The historian Bret Hinsch asserts in Passions of the Cut Sleeve: The Male Homosexual Tradition in China that all ten emperors who ruled over the first two centuries of the Han dynasty were “openly bisexual,” with Ai being the tenth. In fact, a majority of the emperors of the western Han dynasty (206 BCE to 220 CE) had both male companions and wives. The Han HeydeyĮmperor Ai was far from the only Chinese emperor to take a male companion openly. The tale’s influence outlived its time, producing the Chinese term “the passion of the cut sleeve,” a euphemism for intimacy between two men. This story of the cut sleeve spread throughout the court, leading the emperor’s courtiers to cut one of their own sleeves as tribute. So tender was the emperor’s love for this man that, when he had to get up, instead of waking his lover, he cut off the sleeve of his robe. Lying on one of his sleeves was a young man in his 20s, Dong Xian, also asleep. He was in his palace, in Chang’an (now Xi’an, China), hundreds of miles inland, wearing a traditional long-sleeved robe. In the last years BCE, Emperor Ai was enjoying a daytime nap.
