Male Brothels, Urbanization and Xiaoguan Identity in Late Ming Fiction: The Forgotten Tales of Longyang

Abstract

Published in 1632, Jingjiang’s Besotted with Bamboo Recluse’s The forgotten tales of Longyang (Longyang yishi 龍陽逸史) is a short story collection focusing on contemporary male same-sex prostitution. Among the twenty tales, the stories narrate various forms of male prostitution from private agreements, to deals via go-betweens, to public male brothels. This diversity of venues and arrangements appears to reflect the instabilities in which male love was caught up as a result of late-Ming urbanization as well as the growth of urbanization in separate regional centres. This paper aims to assess what the collection reveals concerning changes in late-Ming male same-sex prostitution, including the increased social and spatial mobility of xiaoguan (catamites) and a range of factors determining their social identity. Changes in the organization of urban life appear to have led to the emergence of xiaoguan from feudal arrangements of bonded service only to enter the vicissitudes of the market place. These effects of urbanization and social change were not unrelated to wider redefinitions of masculinity and gender roles in late-Ming society. The impact on their customers had repercussions for their understanding of their own social position, and the kind of homoerotic writing found in Longyang yishi was in part an attempt to come to terms with these changes.