ABSTRACT
Male homosexuality in imperial China seems never to have encountered the general repression it faced in the post-Christian West. Official and unofficial records and documents testify to the acceptance of male homosexuality from the earliest times, as long as it occurred within culturally prescribed limits. A survey of Chinese cultural history reveals a broad acceptance of sexual orientation, including male-male and female-female love. Far from being repressed, a range of sexual orientations were continually recognized in official Chinese documents, as well as in the works of xiaoshuo (fiction), folksongs and paintings in the imperial period. Confucian moralists did not single out homosexuality when they advocated sexual restraint. Qing government edicts prohibited officials from indulging with boy entertainers but this did not imply an intolerance of homosexuality per se. There is thus good reason to believe that a long-term and widespread tolerance towards culturally prescribed forms of male homoeroticism existed in imperial China. As pointed out in Chapter 1, the central aim of this book, and its particular contribution, is to describe the fashion of homoerotic sensibilities in Beijing during the late imperial period and assess its cultural and social significance in late imperial China. While the discussion locates that homoerotic sensibility within its immediate historical context it is not my task in this chapter to offer a general survey of homosexuality in Chinese culture. Much scholarship already exists on that topic. Instead, my aim here is to contribute a more specific assessment of the sources of male homoerotic sensibility in the Qing period. I believe that it is important to engage in detailed studies, now that general surveys of homosexuality in China are available, so that the general picture can be corrected and enriched.
