Leftover peaches: Female homoeroticism during the Western Han dynasty¹

Abstract

Female homoeroticism in early imperial China has received minimal scholarly attention. This article purposes to investigate lesbianism in the Western Han dynasty, taking into consideration both the literary and archaeological material. I first offer a succinct rundown of the ancient terminology of male homosexuality, principally in an effort to underline the classical Chinese language’s absence of a precise vocabulary to describe lesbian attachments. Next, I turn to the transmitted textual sources, analysing the two extant records of love between women in order to gauge something of the nature and permissibility of female homoerotic relationships. The final section of this essay is dedicated to mortuary objects, namely the moulded bronze phalli and other sexual training tools disentombed from Western Han gravesites. When properly contextualised, the excavated dildos can be interpreted as having been used by concubines, both within same-sex partnerships and in the course of pornographic displays staged for their master’s enjoyment.

Keywords:

• Western Han dynasty
• China
• lesbianism
• female homoeroticism
• dildos

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 An earlier version of this paper was given at the 2022 Queer History Conference, that year hosted by San Francisco State University. A special thank you is owed to the audience for their encouragement and feedback. I am equally grateful to the five anonymous reviewers whose critiques and suggestions helped improve this essay.

2 In addition to the scholarship cited below, see Murray (1992); Ruan and Tsai (1987); Vitiello (1996); Whyke (2020).

3 Knowingly avoiding such terms as “homosexual” or “homoerotic,” it might be added, endangers the very existence of gay and lesbian history outside the post-enlightenment West. See Masten (1997), 5–6.

4 A modicum of scholars have challenged this general assumption. Micheal Szonyi (1998, 16–17) presents fragmentary evidence for a religious cult in eighteenth-century Fuzhou, where adult males fostered sexual relationships with boys. He concludes that some members of the early modern Chinese literati did indeed conceptualise sexual orientation as an identity marker.

5 The full quote runs, “To associate [with] obstinate serving boys is a disorderly custom” (bi wan tong, shi wei luan feng 比頑童, 時謂亂風).

6 The “Yixun” chapter’s absence from the jinwen 今文 version of the Shangshu indicates it may have been a later addition.

7 It has been speculated that the monarch in question was King Jia of Wei 魏王假 (r. 228–225 BCE). See Vitiello (1992), 348, note 17.

8 Liu Xiang 劉向, Zhangguo ce 戰國策 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1985), 25.917–918. For translations, see Crump (1970), 449–450; Stevenson and Cuncun (2013), 13–14.

9 Han Fei 韓非, Han Feizi 韓非子 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1958), 12.223; adapted from Watson (2003), 78. Ai wo zai,wu ji kouwei, yi dan gua ren 愛我哉, 忘其口味, 以啗寡人。.

10 Ban Gu 班固 et al., Han shu 漢書 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962), 93.3733 (hereafter Hanshu).

11 Translating pi 癖 as “passions,” it should be mentioned, ignores the noun’s connotations of disease. A better rendering might be “obsession” or even “mania.” In this sense, pi has much in common with the classical Greek term ἔρως which is, quite misleadingly, often glossed as “love.” As David M. Halperin (1985, 162) points out, the word is better understood to evoke a kind of frenzied or overwhelming lust.

12 Sima Qian 司馬遷 and Sima Tan 司馬談, Shiji 史記 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1959), 125.3191 (hereafter Shiji).

13 For example, the early Western Han “Statutes on Miscellaneous Matters” (Za lü 襍律) punished any female slave owner, wife, or daughter who had hejian 和奸 (consensual illicit intercourse) with a nu 奴 (male slave), making her a liqie 隸妾 (bondwoman), a kind of forced labour convict. See Zhangjiashan Han mu zhujian [Ersiqi hao mu] 張家山漢墓竹簡[二四七號墓], ed. Zhangjiashan ersiqi hao Han mu zhujian zhengli xiaozu 張家山二四七 號漢墓竹簡整理小組 (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 2001), 158 (slip no. 190); Barbieri-Low and Yates (2015), 617.

14 For instance, a 1734 CE law of the Manchu-led Qing government criminalised sex between consenting adult males. See Ng (1991), 87–89. For the Qing era sodomy laws more broadly, see Meijer (1985); Sommer (1997).

15 The belief in women’s abundant yin essence also resulted in female masturbation being supposed harmless. See Ruan (1991), 135.

16 It should be noted that analogous conclusions were reached by mainland Chinese scholars. The early twentieth-century eugenicist Pan Guangdan 潘光旦, in an appendix to his heavily annotated translation of Havelock Ellis’ Psychology of Sex: A Manual for Students (Xing xinlixue 性心理學, in Chinese), proffered that female homosexual relationships in traditional China occurred frequently and were easily cultivated. See Liu and Ding (2005), 38.

17 Hanshu, 6.155; Dubs (1944), 27.

18 Absence of an heir threatened Emperor Wu’s hold on power. In 122 BCE, a treasonous plot was exposed to replace the emperor with his uncle Liu An 劉安 (179–122 BCE). See Shiji, 118.3082; Lu (2020), 63–64.

19 Shiji, 49.1978; Hanshu, 97A.3949.

20 Han Xiaowu gushi 漢孝武故事, 8.1 in Tao Zongyi 陶宗儀, Shuofu 說郛 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1988); adapted from Smith (1992), 392.

21 For example, in the twilight years of his interregnum, the usurper Wang Mang is described as having indulged in “lustful pleasures” (yin le 淫樂) with the women of his harem. See Hanshu, 99C.4180; Dubs (1955), 439–440.

22 Shiji, 49.1979; Hanshu, 97A.3948.

23 Hanshu, 6.164; Dubs (1944), 43.

24 Hanshu, 97A.3948.

25 In his gloss on the Zhouli 周禮 chapter “Qiu guan sikou” 秋官司寇, Zheng Xuan 鄭玄 (127–200 CE) records that the Han “Statutes on Assault” (Zei lü 賊律) mandated public execution for practitioners of gu. For a translation of this comment, see Hulsewé (1955), 33.

26 For prose writing focused on the lifestyles and sexual exploits of imperial consorts, see Milburn (2021), 6–8.

27 Hanshu, 97B.3988.

28 Hanshu, 97B.3984.

29 Hanshu, 97B.3984–3985.

30 Hanshu, 97B.3989.

31 Hanshu, 97B.3989–3990. Modern-day studies point to a stroke as the likely cause of death, see Zheng (1999), 125.

32 Hanshu, 97B.3990.

33 Hanshu, 97B.3990; adapted from Watson (1974), 267–268.

34 Xu Shen 許慎, Shuowen jiezi 說文解字 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1963), 3a.58b, 5b.106b.

35 Hanshu, 97B.3390.

36 Liu Zhen 劉珍 et al., Dongguan hanji jiaozhu 東觀漢記校注, (Zhengzhou: Zhongzhou guji chubanshe, 1987), 14.552. The same line is given as a comment in Fan Ye 范曄 and Sima Biao 司馬彪, Hou Hanshu 後漢書 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1965), 27.1018 (hereafter Hou Hanshu).

37 Hou Hanshu, 81.2682–2683.

38 Zhang Tingyu 張廷玉 et al., Mingshi 明史 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974), 305.7816.

39 During the reign of Emperor Wu the imperial harem was said to have contained several thousand women. See Hanshu, 72.3071. Similar numbers are reported for the Eastern Han, see Hou Hanshu, 53.1741, 66.2161, 72.3071, 78.2529.

40 Tuotuo 脫脫 et al., Jinshi 金史 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975), 63.1509. See also McMahon (2016), 47.

41 For the professional reluctance among some archaeologists to contribute to the history of sexuality, see Schmidt and Voss (2000), 3–6.

42 Precisely when Dou Wan’s tomb was sealed is a matter of some controversy. The authors of the original excavation report placed her death between 118 and 104 BCE.

43 For the discovery of the phalli, see Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan kaogu yanjiusuo (1980), Vol. 1, 100, 120.

44 The find location of the silver phallus goes unrecorded.

45 Conversely, it is feasible that the intolerance of pathic males found in the literary sources is unreflective of real-world sexual practices.

46 Though a suspected fake, see also van Gulik (1951 repr. 2004), 202–203.

47 Hanshu, 38.2001.

48 Hanshu, 53.2431.

49 Hanshu, 53.2416.

50 In contrast to other vassal kings, Liu Fei puzzlingly decided against constructing his mausoleum in the vicinity of Jinagdu’s capital city, Guangling 廣陵. His choice of Dayunshan, located some eighty kilometres to the southeast, was conceivably motivated by its proximity to the ancient town of Dongyang 東陽, a flourishing and strategically positioned commercial hub. The mystery thickens however when we consider Liu Fei’s possible relationship with the aforementioned Chen Jiao, who spent much of her girlhood in Dongyang. Daughter of Chen Wu 陳午 (d. 129 BCE), Marquis of Tangyi 堂邑侯, the Chen family had long maintained a tomb complex at Xiaoyunshan 小雲山, bordering Dayunshan to the southwest. Liu Fei had been enfeoffed as King of Jingdu by his father Emperor Jing 景帝 (r. 157–141 BCE) in 153 BCE, aged just seventeen sui. The exact date of Chen Jiao’s birth goes unrecorded, though she was likely born in ca. 165 BCE, making Liu Fei her senior by only four or five years. Age is consequential here for a number of reasons. When Chen Jiao was in her middle teens she had been proposed to marry Liu Rong 劉榮 (d. 148 BCE), Emperor Jing’s eldest son and erstwhile heir apparent. The match was discourteously rejected by Liu Rong’s mother, Lady Li 栗姬, who bore a grudge against Chen Jiao’s mother Liu Piao 劉嫖 (ca. 189–116 BCE), the so-called Grand Princess 長公主. Unperturbed, Liu Piao entreated another of Emperor Jing’s concubines, Wang Zhi 王娡 (d. 126 BCE), whose five-year-old son Liu Che was greatly favoured by the ruler. The arranged marriage between Liu Che and Chen Jiao was initially rejected by Emperor Jing on account of their nearly ten-year age difference. Notwithstanding his objections, Chen Jiao and Liu Che did eventually wed, shortly after the latter’s enthronement as Emperor Wu in 141 BCE (see above). The fact that Chen Jiao is known to have been maritally nominated to at least two of Emperor Jing’s sons gives rise to the following question: was she pledged to a third, namely Liu Fei? Permitting ourselves to momentarily indulge in romantic speculation, it is at least chronologically thinkable to suppose that Liu Fei kept up an amatory correspondence with Chen Jaio in the years prior to her nuptials. As a token of their friendship, Liu Fei may well have opted to build his mausoleum abutting the Chen family necropolis. Of course, no fragment of literary evidence upholds this fairy-tale scenario, yet the whereabouts of Liu Fei’s tomb will doubtlessly inspire further conjecture. For the enfeoffment of Liu Fei, see Shiji, 59.2096; Hanshu, 53.2414. For Chen Jiao’s spurned betrothal to Liu Rong, see Shiji, 49.1976; Hanshu, 97A.3946.

51 Dildos are likewise recorded as being used to prevent orgasm in Ming erotic literature. See McMahon (2019), 31.

52 The discovery of a cache of Western Han medical and sexological manuscripts from tomb no. 3 at Mawangdui 馬王堆 in 1972 served to confirm this. For instance, several lines of prose text in the “He Yin Yang” 合陰陽 bamboo manuscript directly parallel quotations given in chapter 28 of the Ishinpō. See Harper (1987), 580.

53 Tamba Yasuyori 丹波康賴 et al., Yixin fang 醫心方 (Shenyang: Liaoying kexue ji zhu chubanshe, 1996), 28.1155; van Gulik (1961 repr. 2003), 151.

54 For example, the Ming era novel Jin ping mei 金瓶梅 (The Plum in the Golden Vase) records the use of mian ling 勉鈴 (execration bells), also known by their homophonous name 緬鈴 (Burmese bells) on account of the belief they originated in south Asia. For a translation of the relevant passages, see Roy (1993), 324–325.

55 The author of the preliminary excavation report speculated that the dildos could have been used by women for solo masturbation or by men suffering from erectile dysfunction. See Song (2004), 19.

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Notes on contributors

Laurie Venters

Laurie Venters is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Fondazione 1563 per l’Arte e la Cultura in Turin, Italy. The majority of this article was written during his time as a PhD student at the University of Bonn. Dr Venters’ research is primarily focused on issues of slavery, sexuality, and gender in the ancient world.