Song Liling was a Chinese Beijing Opera performer and spy. From 1960 to 1986, Song had an affair with French civil servant Rene Gallimard, who did not know that Song - like all Beijing Opera actors, was actually a man (Song dressed and lived as a woman). Song used the affair to spy on Gallimard for Comrade Chin and the Communist Party of China, and, in 1986, they were charged with espionage. They were both pardoned, but Gallimard - unable to live with his fantasy destroyed - committed seppuku as Song smoked a cigarette.
Biography[]
Song during a performance in 1960
Song Liling was the son of a prostitute, and he became a male Beijing Opera performer; as women were barred from the stage, he cross-dressed and played women's roles. Song came to live as a woman, and, in 1960, he met French civil servant Rene Gallimard after a performance of the opera Madame Butterfly. He himself disliked the play because the Westerner got the Oriental girl, and Song discussed this with Gallimard, who - believing that Song was a woman - fell in love with him. Song hid his masculinity by retracting his testicles to give the illusion of labial lips and a clitoris, always laid on his stomach during sex, and never let Gallimard see him fully naked.
In 1961, Song was contacted by Comrade Chin, a female intelligence officer, who ordered Song to find out when the Americans planned to start bombing Vietnam. Song told Chin that the Americans would increase their troop strengths to 170,000 with 120,000 militiamen and 11,000 American advisors; after Chin recorded this, Chin stated her belief that actors were weird for cross-dressing, and reminded Song that homosexuality was illegal in China, and that her methods of espionage should be in line with the Communist Party of China's guidelines. In 1963, Song pretended to be pregnant with a child, buying a child from Xinjiang and naming him "Song Peepee". In 1966, during the Cultural Revolution, the lovers' apartment on the outskirts of Beijing was confiscated, and Song was forced to renounce his decadent profession, confess his affair with Gallimard, and serve the people on a commune. He worked in the fields of Hunan from 1966 to 1970, living in poverty.
Song's true identity, 1986
In 1970, Song was taken from the commune by Comrade Chin, who sent Song to Paris to follow Gallimard, who had begun to work from home. Song arrived in Chinatown, where he bought a kimono. He brought his "son" with him, and they moved in with Gallimard at his apartment. Song hired Gallimard as a courier, handling sensitive documents; he would photograph them and pass them on to the Chinese embassy because Song wanted him to. In 1986, however, they were both caught and arrested for espionage, but they were ultimately pardoned; Gallimard even publicly insisted that Song was a woman. They returned to living together, but Gallimard criticized Song for his betrayal; Song believed that Gallimard was at fault, as he had been fantasizing, so he was not interested in the reality. Gallimard went on to commit seppuku, and Song, smoking a cigarette, later found his body and attempted to see if he was still alive, asking, "Butterfly? Butterfly?"