Andrew Thomas Huang | 兔兒神 (Kiss of the Rabbit God) / 2019

declaring affiliation to the rabbit god

by Douglas Messerli

 

Andrew Thomas Huang (screenwriter and director) 兔兒神 (Kiss of the Rabbit God) / 2019 [14 minutes]

 

The Rabbit God, the Chinese deity who stands as the patron of male-male love, was supposed beaten to death for having been attracted to an imperial officer. The gods of the underworld, however, saw his act as one of passion and rewarded him by making him a god. The Rabbit God travels through time to awaken homosexual identity and reward it with a special kiss that permits the “Double Happiness” jade green pendant he wears to be awarded to the recipient in the form of love and bliss. A shrine for rabbit god exists in Taipei, Taiwan still today.

     Writer and director Andrew Thomas Huang explained his motives quite clearly in telling this tale in film in a comment on Reddit:

 

“In 2018 I was asked by London-based culture platform “Nowness” to create a film on the theme ‘Define Sex.’ As a queer Asian filmmaker I had yet been tasked with the challenge of representing my sexual identity on screen. This challenge was a loaded one. Having grown up with a deficit of queer Asian visibility onscreen along with the frequent stigmatization and devaluing of Asian male bodies in Western visual culture, being asked to create a piece centered around queer Asian characters became a dauntingly personal journey for me to unpack these issues, while also crafting a story that I felt enriched our collective imagination of what queer Asian male love, sex and intimacy could aspire to be.

     On a trip to Mexico City, I encountered an exhibition on Xōchipilli, the Aztec god of flowers and patron of gay love. The story of Xōchipilli inspired me to redirect my lens toward my own Chinese heritage, through which I found the Qing dynasty story of Tu'er Shen, 兔兒神 , known as the Rabbit God. Written by 18th century poet Yuan Mei, the myth of Tu'er Shen traces a Fujianese soldier who was sentenced to death for professing his love to another man. In death, the soldier was ordained The Rabbit God and became the patron deity of gay love. Today, Tu'er Shen is still worshipped at a temple dedicated to him in New Taipei City, Taiwan where religious ceremonies are performed for gay couples.

     This research led me to craft a narrative about a Chinese restaurant worker who encounters Tu'er Shen as a ghostly visitor. Nightly visits from the god blossom into a tryst that empowers the boy to release his sense of trapped invisibility and embark on a journey of sexual awakening and discovery. Interweaving my personal family history in the Chinese restaurant business with the richness of Chinese mythology, Kiss of the Rabbit God is a confession and a love letter to my queer Asian community and tells the story of a lover's quest for self-possession to own one's desire and unlock sexual intimacy through spiritual embodiment.”

    The film focuses on a very hard-working Chinese American, Matt (Teddy Lee) working in a Chinese eatery named Lucky Dragon, where among the busy chefs and waitress, he lugs goods in and out of refrigerators, takes over-the-phone food orders, sometimes delivers food to tables, and scrubs up the floors and locks up after everyone else has left. He is a “gofer,” who has hardly anytime left for himself.

      In the midst of all these tasks however, one night a beautiful red-haired boy, Shen (Jeff Chen) appears at a table, orders, and then just as suddenly disappears after having a very brief conversation with Matt. Matt is totally intrigued not only by his beauty, but the tattoos on each finger, the earrings he wears, and the obviously coordinated outfit, so out of place in the everyday wear of the works and customers of this rather bleak Chinese dining spot.

     Upon closing up, however, he finds the red-haired boy is still standing on the corner and quickly invites him in. What follows is not only the historically “promised” kiss but a sudden intense sexual encounter that suddenly terrifies the neophyte, who pulls away while still obviously standing opposite the incarnation of the rabbit god while out of breath and filled with confusion. The god, as gods tend to do, may have almost killed him he his intensity of passion, and he realizes that perhaps it is better to leave.

     But the next day, all through work, it is apparent than Matt cannot get the experience out of his mind, and when he closes up is almost pained not to see his beautiful boy waiting on the corner. Nonetheless, the boy soon does show up, and this time it is Matt who greets him with intense passion and the two again kiss and shove the other to the wall, before, yet again, Matt relents, also suddenly perceiving the welts of skin embedded in the other boy’s chest.

      Just as suddenly, Chen pulls the kitchen knife out of Matt’s pocket and puts it to his neck, suggesting that he too should dedicate his body to the embracement of the characters that evidently represent devotion to the rabbit god.

      For me, the blood scene of skin disfiguring reminds me far too much of what self-hating youths do in cutting; and I found that kind of representation of his dedication to be contrary to the simple beauty of opening another to the charms of gay love. I am of a generation, I should explain, when tattoos and other body marks were seen as a defamation of the beauty of the body. And I still feel that way.

    In the empty dining space, Matt awakens early the next morning, finally, with the welts of affiliation now in place, but feeling nonetheless that it may all have been a kind of dream.

      He has, in a very different way, however, now finally “come out.”

 

Los Angeles, June 23, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2026).