Clouds and Rain

The life of a male prostitute—a jinan—in the Floating World of the Beautiful Way in ancient China in the waning years of the Chu dynasty, 200 BC, was a sensual but cruel, often foreshortened, bitter-sweet existence. The term “clouds and rain” was one that was used to denote sexual orgasm. This story weaves a complex, romantic, but also tragic tale of the lives of young male prostitutes—those known as “bitten peaches” once they had been initiated into sex with another man—in a male brothel—the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia—at the moment when men of the West came into contact with the Central Kingdom of China. “Clouds and Rain” strives to capture the essence of the deliciously euphemistic Oriental world of men making love to other men in China’s ancient past set against the advent of contact with the West and the more forceful and forthright of Western adventurers.

Despite the cultural differences clashing together in the meeting of East and West here, the theme of the story is that all men have needs and are capable of love.