Shi Pei Pu - Wikipedia
Bernard Boursicot was born in France and was 20 years old when he obtained a job as an accountant at the French embassy in Beijing. It opened in 1964 as the first Western mission in China since the Korean War. As recorded in his diary, Boursicot had previously had sexual relations only with fellow male students in school and wanted to meet a woman and fall in love. He first met Shi, then 26 years old, at a Christmas party in December 1964; the performer was dressed as a man. Shi had been teaching Chinese to families of embassy workers. He 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. Shi convinced Boursicot that he was with a woman.
After being discovered by the Chinese government, Boursicot was pressured into providing secret documents from his postings in Beijing from 1969 to 1972 and in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia from 1977 to 1979. He took more than 500 documents. When Boursicot was stationed outside of China, he saw Shi infrequently, but they maintained their sexual relationship. Shi later showed Shi Du Du, a four-year-old child that Shi insisted was their son, to Boursicot.
Shi and his adopted son were brought to Paris in 1982, after Boursicot was able to arrange for them to enter France. Boursicot was arrested by French authorities on June 30, 1983, and Shi was arrested shortly thereafter. In police custody, Shi explained to doctors how he had hidden his genitals to convince Boursicot that he was a woman. And as the French doctors sent to examine Pei Pu discovered, he had the ability to make his testicles ascend into his body cavity and tuck his penis back, creating the illusion of female genitalia. He said that Shi Du Du, their purported son, was from China's Uyghur people and had been purchased from the child's mother. Upon discovering the truth of their relationship, Boursicot attempted suicide by slitting his throat but survived. The public disclosure of the long-term affair made Boursicot the subject of widespread ridicule in France.