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Welcome to Sisyphus Highway: In Depth.

From Zhang Yufen, the “mistress killer,” to once-fashionable “mistress deterrence consultants”; from series such as Dwelling Narrowness and The Temptation to Go Home to today’s endless revenge microdramas, we seem always to be searching for someone who “deserves to be hit.” Butwhy is an affair always narrated as a war between women, while the person who actually betrayed the marriage contract repeatedly disappears from the story?

Looking back, we also see that these narratives bear the marks of their eras. After reform and opening up, flows of wealth, class differentiation, remade forms of masculinity, and gendered divisions within marriage all shaped how people now understand marriage, affairs, and the “third party.”

Beginning with news about Zhang Yufen and “mistress deterrence consultants,” we examine the historical background, gender order, and media narratives behind extramarital affairs, while asking:Besides constantly searching for someone who “deserves to be hit,” can we tell marriage, desire, and intimacy another way?

 

- Beginning with Zhang Yufen, the “mistress killer”: why does an affair become a war between women?

- From a “women’s detective agency” to “mistress deterrence consultants”: when affairs become a business

- Driving away the third party: who defines how a relationship should end?

- Desire and Dignity: how did reform and opening up change masculinity and narratives of affairs?

- Dwelling Narrowness and Song Siming: how do sex, power, and wealth together shape male desire?

- “One family, two systems”: how did the market economy change gendered divisions within families?

- From Coming and Going to Chinese-Style Divorce: why is the third party always portrayed as a “new woman”?

- A man supports the family, so his affair can be forgiven? How is responsibility within marriage redefined?

- Why does “beating the mistress” remain such a reliable template for gratifying fiction?