Dongfang Bubai

Dongfang Bubai (lit. "Invincible East"), also known as Invincible Asia, is a fictional character in the wuxia novel The Smiling, Proud Wanderer by Jin Yong. He is the leader of the Sun Moon Holy Cult (日月神教), an "unorthodox" martial arts school. In his quest to dominate the wulin (martial artists' community), he castrated himself to fulfil the prerequisite for learning the skills in a martial arts manual known as the Sunflower Manual (葵花寶典), and became a formidable martial artist after mastering those skills. His castration and supreme prowess in martial arts make him one of the most memorable characters in Jin Yong's wuxia universe even though he appears in only one chapter of the novel.

Created during the Cultural Revolution, Dongfang Bubai and his cult—both names alluding to the propaganda song “The East Is Red”—serve as allegories for Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party. Since Brigitte Lin’s classic portrayal of the character as a trans woman in the early 1990s, Dongfang Bubai’s role has been greatly expanded and the character became a queer icon in Chinese popular culture. From the 2010s onward, censorship of LGBT themes in China led to non-queer reinterpretations of the character in television and film.