The Beautiful Way

by Dirk Hessian

The life of a male prostitute—a jinan —in the Floating World of the Beautiful Way in ancient China in the waning years of the Chu dynasty, 200 BC, was a sensual but cruel, often foreshortened, bitter-sweet existence. The Beautiful Way weaves a complex, romantic, and all too often tragic tale of the interwoven lives of six jinan of one male brothel—the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia. Laid against their linked stories are those of the managers and servants who guided these beautiful young men through their training, their initiation—in which they became bitten peaches—and beyond to burn as bright stars, and, in too many cases, sputter too early to ash. While providing an intricate network of stories of adventure, sexual exploits, and entwining relationships, The Beautiful Way strives to capture the essence of the deliciously euphemistic Oriental world of men making love to other men in China’s ancient past and covering two kingdoms. The stories of these six jinan and of the men who served, coveted, and mastered them are interwoven tales that go beyond the random act of sexual release between men. They offer more complex and context-richer studies by gathering age-old themes, exotic settings, and all-so-human characters up into the Floating World of the Orient in which men give themselves to other men—some more freely than others—for something in return, whether it is for money, position, power, survival, honor, service, devotion—or, not all that rarely, really, in unconditional love.

Genres: LGBT

172 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2012

About the author

Dirk Hessian is the short M/M historial novella alter ego of author habu.

Reviews

[Jason Bradley]

This book was written as a series of stories in the style of old Asian tales. I really enjoyed the read.

[Clive Robin]

The story of the beautiful way set in ancient China was okay. What I disliked about this book was the very sad ending. The unfamiliar foreign names and terms can be difficult if without the listing of the novel’s identified characters and the glossary of Chinese and key terms provided at the end of this book. I was also stuck with certain words in this book. I think, overall, I would give a rating of 2 stars for this book. *I reviewed the book on 18/5/2017.

[Kay]

Written in a disjointed way that was hard to follow. The euphemisms were interesting but the rest of the story was written in a simple sentence structure instead of flowery language. It felt like a translation of a novel where the metaphor is lost in translation. DNF at 35.

[Misty]

*DNF*

(39%)