Glossary /
Boli (玻璃)
Derogatoryboli · glass · boli quan
A note before reading
This word causes harm. This page exists to explain — to anyone who searched for it — why it hurts, where it came from, and what to say instead.
Say instead: tongzhi / gay
Dated slur for gay men — literally "glass," from old Taiwanese street slang. Neutral terms today are tongzhi, gay.
Boli (玻璃) literally means “glass.” As a term for gay men it is generally traced to older Taiwanese underworld slang — one account traces it to street slang for the buttocks — and boli quan, “the glass circle,” became shorthand for the gay community. Many readers know the term through Pai Hsien-yung’s landmark novel Niezi, published in English, tellingly, as Crystal Boys, which portrays young gay men cast out by their families in 1970s Taipei.
The harm here is quieter than an open slur: boli wraps gay life in lowered-voice euphemism — “that circle,” “those people” — treating it as inherently unspeakable, a subject for gossip rather than ordinary life.
Register note: today the word survives mainly in older speakers’ usage and in vintage films and fiction; it carries a double mark, dated and derogatory. Since the community reclaimed tongzhi in the late 1980s, that has been the natural umbrella term, and the English loanword “gay” is common in everyday Chinese as well.
Common misreading: treating boli as a “polite” euphemism. A euphemism only feels necessary if the thing itself is shameful — and it isn’t. In translation, render it as the dated slur it is, not as a neutral synonym for gay.