

- Among them is Emperor Ai, who ascended the throne at the age of 20 and ruled from 7 B.C.-1 B.C.
- Ai loved a young man named Dong Xia so much that he cut the sleeves of his robe to prevent the latter sleeping on it from waking up.
- In his aptly-titled book “Passions of the Cut Sleeve,” Hinsch asserts that all 10 emperors of first two centuries of the Han dynasty — Ai being the 10th — were “openly bisexual”: Emperor Gao favored Jiru, Emperor Hui favored Hongru, Emperor Jing favored Zhou Ren and Emperor Zhao favored Jin Shang, to name a few.
- Bisexuality was not only accepted in China, but it was also the norm in much of Asia, while Europe and its Christianity promoted homophobia.
- Little is known about the same-sex practices of women in the Han dynasty, but there have been records of a so-called “paired eating,” according to historian Leila J. Rupp, which likely refers to cunnilingus.

- Despite such laws, same-sex practices persisted through the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), whose married Zhengde Emperor is believed to have had a relationship with Sayyid Husain, a Muslim leader from Haim, Xinjiang.
- The Tianqi Emperor, the 16th ruler of the Ming dynasty, allegedly had two private palaces: one for his female lovers and one for his male lovers.
- The true shift in attitudes apparently started in the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), which canonized Confucianism and its strict obedience to the social order.
- In 1740, the first anti-homosexual decree defined voluntary homosexual intercourse between adults as illegal, according to China.org.cn.
- Those who practiced homosexual activities faced their worst period of persecution during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) when the government considered homosexuality as a mental illness.
