In Beijing, during the autumn festival, people buy images of a rabbit god who is said to have been sent by the moon-goddess to save people during an epidemic. But in Taiwan, there is memory of another rabbit god, Tu Shen, one who is matchmaker for homosexual men.

Once upon a time, a young soldier was caught looking at an imperial officer through a peephole in the bathroom. On questioning, he confessed he was drawn to the officer’s beauty. He confessed he loved men. The officials had the young soldier beaten to death. A month later, the ghost of the soldier appeared to many who knew him and told them that the gods of the underworld had refused to accept his spirit as he had committed no crime. Love was no crime. So he had to be treated as a venerable ancestor and a god. So to appease the ghost, a temple was built in his honour. He was visualised as a god holding another man in embrace. He was seen as the homosexual counterpart of the heterosexual matchmaker god of Chinese mythology. Since the local slang for gay men in Imperial China was ‘rabbit’, he came to be known as the rabbit god. But he has to be distinguished from the ‘rabbit god of the moon’.