The Butterfly Has Flown

Shei Pei Pu, the opera singer who inspired M Butterfly, passed away.  You may have seen or heard the story, or think you know the story.

Shi Pei Pu, a Beijing opera singer and spy whose sexually convoluted love affair with a French Embassy worker created one of the strangest cases in international espionage and was the inspiration for the Broadway show "M. Butterfly," died in Paris on Tuesday.

Shi (pronounced Shuh), who was convicted of espionage in France in 1986 along with his lover Bernard Boursicot, was believed to be 70. He also had been believed for years to be a woman, at least by Boursicot, who served time in prison after the affair and became a laughingstock in France.

But the story is more complicated than even fiction could keep up with:

In the 1988 Broadway play and the 1993 film "M. Butterfly," Boursicot was depicted as a high-ranking diplomat and Shi Pei Pu as a beautiful female opera singer who met in 1964. In fact, Boursicot was a 20-year-old high-school dropout who had finagled a job as an accountant at the newly opened French Embassy in Beijing. His few sexual experiences had been with male schoolmates, and he was determined to fall in love with a woman, he wrote in his diary.

Shi Pei Pu was 26 when they met, delicate and charming. He lived as a man and taught Chinese to the diplomatic wives. He told Boursicot he had been a singer and a librettist in the Beijing Opera. One night in the Forbidden City, Shi told Boursicot a story no romantic could resist: Shi said he was a woman who had been forced to go through life as a man because her father required a son. A short time later, the men became lovers, although the sex, Boursicot would later say, was fast and furtive, always carried out in the dark.

When the affair was discovered by Chinese authorities, Boursicot — through Shi — passed them French documents, first from the embassy in Beijing and later from the consulate in Ulan Bator, Mongolia.

Boursicot spent most of his life outside China and was romantically involved with men and women. On one of his rare visits to Shi Pei Pu, Shi presented Boursicot with a 4-year-old boy, Shi Du Du, who Shi said was their son.

In 1982, Boursicot — then living openly with a male companion, Thierry Toulet — arranged for Shi Pei Pu and Shi Du Du to live with him in Paris. Shortly thereafter, Boursicot and Shi Pei Pu were arrested. Shi first told the police he was a woman, but he admitted the truth to prison doctors.

Shi Du Du explained the mystery of where he came from in his statement to the police: He was from China's Uighur minority, he said, and had been sold by his mother. "It was not that my mother did not love me," he said. "We were starving."

Boursicot, hearing that Shi Pei Pu was a man and always had been, sliced his throat with a razor blade in prison.

He lived, though, and is still alive.

I can't even really comment on the story -- I mean, where would you even start? -- but it's one of those things of the heart that mystify and blind and confuse and confound everyone inside or outside the tale.  We are such peculiar creatures, and the knots we tie ourselves into to conform to this or that worldview, however uncomfortable or even impossible it may prove, is staggering and tragic and amazing.

Currently The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 (Modern Library War) By John Toland see related

Mollie Sugden, R.I.P.

No longer being served: Mrs. Slocombe and her pussy.

Happy Birthday, Blog!

You're five years old today! Or possibly six!

Farrah Fawcett, however, will not be getting any older.  She passed away from cancer today.  I can't say I was any kind of a fan of hers, although, in recent years, one of her appearances at a Comedy Central celebrity roast was amusing, but she's kind of a 70's icon for America.  And The Burning Bed is still remembered by many of my peers who had televisions in the 1980s, in which Fawcett played a battered woman who finally snaps.  Primarily known for her appearance, the makeup job they did on her to make her look like she had been abused was really quite good, and it sort of drove the point home.

She also managed to have a long-standing marriage to another celebrity, which defied the odds both of her age group as well as the usual difficulty big- and little-screen stars seem to have keeping it together.  Ryan O'Neil stuck by her in her final days through her illness as well, proving that not all famous, successful men end up being assholes.  Just mostly the "Family Values" Republican politicians.

R.I.P., angel.

Edit:  Okay, just got an email from Z-Man that said Michael Jackson died today as well.  WTF?

The Landslide Builds

Hah, good cartoon from the Dutch. 

Via Sullivan.  Original link here

Little Pebbles At The Top Of The Mountain

From the AP.

The ones in plainclothes beating up on the man are the Basij.  You can read about what they are at that Wikipedia link, but of more interest to me are the angry people apparently coming to this guy's aid.

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