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Homosexuality as a discrete sexual identity simply did not exist per se, and it was only with the
influence of Western ideology that the term was named and incorporated into the Chinese
lexicon in the early 1900s (Brown 2008; Chou 1997).
Before translation, euphemisms were used to refer to same-sex attraction, often
originating from classical Chinese texts that allude to homoeroticism (Zhang 2001; 2008). 21 In
Passions of the Cut Sleeve: The Male Homosexual Tradition in China (1992), Bret Hinsch
traces the history of such euphemisms that are still recognized in contemporary Chinese society,
including “the cut sleeve” ( 断 袖 duanxiu), “the split peach” ( 分 桃 fentao), and “male practice”
( 男 风 nanfeng). 22 Though identified as the first serious English language treatment of same-sex
behaviors in pre-modern China, reviewers have criticized this book for being “unidimensional”
and “deceptive” in its conclusion that China’s twentieth-century homophobia resulted solely
from the adoption of Western sexual discourse (Dikötter 1992, 170; Williams 1994, 87).
Charlotte Furth, Chinese historian, also questioned Hinsch’s passive acceptance of the Western
liberationist dialectic of tolerance versus repression without questioning whether its application
would be appropriate in the Chinese context (1991, 912). Because of this, Hinsch’s book
overlooks the complexity of China’s Imperial past to provide a reductive conclusion that
twentieth-century China’s homophobia resulted from the adoption of Western sexual discourse.
After the Cultural Revolution in the 1980s, scholars began investigating China’s
changing attitudes towards homosexuality, but most of these works assert that the evolution of a
stigmatized queer identity resulted from China’s exposure to Western influences (Lau and Ng
1989; Tsai 1987). Samshasha’s History of Homosexuality in China (1984) is a case in point: the
book traces China’s history of homoerotic love from the Zhou dynasty (11 th century BC to 221
21 A list of notable classical Chinese novels with homoerotic content is included in Appendix IV.
22 For a list of other euphemisms, refer to Appendix V.
Introduction | 18