[25] When a rich man gives a feast he sends for women to
cheer the repast by music and song, and for boys to serve at table and to
entertain the guests by their lively conversation. The boys have been
carefully brought up for this occupation, receiving an excellent
education, and their mental qualities are even more highly valued than
their physical attractiveness. The women are less carefully brought up and
less esteemed. After the meal the lads usually return home with a
considerable fee. What further occurs the Chinese say little about. It
seems that real and deep affection is often born of these relations, at
first platonic, but in the end becoming physical, not a matter for great
concern in the eyes of the Chinese. In the Chinese novels, often of a very
literary character, devoted to masculine love, it seems that all the
preliminaries and transports of normal love are to be found, while
physical union may terminate the scene. In China, however, the law may be
brought into action for attempts against nature even with mutual consent;
the penalty is one hundred strokes with the bamboo and a month's
imprisonment; if there is violence, the penalty is decapitation; I am not
able to say how far the law is a dead letter.
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