Male Love Lost: the fate of male same-sex prostitution in Beijing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Abstract

In Ba Jin's novel 'Jia' (The family, completed in 1931) there is a passage where the novel's young hero Juehui struggles internally over his relationship with his paternal grandfather. The grandfather is a solid, conservative representative of the generation that came to be identified with the closing years of the Qing dynasty, and in Juehui's mind, with everything old and moribund. He is a distant and greatly feared figure, and his grandson is fully aware of the absolute power he holds over their wealthy and influential family. In order to break the bonds of his grandfather's authority Juehui lists in his mind a number of his grandfather's "crimes" of which he has become more clearly aware. He has discovered in his grandmother's and grandfather's collected writings a number of poems that were exchanged with courtesans ('jiaoshu') as well as copies of the poems the courtesans wrote in reply. Those were crimes committed before Grandfather turned thirty, so he might be excused, but in fact things got worse.