Gay in China

I wanted to make this posts before I leave early tomorrow morning for Hong Kong. Tomorrow at 2pm is Hong Kong's annual pride festival. Hong Kong is by far China's freest city and has a long tradition of political protest and a free press thanks to its years as a British protectorate. Despite that, Hong Kong's first pride parade was in 2008 and the gay rights movement in Hong Kong hasn't gotten very far. Gay marriage still isn't recognized in Hong Kong and there are no laws protecting gays in employment, housing, etc. So there is still a lot of political charge to a pride parade in Hong Kong, which should make the event exciting. Also, it will be my first time in Hong Kong.

In every respect except freedom of speech, mainland China is the same way. Gays aren't openly threatened the way they were in the United States, but they are rejected, in a sense, by mainstream culture. I still don't have a good grasp on how gays function in everyday life in China, and I'm not quite sure if there is a such thing as a 'gay closet' here. I do know that this city is considered relatively small by Chinese standards, but there is at least one gay bar with quite a few gay patrons. I also know that the young adults here (even high school seniors) seem not to be perturbed by someone being gay. The older generations likely have the most problems with homosexuality, but it doesn't seem to result in outright hostility or overt discrimination.

Before I came to China, I had discovered (via the internet) some gay activity in Hong Kong and Beijing. Shanghai, too, surely due to its sheer size, has some gay bars and the like. But after arriving, I have heard repeatedly that Chengdu is actually the gay mecca of China. I've heard, and since read on the internet, that Chengdu is one of the few cities in China where gays can live openly and honestly and that they aren't persecuted. From the stories, I'm reminded of 1970s San Francisco in the US, also in the decade following the removal of homosexuality from the national list of mental illnesses. I've not been to Chengdu, but I'd like to go and see what all the hubbub is about. I'll make a post if I do.

What I do want to write about this time is what I've noticed so far about being gay and what I think is gay here so far. I personally haven't said much to anyone about being gay, but at least one of my close co-workers knows, as I think several others do. I haven't mentioned anything about it so far, because I'm not sure how to broach the subject with the Chinese. They don't really ask, except to constantly ask if I'm married and, subsequently, if I like Chinese women. (Note to bachelors reading this who are looking for an immediate wife: flights to China from the US can be as low as $600.) The people I hang out with have had a variety of advice on being gay in China and the general breakdown is: Straight people are terrified at the prospect of anyone finding out that I'm gay. That is true of straight friends from the US who were giving me advice before I left and of straight friends that I have made since I have been here. I'm not sure what exactly what they believe will happen if someone finds out (plenty of people already know, like those giving me this advice), but I suspect that it has more to do with people knowing that acting on that knowledge.

Gays, on the other hand, tend to have the opposite advice. At least gays from a certain generation. One of the friends I've made at Mustache (the local gay bar) is Sonny. Sonny is an ethnically Indian Dutchman who had adopted England as his home and now lives in Chenzhou, though he plans to move to Chengdu at the end of the year. Sonny is out and proud and also in his 50s, though his youthful appearance and demeanor do not betray that fact. Sonny comes from a different generation and a different culture. "I tell them I'm gay," he says, drink in hand, standing next to our table "and if they don't like it, fuck them!", Indian accent on full.

But that doesn't seem quite right either. I've never liked leading with the fact that I'm gay. That's not the dominant characteristic of my personality, it's a fact about me that people find out after they've gotten to know me, not that it takes very long to find out. It usually comes up in conversation relatively quickly, though I'll admit that I've avoided mentioning it here since I'm in a fairly vulnerable position. The communication barrier usually provides a decent excuse to avoid the subject with co-workers. To be honest though, the topic hasn't come up with many of the expats either, for a reason that seems fairly obvious to me: their age.

While we were sitting at the bar, a group of British expats has just entered Mustache and approached us from behind. Sonny whirled around and two seconds into the greeting told a silly gay joke. Without waiting for a reaction, he threw his hands into the air and announced "I'm gay!" (apparently this was permission to tell the joke). When he still didn't get any more than a polite smile and nod from any of them, he turned back to the bar in confusion and disappointment. What he failed to realize was that almost all the expats in town, save a few of us, are under 25. British, Canadian, Irish, Italian, Pol, Russian and American alike. Teaching abroad is something almost exclusively done by young people just after finishing college, so very few people here are old enough to remember as far back as the early 90s. For them, gay is incidental. Unremarkable.

In China, I'm not sure what it is. I've had a couple of experiences that I'd like to put down here, though I'm not yet sure what to make of them. As I've said, I'm far from decoding anything that happens in China.



The most remarkable thing is something that happened at school. There are three boys in my class whose English is far behind the others. I tutor them separately in hopes that they will catch up to the rest of the class. I usually read off words or phonemes to them and have them repeat in order to get their pronunciation skills up to par. Chinese boys of this age are much more affectionate than Americans. They lay all over each other (the teenage inability to hold oneself upright for more than 30 seconds) and they wrap their arms around each other. Men do this even as they get older, while walking down the street with friends.

While it isn't unusual for one of the boys to lay his head on the others shoulder during these sessions, revealing how boring he thinks this all is, I noticed the two best friends reach under the book that one was holding and begin to hold hands. Maybe it was just my western perspective or my hyper sensitivity to gay issues, but this seemed different from the other affectionate behavior between boys. It is something I've never seen any of the others do, before or since. The other boy wasn't perturbed, and neither was my Chinese colleague who was helping to translate when necessary.

I would never tell Chinese people of the comparison that I'm about to make, but I have heard that it's unspoken, but considered normal in Japan for teenage boys to 'experiment' (I don't really care for the term) with same sex relationships, but that they are still expected to marry a woman later in life. No one really mentions it, but everyone knows that it's done. I wondered if the Chinese are following the same model. I'll probably never know.

The other thing that happened is that I met a gay couple at the English Club at the local Irish pub. They seemed very nice and were early English learners, though they are much farther along in learning English than I am in learning Mandarin. In chatting together, they invited me to accompany them on a trip to hike a mountain (really a tall hill) in the city. The park is nearby and the hike is relatively easy, so I agreed and the next day we were off to hike to the top of the hill. When they picked me up they both sat in the front seats and I in back, as you would expect of a couple. Throughout the evening they acted like a couple that had been together for years, even though they're young, and even told me about a vacation they have planned to go to New Zealand next spring.

As the evening wore on though, I noticed that neither one was showing any affection toward the other and hadn't mentioned anything gay or anything about being a couple. Had I read them wrong? Was I confused from the beginning? They were both cute boys in their 20s who made comments on how sexy male movie stars were and never mentioned women. I'm certain they're gay, not certain they're a couple, and completely confused as to whether they're 'out', if 'out' is a thing here, and whether other Chinese people can tell that they're a gay couple (or a couple of gays).

Post Script:

Well, sorry for the long post. I should learn to post shorter because I started this before my trip to HK and now it's a week after. I didn't want to post out of order so information from my trip is now out of date, but hopefully you will still enjoy reading it. I also hope to post some of the great pictures I've been taking. I'm downloading an app on my phone now that will hopefully help, but I have trouble getting my phone to do anything at all. I'll update past posts too, If I can ever get the photos off my phone.