Maybe we are not as progressive as we think we are

I ran across this amazing story in Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio.  Pu Songling (1640-1715), wrote this massive work of over 500 items over several decades.  It was never published during his lifetime, but did circulate in hand-copied versions.  It was first published in 1766. 

The story below says a lot about the sexual tolerance of classic Chinese culture.

THE MALE CONCUBINE

A wealthy gentleman of Yangzhou wanted to buy himself a concubine.  He had inspected several women but found that none of them was really what he was looking for.  Then an old bawd who was visiting Yangzhou showed him a  pretty young girl of fourteen or fifteen, a gifted musician and singer.  He found her very attractive, and agreed to buy her for a high price.

The very first night they slept together, he admired the silken softness of her skin and proceeded in a transport of delight to explore her private parts, when to his shock and horror he discovered that “she” was in fact a boy.  He asked “her” to tell him the whole story.  It transpired that the old bawd had bought a pretty young boy, decked him out in all sorts of finery and sold him as a girl—in short she had tricked him.

The next day at dawn, he sent a servant to look for the bawd, but she had disappeared without a trace.  He was left in a state of great distress, quite at a loss what to do next.  Luck had it that an old friend of his from Zhejiang Province came to visit, heard the story and insisted on seeing the boy himself.  He was greatly taken with him, bought him for the original price and took him home with him.

(My apologies to the translator John Minford.  This story was just too good not to reproduce in its entirety.  It is excerpted from the 2006 Penguin Classics edition of Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio.)

I guess the only question I am left with is, did the young man continue to dress as a woman?  Also, one wonders what the man's other wives thought of this new "wife".  It would have been inconceivable for a well-off Chinese gentleman of that time not to have several wives, regardless of his sexual preference.  I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when the Tai Tai's got a load of the newest concubine to be added to the household.