ABSTRACT
The Chinese Communists refer to 1949 as ‘Liberation’ – liberation from the feudal and corrupt rule of the Nationalist government and liberation from foreign colonialism. Liberation symbolised everything Alley had been working for in China for the previous ten years. Yet on a personal level Communist rule did not mean liberation for Alley and other gay men in China. Now that civil order was being restored, the Communist authorities were able to enforce their moral attitudes. Centuries of relative sexual tolerance came to an end as the new government began to close down the brothels and bathhouses that were the outward manifestation of an entrenched sexual culture. At the same time, by harassment and in some cases imprisonment or expulsion, the government made it clear that Western capitalist influence was no longer welcome in China. The days of hedonism for sexual tourists in Shanghai were definitely over, while the Peking the aesthetes so
loved and admired was a symbol of a feudal past that the new regime sought to eradicate. The era of foreign adventurers and aesthetes in China had ended.
