Important Historical context

It is said in south-eastern China that male homosexuality was commonplace and was referred to as 男风 (male wind). In Fujian, men who were lovers couldn’t get legally married but would be adopted into each other’s family, usually the younger into the elder’s. This was called 契兄弟 (lit. duty brothers). The younger would help pay for the elder’s legal wedding, as they were expensive affairs, and both men would sometimes continue to be together long after both were married. The literati and some scholars today blame a gender imbalance or the maritime culture of south-eastern China as the cause for increased homosexuality, but others, like Korean scholar Choi Yun-joo, say the Ming and Qing dynasties’ obsession with the south-eastern Chinese provinces being homosexual was to other the peoples from Fujian and blame them for homosexuality existing in China. I lean towards the latter.

Story of the Rabbit God

兔兒神 (Rabbit God) was a south-eastern Chinese, Fujian and Zhejiang, deity most famously, but not firstly, described in chapter 19 of 子不語 (What the Master Would Not Discuss) by 袁枚 (Yuan Mei) (1716–1797). Yuan Mei tells of a man named 胡天保 (Hu Tianbao) who is entranced by the beauty of a government official sent to his town in Fujian. As the inspector is driven around town by carriage and goes about his day, Hu Tianbao watches him, confusing the inspector, but none of his clerks dare tell him why Hu Tianbao watches him. One day, while the inspector is inspecting a different county, Hu Tianbao, who is still following the inspector, hides in a bathroom in hopes of seeing him naked. The inspector finds him, and after beating him, Hu Tianbao confesses: 「實見大人美貌，心不能忘，明知天上桂，豈為凡鳥所集，然神魂飄蕩，不覺無禮至此。」or “I have indeed seen your beauty and cannot forget it. I know that the laurel tree of heaven is not meant for mortal birds, but my mind wandered and I was so rude that I did not realize it.” The inspector, enraged, lynches Hu Tianbao. Months later, Hu Tianbao appears in a dream saying that he was wrong and deserved to die, but the officials in the underworld laugh at him and do not deem this a serious crime, as it was not done with evil intentions. Hu Tianbao then says that he has been named 兔兒神 (Rabbit God) and that a shrine should be built to him. The villagers, hearing this and already following the custom of 契兄弟 (sworn brothers), build the shrine. The author Yuan Mei then gives the opinion of a man, 程魚門 (Cheng Yumen), who says the inspector would not have lynched Hu Tianbao if he had read 晏子春秋. Cheng Yumen also gives as an example 狄偉人 (Di Weiren), an editor who had entranced a male rickshaw driver who worked for him. When Di Weiren offered payment to the driver, the driver refused. When the driver was on his deathbed, he confessed his love for Di Weiren, who responded, 「癡奴子！果有此心，何不早說矣？」 or “Foolish servant! If you really wanted to do this, why didn’t you tell me earlier?” Cheng Yumen then ordered the rickshaw driver to be buried with generous rites.

There are also records of the very real shrine to the Rabbit God from the Qing dynasty by authors 施鴻保 (Shi Hongbao) (1804–1871) and 丘复 (Qiu Fu) (1874–1950). Shi Hongbao describes that a shrine in Fujian worships the Rabbit God and quotes the very first recorded telling of the story above by 徐𤊹 (Xu Xinggong) (1563–1639) in 竹窗雜錄; this telling shares major plot elements but differs somewhat in specifics and in time, one being set in the Ming and the other in the Qing dynasty. Qiu Fu describes the actual appearance of the shrine as two figures, one pale and one fair, sitting next to each other. Additionally, Qiu Fu describes the rites associated with the shrine as burning incense and sprinkling the ash onto the boy you like, and once you are successful in courting the man, to rub sugar and pig intestine fat onto the lips of the figures. Another text by an unknown author, 重纂福建通志卷 (Re-edited Fujian Chronicles) (Qing dynasty), corroborates this account. According to Qiu Fu and the 重纂福建通志卷, a man 朱珪 (Zu Gui) (1731–1807), while acting governor of Fujian, had a shrine destroyed by splitting the statue described above in two and throwing each man under different bridges.

Use of Rabbit as a pejorative

During the Qing dynasty, rabbit, among many different connotations, also carried the meaning of gay. Specifically, it was used to describe a catamite or 门子 (lit. “door son”), a word originally meant for young, soon-to-be nobles who worked for an older nobleman to deliver things, but which began to gain the connotation of a young male prostitute around the Qing. The phrase 兔崽子 (lit. “son of a rabbit”) could mean that you were a bastard, due to the rabbit’s fecund nature, or that you were a 门子.

天天有喜(Happy Everyday) vs 有兽焉(Fabulous Beasts): Depictions of 兔兒神 and Homosexuality

天天有喜(Happy Everyday)

天天有喜 is a very popular comedy/romance/fantasy drama from 2013 that features 兔兒神 (Rabbit God) as a main character. I was able to watch it on iyf.tv without English subtitles. He helps the main and other couples (not gay) get together and has multi-episode-spanning subplots with a clone of the main female love interest. 兔兒神 is played by actor 陈威翰 (Chen Weihan), who also played 兔兒神 in the Taiwanese series 兔儿神弄姻缘 (Rabbit God’s Marriage), and is dressed as a woman. In episode 52, a character, also played by Chen Weihan, who is the reincarnation/aspect of 兔兒神 transforms into 兔兒神, as seen in the image below.

In another episode, 兔兒神 causes a man to get pregnant and give birth. 兔兒神 is additionally given many scenes where he is naked or bathing, and it is played as humorously embarrassing for the other male characters to look at him. This wouldn’t be strange if he weren’t the only character to whom this happens. While I haven’t seen the entire show, 兔兒神 a gay deity depicted as a crossdresser who “transitions” from a character played masculine into one played feminine, being present in any given episode seems to be the writers’ license to include anything sexually deviant. While the Rabbit God’s depiction in this series has been praised, there is a forum on Baidu called 兔儿神吧 with a lot of media from this show. Ultimately, the Rabbit God’s origin as a gay deity and his queerness are played for laughs in the show.

有兽焉(Fabulous Beasts)

Fabulous Beasts is a Chinese fantasy manhua and donghua by Xue Xia Mao Yao Zi. One of the characters, 兔爷 (Lord Rabbit), is a pretty clear analog of 兔兒神. I haven’t watched past the first season of the show, and I haven’t read any of it, but it was the most positive depiction of an openly gay character I could find in Mainland Chinese media without going into less wholesome sources (the exception being 春光乍洩, which is a very good movie but doesn’t fit my narrative); there are major critiques of that genre of media. He is infatuated with one of the male characters. Lord Rabbit is played like any other lovestruck character, both in the series and out, and he is shown to be genuinely caring towards his love interest. Overall, what I appreciated was that the character’s love wasn’t played as a joke. This, I view, is a more positive depiction of both 兔兒神 and homosexuality than the ones seen in other media.

Special mention 陈情令(The Untamed)

陈情令 (The Untamed) is a hit television series based on a written work whose nature is alluded to in the previous section. However, in the television series, all explicit mentions of the main characters being a romantic couple are removed. Instead, the watcher is flooded with a near-constant stream of homoerotic subtext, including multiple scenes involving them holding rabbits. I have included a video of an edit of such scenes made by user Penthésilée below.

I think the characters being explicitly gay in the original work, and all of the symbolism regarding rabbits previously discussed, should indicate what that scene is trying to say.

兔兒神(Rabbit God) worship in China and Taiwan

Sources for public 兔兒神 worship in Taiwan are easy to find because there is a publicly available and widely known temple to his worship in Taipei. In China, I have seen two dubious sources that claim there is a temple to his worship in the mountains of Fujian and another somewhere in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, where a man operates a temple to 兔兒神 out of his house. The sources for this are included below, separately from the other sources, mostly because they are less academic (ignore that I cite Bai Du or this is a valid reason).

https://www.liaozhaichatroom.com/temple/tu-er-shen-patron-saint-of-homosexuality/?srsltid=AfmBOorXLWge29iHLZPI9dCz_KLYfkmHcXZzbf6mFQA2YkSLlJa493Zs

https://tieba.baidu.com/p/5962576822

Sources

https://d.wanfangdata.com.cn/periodical/CiNQZXJpb2RpY2FsQ0hJMjAyNTA1MjIyMDI1MDUyNzE3MTU0NhIOd3h5d2gyMDE1MDQwMDkaCHBuNnNqYWMz

https://www.thechinastory.org/how-the-rabbit-became-an-emblem-for-both-gay-men-and-chinese-nationalists/

https://medium.com/@jaderune_/the-untamed-when-ancient-symbolism-outsmarted-modern-censorship-3f43133ed4db

https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%85%94%E5%85%92%E7%A5%9E/9804562

https://m.sohu.com/n/381125328/

https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E5%AD%90%E4%B8%8D%E8%AA%9E/%E5%8D%B719#%E2%97%8B%E5%85%94%E5%85%92%E7%A5%9E

https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%85%94%E5%84%BF%E7%A5%9E/64562145

https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_9083260

https://www.tvmao.com/drama/YigrJS0=

https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%85%94%E5%85%92%E7%A5%9E%E5%BC%84%E5%A7%BB%E7%B7%A3/10655244