Mandarin Monday: Queer Vocab From Chinese History

原创 Zeus Zou theBeijinger

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Mandarin Monday is a weekly column where we help you improve your Chinese by detailing learning tips, fun and practical phrases, and trends.

As LGBTQ+ groups gain increasing prominence around the world, there has been a growing need to expand vocabularies to destigmatize and better understand the community, and sub-groups within. Of course, LGBTQ+ folks aren't a product of the 20th century, nor is it relegated to the West. Records of sexual fluidity can be found in civilizations all over the world, and of course in China as well. Actually, as a country with thousands of years of history, it has a world of LGBTQ+ vernacular all its own. However, due to restricted levels of understanding when it came to gender and psychology at the time, most of the vocabulary we are going to explore in this blog will be gay or lesbian related.

The female gaze

For the following three phrases derived from ancient gay love stories, you can either only use the first two characters or the full phrases to refer to people who are gay.

龙阳之好 lóng yáng zhī hào The love for Longyang

Probably the most famous gay man throughout Chinese history, 龙阳君 LóngYáng Jūn (Sir Longyang) was the lover of 魏王 wèi wáng the King of Wei State. Longyang is not his real name, but the title the king bestowed on him – both “龙” lóng dragon and “阳” yáng yang energy or the sun are words used to describe masculinity in Chinese.

According to folklore, Longyang was far more enchanting than most girls, but he was also good at wielding his sword (no pun intended), and he served his state as a brilliant diplomatic envoy and tactician. The love stories of these two were documented in the "战国策" Zhànguó Cè (Intrigues of the Warring States) which beautifully captures the king's love:

One day, the pair of lovers went fishing on a boat (an ideal date), and after catching a dozen of fish in his bucket, Longyang started to cry, which naturally raised the king’s concern. Longyang explained his sudden sorrow by comparing his fate with the little fish, who are inevitably abandoned when a bigger catch is baited on the hook. He worried he too would be replaced when he ages while younger beauties around the country pine for the king's attention. The king apparently felt the need to wipe his lover’s tear off of his beautiful face and encouraged him to share his insecurities. Moreover, he promised him from that moment on that no one would be allowed to even acknowledge the existence of other attractive people aside from him – and whosoever violates this rule would be executed along with their entire family. Now that's true love!

As beautiful as he was, Longyang knew how to utilize his intelligence and social network to survive in that ever-changing period. He is also one of the few gay historic figures who not only earned the love of the man in power, but also managed to retire comfortably after his patron passed away.

断袖之癖 duàn xiù zhī pǐ The fondness of cutting sleeves

This phrase originated from a love story between 汉哀帝 Hàn Āidì, an emperor of the Han Dynasty and his childhood friend and guard, as recorded in "汉书" Hàn Shū (Book of Han). One day, when the emperor had finished his daily routine in the court and was on his way back, his attention was caught by someone standing in front of the palace. It didn’t take him long to recognize that the person was his childhood friend, 董贤 Dǒngxián, and he was stunned by what a loving, handsome lad Dongxian had become. After that, the emperor appointed Dongxian to be his personal servant and they rode on the same carriage and slept on the same bed.

The most famous story of their love is this: There was a time when the emperor was ready to get up, but Dongxian was still deep in slumber. To avoid waking his lover up, the emperor carefully cut off his sleeve to get out of the bed.

Besides that sweet gesture, the emperor also built a palace for Dongxian and all the best tributes were sent to him while the emperor was satisfied with whatever was leftover. What's more, he even publicly proposed leaving the throne to his lover.

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分桃之礼 fēn táo zhī lǐ The ritual of sharing a peach

A blooming royal relationship

This is a relatively sad story compared to the rest. It happened in the Spring and Autumn period, making it the oldest story among the ones we mentioned here today. Our protagonists are the 卫灵公 Wèi Ling Gōng (King of the State of Wei) and his lover 弥子瑕 Mízi Xiá. When their love was burning fiercely, everything Mizixia did would only make the king love him even more, including but not limited to riding the king's carriage to see his ill mom without permission and sharing a peach he had already taken a bite out of with the king. The king would even praise him for being a considerate son and a generous lover.

However, as Sir Longyang worried in the first story, the sparks of passion risk fading away when time takes one's beauty away. Once, Mizixia annoyed the king (the reason isn't entirely clear), and the sins of his past clawed their way out from the king's memory, causing him to blame Mizixia. The legends aren't too clear on what happened after that, but it's implied that the pair were none too happy.

对食 duì shí Eat with face-to-face

This word originally described the romantic relationship between palace maids, though its scope later expanded to include relationships between palace maids and eunuchs.

磨镜 mó jìng Grinding the mirror

No man is allowed to enter

This is a word to describe the sensual relationship between females in ancient China and is derived from the sexual behavior they usually adopt, which looks like two girls looking at each other in a mirror. There was even a lesbian organization 磨镜党 mó jìng dǎng named after this term around the end of the Qing Dynasty and the.beginning of the Republic of China.

契兄弟 qì xiōngdì Brothers-by-oath

In southern China, especially in the regions around Guangdong and Fujian, when a boy reaches 16-years-old, it was not uncommon for him to be adopted by an older unmarried man as a brother-by-oath, thus forging a relationship similar to married couples, until the older man enters a heterosexual marriage. Yet, sometimes their relationship would remain even after one or both of them got married, with even their parents regarding the partner as a son-in-law. Since this relationship doesn’t overturn the essential core of continuing the family tree in traditional Chinese values, brothers-by-oath usually wouldn’t be treated differently, and holding hands on the streets was socially acceptable. That is, until the flourishing of Catholic and puritanical western values in the 19th and 20th century changed everything.

梳起 shū qǐ Comb up

Another one from southern China, this term comes from the silk reeling and spinning workshops that were commonly regarded as a sanctuary exclusive to women. Some girls would choose to comb each other’s hair up as a bun and take a vow under the watchful eye of temple statues after drinking blood from a live rooster in public. They would be regarded as sisters and could act like other heterosexual couples. Moreover, no one was allowed to force any of them to marry a man.