Introduction
This chapter discusses domains of popular culture that constitute the “pornosphere” in mainland
China, including migratory websites and databases that constitute a zone where people access
and share sexually explicit media despite the nationwide ban. Pornography has also become
an aspect of popular culture as mainstream media texts and cultural practices are incorporating
sexualized styles, gestures, and aesthetics (McNair 2013). While men veer towards an adoration of
Chinese-dubbed versions of Japanese porn idols, women recreate the products of queer Japanese
animation called Boys’ Love. State media outlets disavow the existence of these products and the
pornosphere, but the zone mediates elegantly between government and citizens who interact
with their idols and project stories of sexual release. The social imaginaries created in this pro-
cess will be seen as a creative and symbolic dimension through which people navigate stringent
morality and censorship legislation while nurturing sexual knowledge and desires.
The chapter will zoom in on pornography within Chinese popular culture, focusing on
female and male web users who reimagine Japanese culture and its sexualized idols. Expressly,
the chapter looks beyond the primary function of pornography as a tool for sexual arousal and
masturbation and examines it as an important aspect of civil rights and trans-cultural affect.
At the same time, the pornosphere allows people to nurture gender identities—while men covet
conventional idealtypes, women share queer fantasies about masculine power roles and sexual
weaknesses.
It is not a great surprise that the Chinese social media generation has found release and
gender identification in Japanese idols, whose portraits and movies are carefully archived in
designated databases. This convention itself is a characteristic of the Japanese geek generation,
whom Hiroki Azuma has labeled as “database animals.” According to Azuma, the Japanese otaku
generation is no longer interested in reading narratives or overarching philosophies about idols
or characters, but is “satiated by classifying characters from stories according to their traits and
anonymously creating databases that catalog, store, and display the results.” (Azuma 2009, xvi)
Azuma explains that the loss of grand narrative in literature and cinematic culture has made
way for a specific type of adoration of single characters and idols, whether they are animated
fantasy beings and post-humans or human models in the flesh. The database instinct not only
refers to an obsession to archive, classify, adore and sexualize idols, but also to a “model or a