LGBT History in China - Ancient China

Ancient China

Homosexuality has been documented in China since ancient times. The Intrigues of the Warring States, a collection of political advice and stories from before the Han Dynasty, refers to Duke Xian of Jin (reigned 676–651 BCE) planting a handsome young man in a rival's court in order to influence the other ruler and to give him bad advice. The historian Han Fei recorded a more exalted example in the relationship of Mi Zixia (彌子瑕) and Duke Ling of Wei (衛靈公). Mizi Xia's sharing of an especially delicious peach with his lover was referenced by later writers as Yútáo, or "the leftover peach". Another example of homosexuality at the highest level of society from the Warring States Period is the story of Lord Long Yang and the King of Wei.

Scholar Pan Guangdan (潘光旦) came to the conclusion that many emperors in the Han Dynasty had one or more male sex partners. Many were recorded in detailed biographies in the Memoirs of the Historian by Sima Qian and the Records of the Han by Ban Gu. Grand Historian Sima Qian notes that, unlike female wives and concubines, the male companions of the emperors were often admired as much for their administrative abilities as for their sexual abilities:

— Those who served the ruler and succeeded in delighting his ears and eyes, those who caught their lord's fancy and won his favor and intimacy, did so not only through the power of lust and love; each had certain abilities in which he excelled. Thus I made The Biographies of the Emperors' Male Favorites. The proverb says, "No amount of toiling in the fields can compare to a spell of good weather; no amount of faithful service can compare to being liked by your superiors." This is no idle saying. Yet it is not women alone who can use their looks to attract the eyes of the ruler; courtiers and eunuchs can play at that game as well. Many were the men of ancient times who gained favor this way.

The last of these emperors overlapped chronologically with "all but one" of the first fourteen Roman emperors held to be bisexual or exclusively homosexual by historian Edward Gibbon. The Han emperor most strongly devoted to his male companion was Emperor Ai, who "by nature...did not care for women", and who attempted to pass the throne on to his lover, Dongxian (董賢). The story of Emperor Ai which most struck later writers, however, was when the Emperor carefully cut off his sleeve, so as not to awake Dongxian, who had fallen asleep on top of it. The cut sleeve was imitated by many people at court and became known as Duànxiù, or "breaking the sleeve". This phrase was linked with the earlier story of Mizi Xia's bitten peach to create the formulaic expression yútáo duànxiù (余桃断袖) to refer to homosexuality in general.

Throughout written Chinese history, the role of women is given little positive emphasis, with relationships between women being especially rare. One mention by Ying Shao, who lived about 140 to 206, does relate palace women attaching themselves as husband and wife, a relationship called dui shi. He noted, "They are intensely jealous of each other."

It should be noted that except in unusual cases, such as Emperor Ai, the men named for their homosexual relationships in the official histories appear to have had active heterosexual lives as well. It is, in fact, impossible to know the full sexuality of any historical figures from most of Chinese history, unless they are indicated to be bisexual, since only affairs which were considered out of the ordinary were documented. Neither heterosexuality nor homosexuality were considered out of the ordinary for most of that history, so the fact that only one of the two was documented cannot rule out the other.

The cases of Huo Guang, who served as regent of the Western Han, and General Liang Ji, who dominated the government of Han China in the 150's, are typical of bisexuals whose homosexuality would not have been mentioned had it not been seen as unusual in some way. Huo Guang was infatuated with his slave master, Feng Zidu, a fact that "provoked laughter in the wineshops of foreigners", but which didn't have much effect on his own countrymen. What did surprise them was when Huo Guang's widow took up with the slave master after her husband's death. For two lower-status individuals, one a woman and one a servant, to dishonor their master's memory in this way was considered shocking, and so the relationship was made note of.

Similarly, General Liang Ji, was typical in having both a wife, Sun Shou, and a male slave, Qin Gong, who was acknowledged publicly with a status similar to a concubine. In this specific case, the relationship made it into the histories only because Liang Ji showed exceptional devotion to his wife, sharing the slave Qin Gong with her in a ménage à trois. It was not Liang Ji's bisexuality which was considered noteworthy, but rather the fact that he let two of his lower-ranking lovers enjoy each other instead of demanding that they each concentrate solely on him.

Two notable scholars, Ruan Ji and Shan Tao, were unique as egalitarian, long-term partners in the 3rd century. They were members of the anti-establishment Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, and their relationship reflected that group's vaunting of mystical, rustic, and simple life over the corruption, hierarchy, and intrigue at court. According to Lady Han, the wife of another of the Sages, who spied on the two in their bedroom, they were also sexually talented.

Writings from the Liu Song Dynasty claimed that homosexuality was as common as heterosexuality in the late 3rd century:

All the gentlemen and officials esteemed it. All men in the realm followed this fashion to the extent that husbands and wives were estranged. Resentful unmarried women became jealous.

One of the earliest mentions of the actor-prostitutes who would become common later in Chinese history is also from the Jin Dynasty.

Poems written by and for the future Emperor Jianwen of Liang also highlight the luxurious but ultimately degrading role of the male prostitute at the time.

The aristocratic poet Yu Xin was representative of the more subtle system of patronage which existed without the stigma of prostitution, whereby a poorer or younger man could provide sexual service to a more established man in return for political advancement. Yu Xin opened his home and provided a standing reference for the younger Wang Shao, who repaid him by serving as a sort of butler and sex provider. Wang Shao went on to become an official censor.

With the rise of the Tang Dynasty, China became increasingly influenced by the sexual mores of foreigners from Western and Central Asia, and female companions began to accumulate the political power previously accumulated by male companions at the imperial court. At the same time, the actual power of the imperial court was in decline relative to intermediate rule by scholar-bureaucrats. The first negative term for homosexuality in Chinese- 'jijian', connoting illicit sexuality- appears at this time.

The following Song dynasty was the last dynasty to include a chapter on male companions to the emperors in official documents. In addition to Central Asian influence, the Song Dynasty saw the first widespread adoption of Indian Buddhism, which derided sexuality in general. Increasing urbanization caused the monetization of all kinds of sexuality, and the first law against male prostitutes, never effectively enforced, went into effect.

After the Song Dynasty, homosexual behavior was most documented amongst the gentry and merchant classes, since these were the people who were doing most of the writing. Practically all officials of this class maintained a wife or wives to produce heirs, and used their economic advantage to engage in relationships, heterosexual and homosexual, which gave them unequal power. Thus documentation focuses on male courtesans or "singing boys" in luxurious but decadent surroundings who must take on a female role to please wealthy patrons intent on maintaining their role as the masculine partner in the agreement.

According to Bret Hinsch in the book Passions of the cut sleeve: the male homosexual tradition in China, Emperor Zhengde had a homosexual relationship with a Muslim leader from Hami, named Sayyid Husain, whom served as the overseer in Hami during the Ming Turpan Border Wars. In addition to having relationships with men, Zhengde also had many relationships with women. He sought the daughters of many of his officials. The other Muslim in his court, a Central Asian called Yu Yung, sent Uighur women dancers to Zhengde's quarters for sexual purposes. The emperor appears to be also fond of exotic women from border areas such as Mongols and Uighur.

Still, Chinese homosexuals did not experience persecution which would compare to that experienced by homosexuals in Christian Europe during the Middle Ages, and in some areas, same sex love was particularly appreciated. There was a stereotype in the late Ming Dynasty that the province of Fujian was the only place where homosexuality was prominent, but Xie Zhaozhe (1567–1624) wrote that "from Jiangnan and Zhejiang to Beijing and Shanxi, there is none that does not know of this fondness." European Jesuit missionaries such as Matteo Ricci took note of what they deemed "unnatural perversions", distressed over its often open and public nature. Historian Timothy Brook writes that abhorrence of sexual norms went both ways, since "the celibate Jesuits were rich food for sexual speculation among the Chinese."

Although the province of Fujian was not alone in open homosexuality in the 17th century, it was the site of a unique system of male marriages, attested to by the scholar-bureaucrat Shen Defu and the writer Li Yu, and mythologized by in the folk tale, The Leveret Spirit. The older man in the union would play the masculine role as a qixiong or "adoptive older brother", paying a "bride price" to the family of the younger man- it was said virgins fetched higher prices- who became the qidi, or "adoptive younger brother". Li Yu described the ceremony, "They do not skip the three cups of tea or the six wedding rituals- it is just like a proper marriage with a formal wedding." The qidi then moved into the household of the qixiong, where he would be completely dependent on him, be treated as a son-in-law by the qixiongs parents, and possibly even help raise children adopted by the qixiong. These marriages could last as long as 20 years before both men were expected to marry women in order to procreate.

A more individual example of a marriage-like relationship between men was that formed by the scholar-bureaucrat Bi Yuan 畢沅 (1730–1797) and the Suzhou actor Li Guiguan. The two men exchanged vows of fidelity, and Li Guiguan retired from the stage to be addressed by acquaintances as Bi's wife. Unlike the Fujian marriages, this was a unique relationship in its locality, so much so that it was still remembered 200 years later, when it inspired the novel Precious Mirror of Ranking Flowers by Chen Sen.

Another example of the high status of homosexuality in Fujian province, clearly not shared by the centralized Chinese government by this time, was recorded by Qing official Zhu Gui (1731–1807), a grain tax circuit intendant of Fujian in 1765. Intending to standardize the morality of the people under his jurisdiction, he promulgated a "Prohibition of Licentious Cults". One cult which he found particularly troublesome was the cult of Hu Tianbao. As he reports,

The image is of two men embracing one another; the face of one is somewhat hoary with age, the other tender and pale. is commonly called the small official temple. All those debauched and shameless rascals who on seeing youths or young men desire to have illicit intercourse with them pray for assistance from the plaster idol. Then they make plans to entice and obtain the objects of their desire. This is known as the secret assistance of Hu Tianbao. Afterwards they smear the idol's mouth with pork intestine and sugar in thanks.

The Qing Dynasty instituted the first law against consensual, non-monetized homosexuality in China. It has been construed that this may have been part of an attempt to limit all personal expression outside government-monitored relationships, coming in response to the social chaos at the end of the Ming Dynasty. The punishment, which included a month in prison and 100 heavy blows, was actually the lightest punishment which existed in the Qing legal system.

The homosexual tradition in China was largely censured as antiquated by the Self-Strengthening Movement, when homophobia was imported to China along with Western science and philosophy, but some interest in the past remained. In the year 1944, the scholar Sun Cizhou (孫次周) published a work stating that one of the most famous ancient Chinese poets, Qu Yuan, was a lover of his king. Sun cited the poetry of Qu Yuan (屈原) to prove his claim. In Qu Yuan's most important work Li Sao (Sorrow of parting), Qu Yuan called himself a beautiful man (or woman, 美人 Pinyin: měirén). A word he used to describe his king was used at that time by women to characterize their lovers.