CRYSTAL BOYS <i> by Pai Hsien-yung translated by Howard Goldblatt (Gay Sunshine Press: $11.95) </i>

“Crystal Boys” is the first Chinese novel to focus on the buoliquan (literally “glass community”) or gay subculture. After being thrown out of his home by his father, A-Qing , a young man in his late teens, enters the world of hustlers, pickpockets and petty con men who frequent a seedy park in Taipei. The Taiwanese counterculture in “Crystal Boys” is oddly reminiscent of the gay underworld that John Rechy described in “City of Night:” a hidden realm with its special names, code of conduct and values that extend to a private mythology centered on the ill-starred love of the socially prominent Dragon Prince for the wild delinquent, Phoenix Boy. Pai Hsien-yung uses his characters’ gritty adventures to explore the conflict between the desire for Western material goods and traditional Chinese mores. Although his work is virtually unknown in the United States, Hsien-yung’s novels are highly respected in Taiwan and much of the rest of the world.