‘I loved him all my life’: love, duty and homosexuality in post-liberation China

Abstract

This article is born out of an oral history study of 31 elderly homosexual men in four cities in China. It shows the ways in which major events of Chinese history since the birth of the People’s Republic in 1949 intervene in personal lives and, in turn, how personal lives are drawn into larger historical events. One of the major themes running through these life narratives is that of love and duty. The interrelationship, as well as the tensions, between duty and love is a central part of the experiences of elderly Chinese homosexual men; their lives have been beset by hardships and duty, as well as by the joys of love, and these have an impact on their health and wellbeing. The experience of one individual, Mr Peng, illustrates the important yet shifting ways in which love and duty have been twinned throughout key life events. His narrative indicates an intricate interweaving of love for family, love for Deng, his male partner of 20 years, and love for his wife, as well as duty to family and to a patron. The inseparable couplet of love and duty served as the source of hardship and pain, but also of protection and great joy.