SOLD - Shi Pei Pu 1938 - 2009 Painting

Oil & mixed media on gesso board Shi Pei Pu was a Chinese opera singer from Beijing. He became a spy who obtained secrets during a 20-year-long sexual affair in which he convinced Bernard Boursicot, an employee in the French Embassy, that he was a woman. Shi grew up in the southwestern province of Yunnan, where he learned French and attended the University of Kunming, graduating with a literature degree. By 17, Shi was an actor/singer who had achieved some recognition. Bernard Boursicot, an accountant at the French Embassy in Beijing first met Shi, dressed as a man, at a Christmas party in December 1964. Shi told Boursicot that he was “a female Beijing opera singer who had been forced to live as a man to satisfy his father’s wish to have a son”. The two quickly developed a sexual relationship maintained in darkness in which Boursicot was convinced that he was with a woman. This deception was made plausible by the fact that Boursicot had only previously had sexual relations with fellow male students in school. In 1965, Shi claimed to be pregnant by Boursicot, and that subsequently a baby boy called Shi Du Du (who had in fact been bought from a doctor in China) was their biological son. Over the next decade, they continued their on-again off-again affair as Bernard moved from posting to posting in Southeast Asia. According to Boursicot, he began passing documents to Shi when the Chinese Cultural Revolution made it difficult for him to see ‘her’ and a member of the Chinese secret service offered him access to Shi in exchange for government papers. Eventually, in 1982, Boursicot managed to arrange visas so Shi and his adopted son could come to live in Paris. Almost immediately, however, agents of the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire discovered that Boursicot and Shi were living together, and in the summer of 1983 they questioned both men. Unimpressed by Shi’s insistence that he was in fact a woman, a French judge ordered a thorough medical examination. Upon hearing the results via the radio in his remand cell, Boursicot, finally disabused of the illusion Shi was female, attempted to cut his throat with a razor blade. They were each sentenced to six years in prison in 1986, but were both pardoned in 1987 having served only a fraction of that time over what was described as a “very silly” and unimportant case. After his pardon, Shi remained in Paris, performing as an opera singer. He and Boursicot spoke occasionally, but were no longer friends. Reluctant to talk of the relationship with Boursicot, he stated that he “used to fascinate both men and women” and that “What I was and what they were didn’t matter”... “I never told Bernard I was a woman,” Shi later claimed. “I only let it be understood that I could be a woman.”... “I thought France was a democratic country. Is it important if I am a man or a woman?” Shi died in 2009, having maintained he still loved Boursicot to the end. Boursicot, on hearing the news was less moved however, saying only “He did so many things against me that he had no pity for, I think it is stupid to play another game now and say I am sad. The plate is clean now. I am free.” Original work available through The Martin Tinney Gallery, Cardiff

Painting:Oil on Wood

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:27.5 W x 24 H x 2 D in

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