clipped from: www.washingtonpost.com Mr. Shi had been working as a librettist and soprano for the Beijing Opera and taught Chinese to diplomat families when he met Bernard Boursicot in 1964 during a Christmas party at the home of a mutual associate. Boursicot, then a 20-year-old clerk working for the French Embassy in Beijing, later said the relationship started platonically, out of interest in forging "a good friendship with a Chinese person."
Boursicot soon left China for assignments that kept him away several years, but Mr. Shi reinforced their relationship by claiming to have given birth in Boursicot's absence to their child.
After Boursicot returned to China in the late 1960s, secret police discovered his relationship with Mr. Shi. The police were alarmed that Mr. Shi was involved with a Westerner at a time when China was closed to much of the outside world.
The child, a boy named Shi Du Du, was later revealed to be a Muslim minority Uighar sold by his mother to Mr. Shi.