Platinum Bible of the Public Toilet

“Artist, activist, pioneer, and provocateur, Cui Zi’en is known for shaking up the world of Chinese queer cinema and standing at the forefront of the queer rights movement in China. Now, for the first time, a selection of his avant-garde literary works is available in English. This collection reveals Cui Zi’en’s strange literary universe, brimming with the uncanny, the philosophical, and the beautiful.” - Michael Berry, author of Enter the Clowns: The Queer Cinema of Cui Zi’en

“In Platinum Bible of the Public Toilet Cui Zi’en invites readers into an enchanted world of childhood innocence, family legends, and young love. Through vivid language and skilled storytelling, Cui creates a queer utopia where gender and sexual fluidity are celebrated in ways that challenge the patriarchal, heterosexual, and homosexual norms of our times. This collection showcases Cui as one of the most talented and original queer writers in the world today.” - Hongwei Bao, author of Contemporary Chinese Queer Performance

"The volume’s abundant supplementary material includes meticulous footnotes, a lengthy interview with the author, and an appendix that illustrates the diversity of his artistic output. Throughout, Cui’s impulses to provoke the forces that repress sexuality and uphold literary conventions are grounded in joie de vivre. Reminiscent of the writings of Pier Paolo Pasolini, this is an indelible portrait of an artist." - Publishers Weekly

"[T]hese stories are playful and celebratory in their characters’ transgressions of taboo. . . . Creepy uncles, overstepping teachers, voyeurs, exhibitionists, money boys and cross-dressers count among the cast, and none of them feel the need to justify who they are; they just are, irreverently and joyously so. The range is wide, exploring effeminacy, tenderness, gender-non-conformity, deviance, bottomhood and penis worship. . . ." - Jack Hargreaves, China Books Review