September 29, 2005

一路同行: The universal movement for LGBT equality

Posted in Uncategorized at 10:53 pm by Alissa

This post was written in the end of June 2005, but I didn’t feel quite ready to post it until now:

People who have traveled to foreign countries love to make the cliche statement about how people all around the world, no matter what their superficial differences may be, all share the same core of the human experience.  Last night, while taking part in the one year anniversary celebrations of the Sichuan University’s gay alliance in Chengdu, China I thought about that statement over and over.

First, a little background: The gay alliance which is known as “SU Friends” (川大朋友) was setup a year ago among an original group of 21 students.  Since then, it has grown significantly and its members are quite well-organized.  It is not an official student club of the university, but nor is many other active student clubs given the trouble it takes to get official recognition.  Besides all the bureaucratic processes, the main barrier for this club would probably be passing the Communist Party censors of the university.  Regardless, there are a number of students who have taken up leadership roles and through name cards, an online instant messenger known as QQ, online BBS’s, word of mouth, the local gay bar, etc they have built up a strong network.    There are also straight students who are involved and one, in particular, is heavily involved with the organization.  He is a graduate student who is researching GLBT issues.  Although “SU Friends” is primarily male, I was told there is another group specifically for lesbians.  Perhaps I could find out more on that one later.

Another American classmate (David) and I joined up with the night of the celebrations just in time for a Chinese banquet style dinner.  We met at a well-known campus restaurant with five large tables already set and waiting.  As we were waiting for the other students, one member warned us that some people might not come because there is a lot risks for them to be seen in such a public place with other known gay students.  But in a short time, the tables were completely full with around 50 students chatting and laughing up a storm.  David and I were already blown over with the turnout, even though we knew there would be even more people at the after-dinner festivities in a gay bar downtown.  But to see these students willing to come together at a public location in the clear view of their other classmates was a sight to behold.

As I looked across the students of our group, I was trying to put my finger on what was just so blatantly different about us.  Perhaps some of the guys had a little more edgy fashion with their color choices, or crystal necklaces, or pierced ears.  But there was plenty of other guys whose plain shirt and jeans combo would never stand out in the typical scene of Chinese university students.  Perhaps it was the… our Chinese friend turned to David and I, and suddenly asked, “Are there sissy guys in the U.S. too?”  We laughed over the idea that the question even needs to be asked and our friend explained that in Chinese the word for sissy is “C”.  I looked back at the crowd, well, yes the Cs definitely do stand out.   But that still didn’t account for all the people of the group.  The fact was that we all knew that we shared one particular facet of the human experience and even though all our attempts to label it and categorize might fail to capture its true essence, we all intuitively knew of our common bond.  Right as I thought about this, David turned to me with a big grin, “Oh honey!  We’ve come home!”

In typical Chinese banquet fashion, we held innumerable toasts for the hard work of each of the leaders of the group, for the group as a whole, for the future, for the sacrifices made, and some made just for an excuse to drink another glass.  As dinner wound down, we were told that the bill was already taken care of and people filtered out to catch a ride to the bar downtown.

I had never been to Chengdu’s most well-known gay bar before but David had given me a briefing beforehand.  It has been around for eight years (well, there was some controversy on this number) and does good business with its regular nightly drag show.   But like all bars in China, it can only operate with the right political connections especially those with the police.  From the stories we have heard, a bar without connections is inevitably shut down by police within a short time and this is especially true of gay bars.

Upon our entry, we were urged to sign the silk covered guestbook as per the custom of Chinese anniversaries, birthdays, marriages, etc. and take our free gift: condoms.  The gift said as much as the posters documenting the AIDS work plastered around the entrance: the birth of the gay movement in China has been legitimized partly by the efforts to curb AIDS.  Politely turning down the my free gift, I thought about the apparent invisibility of lesbians in China, a phenomenon that is also common to the U.S.

Inside the bar, we quickly learned that the whole establishment has been specially reserved for this momentous event.  The tables all had a paper outlining the night’s events which included a number of karoake performances, a couple dance performances that are standards from the drag show routine, a couple comedy skits, a public celebration of student couples who have found love, and the grand finale of “Happy Birthday” and cake-cutting.  The graduate student who did a lot of organizing for this night expected 150 students from all the major universities and colleges of Chengdu (a city of about 11 million people) to come.  I would estimate we had over 200 people which was as much as the floor could hold and plus some.

While the crowd was mostly made up of guys, there were a number of women who had come as well.  Some were with their gay guy friends, giving them moral support or perhaps keeping their eye out for another single girl in the company of her gay guy friends.  But there was also a handful of female couples sitting closely with their hands clasped and chatting it up with friends.  I watched one particular love-struck couple sitting in front of me during the shows.  While her girlfriend sat on her lap and she wrapped her arms her waist and they watched the comedy skit performed in the local Sichuanese dialect of a gay guy getting setup with a woman despite his desperate attempts to explain what being gay means.  And after each hilarious punchline, they would turn and look into each others eyes laughing and smiling.

It was clear how much this night meant to many of the people there.  This was a place where they could finally let down their guard.  The guys could dress up in any style they wanted, whether it be black chiffon and a feather boa or baggy jeans and a bandanna and then sing their heart out on stage in front of a packed house.  Couples could hold hands and hug freely without fear of who can see them and what they will they think.  Couples were even invited to come up on stage to sign a very official looking certificate which attested to their love, introduce themselves and how they met, and get a couple more free gifts to remind them of the meaning of safe sex.  The symbolism of the couples signing the mock certificate in a country where everything deemed valid has some sort of official looking certificate with a red stamp on it couldn’t be overlooked.  This might be the only “stamp of approval” that these young couples get in a society where the government ignores them and parents often incessantly ask their grown children when they are going to get married and have kids.

There was also a short interview with the one of the MCs and the graduate student who was so well known in the community.  He was honored with a dozen roses and then opened up with the question that everybody had been gossiping about: “Are you gay?”  It seemed this question had been presented on many other occasions and he chuckled good-naturely while trying to explain his sincere interest in helping the community.  He fielded a couple more questions and the MC ended with a final question, “You’re really not gay?”  It seemed that the students had a hard time believing that a straight person could be willing to work so closely with their community just out of the goodness of his heart.  Given the fact that the government has long ignored China’s gay community, it’s a reasonable skepticism.  Chengdu has started up a AIDS awareness organization a couple years ago that operates from an office just a few doors down from the gay bar.  But it remains an underground organization with no official government recognition or support.

Witnessing what the young Chinese gay community has done here in Chengdu was amazing to say the least.  Homosexuality was only taken off the list of medical disorders from the Chinese psychological association about four years ago.  The police will still raid gay bars and cruising spots and incidents of brutality is not unheard of.  Although homosexuality is one of the government’s gray areas where there is no official policy, it’s generally regarded as unacceptable.  And yet despite the grave consequences that could come about if a person is deemed subversive to the Communist Party, these young people have refused to stay silent and be forced back into the shadows.  Without any outside support, even in the face of direct opposition, they have made creative use of very meager resources with spectacular results.

Perhaps it was while watching the neo-traditional Chinese dance routines by some of the regular drag show performers that I was most struck by the thought of how deeply embedded the phenomenon of “queer” is into human culture.  Men dressed in traditional Chinese women’s clothing, dancing, and singing in falsetto isn’t odd in the least.  It’s only been going on in China for a couple thousands of years.  And traditional Chinese opera is still celebrated today with special TV documentaries and museum exhibitions on the well-known performers like Bak Suet Sin (白雪仙) who was famous for her male roles.  Of course, these documentaries usually gloss over their real-life queer features like Bak Suet Sin’s life-long and committed relationship to fellow female performer Yam Kim Fai (任劍輝).  But it’s not just China, male crossdressing is a familiar scene to all those who appreciate Shakespeare in western culture.   Theater and arts is one of the traditional roles that many societies allowed the “sissies”, “butches”, “genderfucks”, etc. to exist and express themselves.  But some modern-day people try to actually claim that homosexuality and transgenderism is foreign to human nature and has no place in our societies.  There are American conservatives who think that gay is a modern-day phenomenon and Chinese people who think it’s just a vice introduced from the Western world.  But to sit in a modern gay bar in a Chinese city deep in the mainland, surrounded with a young Chinese audience, watching middle-aged men in drag performing this neo-traditional Chinese dance incorporating folk songs and folk costumes… the realization that gays, lesbians, bis, trans are all a natural part of the universal human experience becomes much easier to grasp.

On the backdrop of the stage is the phrase “一路同行” which could be translated as “we are all on the same path together.”  What an appropriate phrase for the night.  Not only has the group helped bring together students who have gone through the same life experience of being gay and who fight for the same respect that all people deserve, it also highlights the universal movement for GLBT equality and the community of love and life that all people share.

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