Long Yang

Lord Longyang was the favorite and lover of an unknown king of Wei, often speculated to be either King Anxi or King Jia, during the Warring States period of the Zhou dynasty. Vivian W. Ng and Robert H. van Gulik describe him as a "minister." In his book Passions of the Cut Sleeve: The Male Homosexual Tradition in China, Bret Hinsch writes that the story of Lord Longyang serves as an example of both the sexual opportunism and openness of homosexuality in Zhou dynasty courts. and does not appear in any other contemporary sources. The Records of the Warring States is generally considered a work of history. In it, Lord Longyang and the king are in a fishing boat together. The king catches a fish but discards it after catching a larger one; Longyang then begins to cry. Longyang reveals that he is afraid that the king will be tempted by other, more beautiful men and lose interest in him. The king then forbids anyone to mention other beauties in his presence under penalty of death.

Influence The story of Lord Longyang also influenced later Chinese literature. In the poetry of Ruan Ji, Lord Longyang is used, along with Anling, to figuratively evoke male beauty and love between men, and specifically royal favor. In the story "Wan the Student" from the Ming and Qing collection The Cut Sleeve , in which Wan falls in love with another male student, Lord Longyang is used (along with Anling) as an example of male beauty. tells twenty stories of male same-sex prostitution in the late Ming dynasty. In it, the author, known by the nom de plume "Jingjiang's besotted with bamboo recluse," uses the story of Lord Longyang to evoke an earlier golden age characterized by feeling; this is juxtaposed with the stories and characters in the collection. The Forgotten Tales of Longyang is mentioned in some biji and lists of prohibited books, but disappeared from the early Qing dynasty until the late 1980s, when a manuscript was discovered in Japan. references the story of Lord Longyang, among others, to argue that sexual relationships between men were normal because they had existed since antiquity. Yu Muxia's entry on homosexuality in Shanghai Tidbits used Longyang to make the same argument. Jian Fu and Xuekun Liu describe netizens similarly using the story of Longyang as evidence that homosexuality was not historically discriminated against in China.

Use as a euphemism The word longyang is also used in China to euphemistically refer to gay men, including in newspapers. However, Zhiqiu Benson Zhou reported in 2022 that the term was "rarely" used, and Jing Wu writes that the term longyang was not well known among young Chinese people by the mid-1990s. Longyang has been used through much of Chinese history, serving as a common classical literary term for male homosexuality. Longyang is also sometimes translated as "catamite," or used to refer specifically to male prostitutes, younger male lovers, Giovanni Vitiello reports that longyang was classically used as a verb.

The phrase lóngyáng zhīpǐ Lóngyáng yīdào , usually translated as "the way of catamites," refers to male-male desire