The scene: Peking 1964. French Embassy Accountant Bernard Boursicot becomes enamored of a graceful Chinese opera singer named Shi Peipu. She returns his affection, bears him a child and induces him to engage in a little low-level spying on behalf of the People's Republic.
Paris 1986: Surprise! Shi Peipu was a male transvestite who somehow managed to perpetrate a 19-year hoax on the unsuspecting Boursicot by faking femininity and pregnancy and providing a baby boy who had been bought from a doctor in the Xinjiang region. Boursicot claimed that he did not discover the truth until he was arrested by French intelligence agents on charges of espionage. After hearing the strange case, seven judges last week sentenced both the hapless accountant and the former dancer to six years in prison. Their "son," Shi Dudu, now 20, was in the Paris courtroom at the time.