For true sensuality in the mortal world, one ought not search among womankind. Why pass through each and every brothel.…In selecting smiles and summoning music [seeking sensual pleasure], one must seek out the Chrysanthemum Registry [the world of actors].

The operas began in the afternoon of the first day.…Whenever a portion was performed that brought blushes to the women and the young folks in the audience and smirks to the grown men, a servant with a stentorian voice would come out on the stage and read from a festively red slip of paper: “The Honourable Mr. So-and-so presents to such-and-such an actor the sum of so-much!” And the lucky actor (invariably a female impersonator) would at once profusely thank his donor, while the beneficent gentleman beamed with pompous satisfaction. But even this did not satisfy the honourable guests. When an opera was over, the actors who had been rewarded had to drink with them at their tables, still wearing their make-up and costumes. The honourable gentlemen fondled the performers and filled them with wine; they behaved with such crass vulgarity that the younger guests were shocked and the servants whispered among themselves.

It is only since the Republican period that China's long history of cultural tolerance of same-sex eroticism began to fade. In the process of Westernization, what Chinese intellectuals have accepted is not homophobia per se but a scientific discourse of biological determinism that marginalizes and pathologizes all nonreproductive sexuality.

“Global gayness,” with its assumptions about the similitude of identity, the homogeneity of values, and a sliding scale of identity development, fails to capture the intricate complexity…of gay life in Beijing.…While the visions of many Chinese gay men in China about what it means to be gay are certainly connected to the knowledge that gay people exist all over the world, these men do not simply imagine a global community of horizontal comradeship.