Treacherous Women - Sex, temptation and betrayal (True Crime) by Gordon Kerr Read Free Book Online

thirty-month contract.
    In December 1964, he joined the Beijing ex-pats’ party circuit and was excited when he met a blonde British secretary who agreed to give him her phone number. He invited her to a party just before Christmas at the home of a French Embassy official, but realised pretty quickly that there was someone at the party who interested him more than his date.
    He was a short, slightly-built Chinese man, the only Chinese present at the party. He was aged around twenty-five and was dressed in the usual Mao suit that all Chinese wore in those days, and he was speaking fluent French. Boursicot went over and introduced himself and, before the end of the party, he had obtained the man’s address and phone number.
    His name was Shi Pei-Pu and Boursicot contacted him and invited him to dinner shortly after they had met. Shi told him that he had been an actor and singer when younger and was currently writing plays about the workers. His late father had been a university professor and his mother, with whom he now lived, was a teacher. He had two older sisters and had learned French as a boy. He had a degree in literature from the University of Kunming.
    The two men became good friends. Shi took Boursicot to places off the beaten track, where few foreigners would ever be able to go and he told him wonderful stories of old China. He was a terrific storyteller and Boursicot loved listening to him talk of the roles he had played during his performing career and of the loneliness of his childhood. They shared secrets with each other that they had never told anyone else.
    The relationship was short-lived, however. For a number of years, Boursicot had been trying to obtain an invitation to join an expedition that was travelling to the Amazon jungle. Finally, in mid-March 1995, it arrived. He called Shi to let him know he was going to resign but before he left, Shi invited him to his house. This was very unusual and even slightly dangerous – foreigners did not visit the homes of Chinese people in Mao Tse-Tung’s China. Then a few days later, Shi told Boursicot a remarkable story.
    He told him that his mother had had two daughters before he was born and reminded Boursicot that, in China, sons were more desirable than daughters. Shi’s grandmother declared that if Shi’s mother’s next-born was not a boy, Shi’s father would have to take a second wife. Shi’s parents were distraught and when Madame Shi gave birth to another girl, Pei Pu, they were aghast at the thought of the break-up of their marriage. They made a spur-of-the moment decision – they would tell the grandmother that the new baby was a boy and raise it as such.
    So, Shi Pei-Pu had lived his life as a male, even though he had been born a female. Amazingly, Boursicot accepted the story, unquestioningly. He promised to tell no one.
    Eventually, Boursicot realised that he had fallen in love with the strange Shi Pei-Pu and asked her to sleep with him. Sex between them was never entirely satisfactory, however, and Boursicot was surprised by Shi’s minute breasts. Shi told him that in order to keep up the pretence, he had been taking male hormones for a number of years to make him appear more masculine.
    Boursicot left China at the end of December 1965, but before he did so, Shi had yet another surprise for him. She told him she was pregnant. He told her that if it was a boy, it should be called Bertrand and, if a girl, Michelle. He left, promising he would return.
    By the time Boursicot returned to work as an archivist at the embassy, a couple of years later, China was in turmoil, in the throes of the Cultural Revolution that was to tear the country apart. While he had been away, he had had an affair with a French woman and had undertaken the expedition to the Amazon. However, he was afraid of getting in touch with Shi, given the difficult political climate. Shi had moved house and it took him a while to find her. He firstly travelled there in a pedicab, but