Yesterday I was reading Wikipedia (as you do) and looked up Magnus Hirschfeld and then about 李兆堂 Li Shiu Tong, and (text from wikipedia)
Li met Hirschfeld at a public lecture for Chinese feminists at China United Apartments in 1931. Li recalled that "His lectures [were] about human sexual variation, particularly on homosexuality, a still ignorant and controversial topic." After the lecture, Li approached Hirschfeld, who claimed "[Li] offered himself to me, after my first lecture in Shanghai, as a 'companion' and 'protector', to take care of me and help me wherever I might want to travel in China, in particular to stand by my side as a Chinese interpreter." His father approved of Li accompanying Hirschfeld and hoped that his son would become "the Hirschfeld of China"... Li ended up translating for Hirschfeld in a meeting with the Kuomintang Minister of Health about "prostitution, birth control, and homosexuality."
Soon after, Li quit medical school at the age of 24 in order to pursue a career with Hirschfeld... Li seems to be underrepresented when talking about sexology and the world tour on which he and Hirschfeld embarked...
The original plan was to return to Berlin so Li could finish medical school and work at the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, but this was derailed by the rising influence of the Nazi Party in Germany...
[Li] entered a "drifting" period after Hirschfeld's death, where he used family money to travel across Europe and North America and study at numerous universities, including Harvard, without actually completing a degree program or taking any examinations. He then moved back to Hong Kong in 1960 before settling in Canada for the final phase of his life in 1974...
Li Shiu Tong died on 5 October 1993 at St. Paul's Hospital, Vancouver, Canada at the age of 86. Li's youngest brother dealt with his affairs, and many of his manuscripts and belongings ended up in a dumpster near his apartment.
(Li and Hirschfeld; image source.)
Then I found "The Asian Canadian gay activist whose theories on sexuality were decades ahead of their time" by Laurie Marhoefer; excerpts in indented quotes below
On the world tour, the two fell in love, though to everyone else, they passed as teacher and student. Hirschfeld decided to make Li his successor. The plan was for Li to return to Berlin with him, train at his Institute for Sexual Science and carry on his research after his death.
Their shared dream was not to be. When they reached Europe, Hirschfeld realized he could never go back to his home in Berlin. Hitler was chancellor. The Nazis were after Hirschfeld because he was Jewish and because of his left-wing views on sexuality. He went into exile in France.
Li stayed by his side and helped him write a memoir of their travels.
It is a stunning departure from Hirschfeld’s earlier work, which trades in racist thinking – containing, for example, the claim that Black Americans had stunted brains.
In the book he wrote with Li’s help, a different Hirschfeld emerges. The text denounces imperialism – for example, calling British rule in South Asia “one of the greatest political injustices in all of the world.” Hirschfeld even saw a link between gay rights and the struggle against imperialism: both grew out of an undeniable human yearning for freedom.
After Hirschfeld died in France in 1935, his will named Li, then a student at the University of Zurich, his intellectual heir.
Hirschfeld was the most famous defender of gay people the world had yet known. But when Li died in Vancouver in 1993, it seems no one realized his connection to gay rights.
Yet Li’s rediscovered manuscript shows he did become a sexologist, even though he never published his findings.
In his manuscript, Li tells how after Hirschfeld died, he spent decades traveling the world, carrying on the research and taking detailed notes while living in Zurich, Hong Kong and then Vancouver.
The data he gathered would have startled Hirschfeld. 40% of people were bisexual, he wrote, 20% were homosexual and only 30% percent were heterosexual. (The last 10% were “other.”) Being trans was an important, beneficial part of the human experience, he added.
Hirschfeld thought bisexuals were scarce and that even homosexuals were only a minor slice of the population – a “sexual minority.” To Li, bisexuals plus homosexuals were the majority. It was lifelong heterosexuals who were rare – so rare, he wrote, that they “should be classified as an endangered species.” Li found same-sex desire to be even more common than had sexologist Alfred Kinsey, whose studies identified widespread bisexuality.
Related: Thirty Years of Collecting Our History – Or: How to Find Treasure Troves by Ralf Dose, Magnus Hirschfeld Society, Berlin, 2012 https://www.hirschfeld.in-berlin.de/publikationen/dose_alms.pdf
Adam [who pulled Li's things from the garbage] told me that he had known Mr. Li only from meetings in the elevator of the building, exchanging a friendly “Good morning, Mr. Li”. He had come across these items because as a student, he earned some money by cleaning out the dumpster of the building once a week. And one day, after Mr. Li’s death, he found all those strange things in that room, which he thought should not be just thrown away. He could not read German, and, of course, not at all old German handwriting—but nevertheless, after asking a family member for permission, he put those items into a suitcase and took everything home. His later wife, Nancy, at that time a medical student, had heard the name of Hirschfeld, so they knew that they had found something important.
