Bizarre Story

In my Thursday's Asian Visual Cultures lecture, we were on the topic of Western images of Asia. We watched a documentary about how this French diplomat got into a relationship with a Chinese man thinking he was a female!  They even had a kid (fake one of course)! This actually went on for 18 years. WTH. Totally OhEmGee. You can read about this funny yet bizarre story here: http://zagria.blogspot.com/2010/03/shi-pei-pu-1938-2009-opera-dancersinger.html

The point my prof was trying to make in showing us this documentary was how the westerners held such stereotypical views of Asian people- that they are petite, shy and delicate. In a way, they had feminized Asian people. Of course, the link above doesn’t really go into much details of the whole affair as much as the documentary did. The documentary we watched was of an interview of the French guy himself, so he really gave full details of his experience with Shi Pei Pu, his Chinese partner. This story was then adapted into films and plays, so if you’re interested you can search for ‘M Butterfly’. I think it’s a really interesting story and if I do find the time, I might watch M Butterfly one day.