There’s a love story that unfolded at the French Embassy in the mid-1960s that you simply have to hear to believe. A Chinese man pretended to be a woman and climbed the ranks to the point where “she” began running point for Chinese espionage against the French.
The man was Shi Pei Pu, who made a living teaching Mandarin to the wives of diplomats during the then-growing inflow of foreign officials to China. When Shi turned 26, however, he devised a plot that would make Candace Owens’s ears perk up. Shi met an impressionable 20-year-old named Bernard Boursicot, who worked in accounting at the newly opened French Embassy. Shi decided that Bernard would be his target for his growing web of lies.
Boursicot himself was reportedly still trying to understand his sexuality at the time. He had dated men when he was younger but was looking forward to pursuing a relationship with a woman. When the two met, it didn’t take much for Boursicot to fall for Shi — who claimed to be a woman forced to live as a man because of her father’s demands. Boursicot believed him. In a fascinating obituary published by the New York Times following Shi’s death, the publication described their relationship as “sexually convoluted.” Which is still somehow an understatement.
When Chinese authorities found out, they quickly saw an opportunity for extortion. Boursicot claimed until late in his life that he had no idea Shi was a man, yet he also knew their relationship was something best kept private. The Chinese authorities convinced him that if he wanted their story to remain hidden, he needed to provide certain documents from the Embassy. Boursicot obliged.
A spy film based on their story was released in the 1990s, though given today’s political climate, it might be tailor-made for Timothée Chalamet to finally get that Oscar he’s openly chasing. Still, if even Mulan wasn’t allowed to show in China, it’s hard to imagine this one making it past the censors either.
After the extortion, the two went on to live separate lives — but fate and fraud brought them back together. Shi reportedly “bought” a 4-year-old child from a woman in the often-persecuted Uyghur community and convinced Boursicot that the child was theirs. Once again, he believed it. Boursicot even invited Shi and the child to live with him in Paris.
But in 1982, the ghosts of their past caught up with them. The French government learned of the espionage when they returned from China. Both were arrested and sentenced to six years in prison. Shi never stopped loving Boursicot, and Boursicot never quite forgave Shi.
Years later, it became clear that Shi hadn’t been lying entirely about being a woman. He suffered from gender dysphoria — a condition little understood at the time, especially in China. “If I could have it my way,” Shi once said, “I would have just been an opera singer. I used to fascinate both men and women. What I was and what they were didn’t matter.”
