Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China by Wu Cuncun; Berry Chris ;

Author:Wu, Cuncun; Berry, Chris ;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2005-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Li’s guide was extremely popular. First published in 1886, it was reprinted several time over the following twenty years. It was regarded as the best and most practical guide for the new visitor. The eighth juan was originally dedicated to listing the most popular boy-actors of the time, and provided the addresses of the private apartments (siyu). The provision of the actors’ addresses in Li’s guide is further evidence that the boy-actors were male prostitutes entertaining clients at their apartments.88

Liang Shaoren (1792-?), a literatus who enjoyed considerable celebrity in Beijing during the nineteenth century, claimed that he was often derided by other literati as a hypocrite, or was accused of being made of stone or wood, because of ‘his indifference to boy-actors at banquet gatherings’.89 Nevertheless, opening his collected poems we also find that he confesses to some difficulty in resisting at least one boy-actor. In several poems he pours his heart out to the boy: ‘I fancy we could make a date and return as matched ducks in our next lives; in the form of a butterfly I dream of our previous souls’, ‘Originally free of such thoughts suddenly the demon of love was upon me; can I survive a lovesickness as sharp as this?’90 For a man jeered at as a stone-hearted hypocrite to write lines with such intensity must surely be testament to the force and pervasiveness of the male-mode and the fashion surrounding boy-actors. Liang himself hints at how the air in Beijing was steeped in the male-mode sensibility:

Miles of soft luxury caressed by spring air,

They notice the boys as if the girls weren’t there.

Arias ring out and rise over the roofs,

From beautiful boys made up as beautiful girls.91

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