The World of Male Prostitution in Imperial Beijing
The area south of Qianmen Gate was once known for its brothels, and in the late 19th century the most popular attractions were not always the fragrant female courtesans imported from China’s south, but young – and sometimes not so young – men often referred to as xiànggong 相公. The term could mean “gentleman,” or an old-fashioned way for a wife to address her husband, but it was also a play on words, a loose homophone for “xiàng gūniáng” 像姑娘, or “as like a woman.” South of Liulichang, near where the Liufangqiao Metro Stop is today, was Hanjiatan, now known as Hanjia Hutong. Along with Shaanxi Hutong, Hanjiatan was famous for its proximity to the best theaters, the finest opera stages, and, of course, the most refined and comely actors.
For men of refinement, the theater was a venue of culture but also an erotic space. Patrons in particular focused their obsessions on the actors – almost always male – who played the dàn 旦, or lead female role in the performance. The dan became objects of desire and connoisseurship. Actors were encouraged to smile coquettishly at theatergoers and to mingle with more elite members of the audience who sat in curtained boxes or at tables.
The charged atmosphere of the theater was captured in this popular song from the early 19th century, translated by historian Wu Cuncun:
There is no place as thrilling as the upstairs stalls,
Those fellows look like they have money to spend.
A single smile from behind the curtain,
They won't begrudge the thousand spent on the best table.
There existed an implicit understanding of the theater, and its performers, as sex workers. It was even assumed in legal cases. Matthew Sommer, who has done extensive research on gender, sexuality, and the law in the Qing era, describes a case from 1824 in which two men attacked and raped an actor named Wang Ke’er and one of his fellow performers. Ordinarily, the two attackers would have been sentenced to strangulation for the crime of “forcible sodomy,” but the provincial governor overruled his officials, arguing that Wang and the other victim, actors who portrayed female roles onstage, could not be treated as men of good character and so commuted the attackers’ sentence to 100 blows of heavy bamboo.
The area south of Qianmen is still home to remnants of Beijing's past
Historian and sexologist Robert van Gulik once argued that under Manchu rule, China forgot that sex was fun. Bret Hinch, author of Passions of the Cut Sleeve: The Male Homosexual Tradition in China, has claimed that the Manchus were particularly intolerant of homosexuality and that the Qing era represented a departure from the more open and tolerant attitudes of dynasties past. But while the Manchus, at least at first, were eager to contrast their frontier rectitude with what they perceived as the dangerously effete sexual decadence of their Ming predecessors, by the late 19th and early 20th centuries some of the most enthusiastic patrons of Bada Hutong’s brothel culture – and especially male brothels – were members of the imperial family.
Following the fall of the Qing Dynasty, modernizers in the government of the new Republic of China and in the city of Beijing began to issue regulations which they hoped would curtail brothels and theaters. Some of these regulations specifically target the theaters of the Dashilar area, including this police notice translated by Wu:
It has become clear that several houses in Han Clan Pool and Wailang Camp have been using opera as a means of luring young boys from decent families, then dressing them up and training them to sing. Initially, this was only a form of cultural gathering, but over time it has become a den of all manner of foulness. Over the generations, this has become a peculiar feature of the Beijing cultural landscape, sullying the nation's reputation and attracting the derision of foreign nations. To be referred to as 'the likeness of a woman' is completely contrary to human nature.
Despite the efforts of the Republican-era Beijing city authorities to destroy the culture of male prostitution in Beijing, the trade continued into the mid-20th century when even more puritanical (at least outwardly) and energetic politicians in the post-1949 era would employ drastic measures which pushed most prostitution – male and female – deep into the shadows for the next few decades.
Today, the street names and even some of the buildings remain in the hutongs east of Qianmen. It is no longer a lively red light district, but the floating world of Beijing’s theaters and brothels live on in the stories of an earlier, perhaps more tolerant, era in the city’s history.
Photos: Uni You
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