you call me gaofushuai?
8.  T: When I see your profile picture and comments, I can immediately tell that
9.  you are gaofushuai.

Excerpt 7 is a nice example of the fluidity of masculine identity in online football fan
discussions. While P still expresses himself as ‘diaosi’ here, T concludes that she/he is
‘gaofushuai’ from the former’s profile picture and comments. (P’s profile picture is a
cartoon character with confident and contempt facial expressions.) This suggests that P’s
images and comments on the message board are in the flux and open to different inter-
pretations from other fans. More interestingly, in excerpt 8, P himself starts to disclose
his/her economic competence:

Excerpt 8:

[Title] It is always said that Arsenal fans are all diaosi, aren’t there any gaofushuai?
1.  S: Please introduce them to me.
2.  P: (Recommend some fans to A first) Little brother, in fact I have also made
3.  some money these years. Do you believe me?
4.  S: I don’t believe you. You are actually boss, aren’t you?
5.  P: Of course not. I am jobless.
6.  S: Haven’t you heard of making great fortune overnight?

Here, P first aligns himself/herself to the polar of ‘gaofushuai’ by telling S that he has
also made some money (lines 2 and 3). But when S confirms his ‘gaofushuai’ status by
calling him/her ‘boss’, P vaguely replies that she/he is ‘jobless’. S continues to suggest

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Gong 13

that ‘jobless’ does not prevent P from making a fortune overnight. The limited indicators
P has provided make it difficult to judge whether she/he is truly moneyed or just uses
such comments as self-mockery. Although P is constructed as ‘gaofushuai’ during the
interaction, his/her real identity is uncertain and contingent.
These three examples combine to show P’s ongoing play between the identities of
‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’ in the actual discursive events. In the online fan discussions,
particular masculine identities are constituted for fans, but they are always unstable,
fragmented, and performative. Chinese Arsenal fans’ performance of ‘gaofushuai’
and/or ‘diaosi’ is affected by their reworking of the terms with more complex mean-
ings and more contradictory orders. The openness and contradictions within the terms
make it impossible for them to offer any stable and united identity. Yet this trend of
identity destabilization might also be an outcome of the online communicative pro-
cesses. The virtuality and anonymity of the Baidu Arsenal message board allow fans
to perform masculinities without social responsibility or physical recognition. This
means that female fans can also join in the discussions in the name of either ‘gaofush-
uai’ or ‘diaosi’.
In fact, Chinese Arsenal fans destabilize the fixed masculine identities not only of
themselves, but also of the football clubs and players. Few teams or players are con-
stantly categorized into one fixed type of masculinities. The delineation of the same
subject includes slippages and transformations between ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’. This
trend embodies how these fans conceptualize the fluidity and performativity of mascu-
linities as a whole. Excerpt 9 presents fans’ diverging ideas on Arsenal’s identity:

Excerpt 9:

[Title] Is our team (Arsenal) gaofushuai or diaosi?

1. A: Just as the title.
2. B: I am hungry … it should be a diaosi team …
3. C: Diaosi.
4. D: Both.
5. A: Yes, its performance is like gaofushuai, but the players are all diaosi.
6. B: Yeah, the boss gives so little allowance. Gaofushuai leads a diaosi life.

In response to D’s answer of ‘Both’ (line 4), A elaborates in line 5 that Arsenal’s per-
formance is comparable to ‘gaofushuai’, but it is composed of all ‘diaosi’ players. B
further discusses the masculine ambiguities of the club (line 6) by saying ‘Gaofushuai
leads a diaosi life’. Arsenal’s definite and fixed traits are put into crisis through its align-
ment to both ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’. In the eyes of Chinese fans, there are possibilities
to slip between ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’ for themselves as well as the clubs and the play-
ers. What these terms connote is no longer stable or definable traits, but two fluid perfor-
mances that interchangeably produce the football subjects. The ambiguities of these
masculinities articulated in fan discussions indicate the existence of uncertainties and
tenuousness surrounding the masculine hegemony ‘gaofushuai’ signifies. It is very likely
that such hegemony is still under construction as China is experiencing significant trans-
formations in material reproduction and formation of values and norms.

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14 Discourse & Society 

However, it is important to note that such discursive struggles have not lessened the
masculinization of language and practices related to European football. Chinese Arsenal
fans’ conversations essentially form football fandom as a gendered conduct. No feminine
term and discourse are found to describe any club, player, or fan in all the samples. Their
use of the masculine terms to concretize all aspects of football naturalizes the sexist
assumption that associates this field with masculinities in the first place. Moreover, in the
online environment where gender is not recognizable, fans’ exclusive self-reference to
‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’ distorts the actual gender proportion of transnational football
fandom in China. Arsenal fans’ discourse excludes women’s presence within their com-
munity, which, from my observation, actually has a considerable female fan base in real
life. Because some fans who are very active on the message board occasionally claim
their female identity, it is likely that most of the time they are silent about their gender,
thus conceding the masculinization of the fandom. Therefore, Chinese Arsenal fans’
struggles with ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’ are compounded with their complicit reproduc-
tion of the dominant discourse of patriarchy and football. In other words, they have
integrated both ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’ to the same ‘masculine hegemonic bloc’ which
subordinates femininities in the transnational football fandom.

Conclusion
The above findings show that the transnational European football fandom has become a
crucial cultural site for constituting, contesting, and performing contemporary Chinese mas-
culinities. By analyzing Chinese Arsenal fans’ interactions on the Baidu message board, I
identify the discourse of ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’ as the main form through which these fans
imagine and negotiate masculinities. Their use of the terms forms complex discursive strug-
gles over the dominant masculine structures embedded in ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’. These
fans simultaneously reproduce, contest, and racialize this mainstream Chinese masculine
discourse. Meanwhile they enact fluid identities for themselves around ‘gaofushuai’ and
‘diaosi’ and discursively destabilize these two masculinities. But as a whole, their language
use is still dominated by the sexist discourse of football and patriarchy.
Chinese fans’ use of ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi’ in the discussions of European football
speaks to Chouliaraki and Fairclough’s (1999) view of discoursal hybridity in late modern
society, which refers to a radical unsettling of social and cultural boundaries along with
the mixing of different genres and discourses. Reconstructing the local terms with an
external fan object, Chinese fans’ discursive practices are embedded in the dialectical
globalization that entails an unprecedented degree of interpretation between the global
and local (Featherstone, 1995). Particularly, the present case vividly presents ‘football
glocalization’, which sees football fandom as a global phenomenon and macroscopic pro-
cesses recontextualized with respect to local cultures (Giulianotti and Robertson, 2004,
2009). On the global level, leading European football clubs such as Arsenal FC have
cultivated this fandom in China through their integral presence in both media and real life.
While Sandvoss (2003) has argued that major football clubs are becoming increasingly
bland, culturally inoffensive, and meaningless to attract more transnational fans, this
study suggests that the local fan discussions in China still derives rich values and mean-
ings from European football to redefine masculinities. On the local level, the influx of

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Gong 15

European football to China confronts the nation’s radical social transition and stratifica-
tion in the reform era. Characterized with the privatization and deregulation of state enter-
prises and public sectors, the abdication of welfare provisions including education and
medical care, and the rise of a housing market (Zhang, 2013), the neoliberal transition has
led to not only economic growth but also class stratification in Chinese society. In particu-
lar, China’s integration to the global market has created new labor arbitrage and reprole-
tarianization (Tomba, 2002). As a result, the income disparity and power difference among
men have become much more widened than those in the Mao era. The existence of such
hierarchized and competing masculinities in contemporary China enables fans to discuss
and imagine European football with local resources. Ultimately, we should contextualize
this case in the global trend of neoliberal capitalism, in which both football and masculin-
ity are colonized by the economic discourse. Yet it is precisely under such circumstances
that Chinese fans present their agency and show how the dominant ideologies can be
contested and negotiated through communicative practices.
Future research can follow the path of this study to more deeply explore the relation-
ships among transnational football fandom, online interactions, and gender discourses.
First of all, it is necessary to further investigate the role of new media in forming the
discursive struggles of football and sports fans more generally. We need to consider the
possibility that the virtual fan space has become a key site where gender ideologies are
contested. In such a transitional society as China where many values are under construc-
tion, new media might trigger the invention of new terms and discourses about mascu-
linities and femininities. This might help us identify new forms of political actions in the
late modern era. Subsequent China studies should also take into account the governmen-
tal regulations of the online space, which complicates the situations for virtual discursive
struggles. Second, future research could pay more attention to how European football
fans exist in other social contexts such as Latin America, Africa, and even Europe, where
the economic and cultural conditions, while experiencing the similar radical changes as
China in this globalization era, still hold characteristics to inspire local fans to produce
unique discourse of gender hegemony and subordination. Such discussion could incor-
porate postcolonial theories to understand the power relations in transnational football
fandom and particularly how the dominant European football culture is disseminated and
negotiated at various ‘peripheries’ of the world. Finally, based on the analysis of mascu-
linities here and the more general theorization of gender and sports elsewhere, our next
step is to bring other gender and sexuality categories such as femininities, homosexual-
ity, bisexuality, and transgender into the discussion. While this study displays the preva-
lence of patriarchy in Chinese European football fans’ discourses, it is essential to forge
on an examination of how transnational football fans’ online discussions on a wider scale
are possibly associated with discourses of these subordinated and marginalized catego-
ries in the orders of gender and sexuality. In this way, we are likely to reveal the emanci-
patory potential of the seemingly unpolitical, trivial discourses of online sports fans for
gender equality in the late modern society.

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or
not-for-profit sectors.

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16 Discourse & Society 

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Author biography
Yuan Gong is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Communication, University of
Massachusetts Amherst, USA. Her research interests are in transnational football fandom, and in
particular Chinese fans’ practices and discourse around European male professional football in the
reform era.

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