Mizi Xia

When Mizi Xia got news that his mother was ill, he forged an order from the Duke to use a ducal carriage to travel quickly to see her, and was praised for his filial piety.

[1]Han Fei's primary goal in telling the story was to caution courtiers against getting too close to fickle rulers, but in later Chinese literature Mizi Xia became more alluded to for his beauty and his homosexuality.

The Liang dynasty poet Liu Zun wrote, "Favors of the cut sleeve are generous,/ Love of the half-eaten peach never dies," confident that any educated person reading the poem would know exactly to whom he alluded.

[5] The narrowing of gender roles under the Qing dynasty and the influence of homophobic attitudes from the West would eventually make mention of "the bitten peach" completely taboo, so that today Mizi Xia is mostly unknown inside China.

[6] Mizi Xia's story became known to the broader world through the writings of Europeans such as in Sexual Life in Ancient China by Robert van Gulik.