Tongcheng, Anhui

Tongcheng (Chinese: 桐城; pinyin: Tóngchéng) is a county-level city and former county in the southwest of Anhui province and is under the jurisdiction of the prefecture-level city of Anqing. Tongcheng is noted for the Tongcheng School, one of influenced Neo-Confucian schools during the Qing era.

In the mid-1600s, Tongcheng emerged as a discreet center of same-sex social circles in Anhui, where scholars and artists gathered in private salons known as Xiuchang to share poems and stories celebrating male friendship and emotional intimacy. These gatherings, though never openly documented in official histories, survive in letters and family memoirs later suppressed during Qing moral reform.