This espionage case became something of a cause célèbre in France in 1986, as Boursicot and Shi were brought to trial, owing to the nature of the unusual sexual subterfuge alleged.

Periodic restagings of the play and television airings of the film based on it continue to spark interest in the espionage case at the heart of the fictional works of art.

During this period Boursicot embraced his own bisexuality, having multiple liaisons with women while also engaged in a long-term relationship with a Frenchman named Thierry, with whom he one day hoped to form a family including Shi Pei Pu and Bertrand.

He was approached by Kang Sheng, a member of the Chinese secret service who offered him access to Shi in exchange for his passing documents.

[4] Boursicot cooperated fully with reporter Joyce Wadler, who was seeking information for her book on the espionage case and affair, Liaison, granting her lengthy interviews about deeply personal subjects as well as access to all records and his closest family members.

[8] In a separate but lengthy article published in The New York Times Magazine in 1993, titled "The True Story of M. Butterfly; The Spy Who Fell in Love with a Shadow", Wadler reveals in intimate detail how Boursicot came to believe the fiction that Shi Pei Pu was a woman despite having first come to know him socially and in a close friendship as a man.

Boursicot related through Wadler that Shi first told him the story of an opera about a Chinese girl who swaps clothing with her brother so she may be educated.

Boursicot reported that it is only when he had the opportunity to leave his dull job that Shi Pei Pu told him the Story of the Butterfly again with an added twist that he, Shi Pei Pu, had been a woman masquerading as a man all his life to prevent her father from taking a second wife and shaming her mother who had two older daughters.

[2] In his obituary, it was reported that Shi Pei Pu disliked answering questions about the sexual specifics of the affair; in 1988 he was quoted in an interview as having said, "I used to fascinate both men and women.