fan language: the victorian imaginary and cnovel fandom
bao3bei4
there’s this pinterest image i’ve seen circulating a lot in the past year i’ve been on fandom social media. it’s a drawn infographic of a, i guess, asian-looking woman holding a fan in different places relative to her face to show what the graphic helpfully calls “the language of the fan.”
people like sharing it. they like thinking about what nefarious ancient chinese hanky code shenanigans their favorite fan-toting character might get up to—accidentally or on purpose. and what’s the problem with that?
the problem is that fan language isn’t chinese. it’s victorian. and even then, it’s not really quite victorian at all.
