Bernard Boursicot

French minor administrator who had a affair in China that was so romantic and so strange that it gave birth to the sensational New York play, M. Butterfly. The play won a Tony award and was later made into a film starring British actor Jeremy Irons. It told the story of a great love affair between the young accountant at the French Embassy in Peking and his Chinese mistress, Shi Peipu. They even parented a child whom they raised, before the strange truth came out, that Shi Peipu was not a woman.

Bernard Boursicot was the son of a merchant in a small town in Brittany, one of four brothers. In 1963, as a 19-year-old high-school dropout, he went to Algeria where he took a low-level administration job. The strictly brought-up Catholic boy had his first sexual experience in Morocco, with a prostitute. He said it had been cheap and fast, not something he enjoyed but did "to prove to myself that I was not a homosexual."

He moved on to Peking in October 1964 where he became an Embassy bookkeeper, a great adventure in newly opened Red China. At a party two days before Christmas 1964, he met Shi Peipu, a witty young man who was a singer and actor, versed in playing both male and female roles. A fun-loving man who might be seen with one hand shackled to a diplomatic pouch and the other carrying a case of beer, he was not dissuaded by the fact that relationships between Chinese and foreigners were frowned upon. The 20-year-old youth began a clandestine affair with the 26-year-old Shi Peipu, thinking that he was a woman.

The question is inevitable of how can a man not know that his mistress is another man? Shi Peipu was delicate and small in stature, with small hands and no facial hair, and the Chinese women often were small busted. He taped his genitals close to his body and during love-making kept his legs closed and oiled so that the comparatively inexperienced Boursicot believed he was making sexual entry.