Well, yesterday I visited the Great Wall on my way back from a rural stay. On the bus ride there, I took the mic and announced, "Today, I am a man" just as I arrived. Everyone on the bus had a good laugh. The Great Wall was truthfully nothing short of spectacular, though I cannot say that I am particularly happy with the manicured walls, the myriad of Chinese/English graffiti, nor the persistent English-speaking merchants. We took a cable car up, walked about for a couple of hours, then slid a Tabagon down. When I arrived back at the entrance I bought a t-shirt for 15 kuai that read, "Bu Dao Chang Cheng Fei Hao Han."
Right before we left to see the Great Wall, we were invited to attend the wedding ceremony at the countryside. The bride came from a village far away and this was something difficult for her family because they will have little opportunity to see her. This was not a traditional Chinese wedding, however. The bride wore white, speakers pumped Mendelssohn's Wedding March, and the bride and groom exchanged vows and rings. But in many ways, this ceremony was very Chinese in that it was much less "serious"--children threw silly string and confetti at the bride and groom as they walked down the short aisle at the groom's house, both poured tea for their fathers, and the bride wore red during the lunch that followed. I thought that if I were to have a heterosexual marriage, it would be something like this.
The concept of marriage and love has been on my mind lately. During my conversation with my father, he also very forwardly asked, "So, have you found a girlfriend yet?" and when I said no, he quickly and almost demanding asked, "Well, why not?" I wasn't sure what to say so I first told him that I felt that Chinese girls were way too shy compared to American girls. He said that that was the truth and that was the way it should be. He said that though it will ultimately be up to me, it is his view that Chinese girls are better. Then I thought, well, what are the problems between me and finding suitable Chinese men? I told him that communication was an issue because my Chinese is poor and "her" English is poor. He felt that that wasn't a problem as long as we both teach each other and even when I return to the States we can keep in contact through the internet.
A week ago I was pretty upset because I received an e-mail that said a poll showed that No on Prop 8 was losing. But what makes me even more upset is that marriage in the U.S. is ruled by the State--that even when I am married in California, other States are not obligated to recognize my marriage and more importantly, because immigration is federally regulated, it chooses not to recognize international marriages between non-heterosexuals. In short, while heterosexual couples marry across borders (indeed, it is now the primary way of achieving legal immigration status), gay couples cannot. Granted, due to language and cultural barriers, I doubt that I am going to find my husband in China, but I would like to have the option to.
When I was in high school my father told me that his marriage with my mother was not meant to be. My mother and father met when they were about my age in their hometown of Kaiping, Guangdong province. However, my grandfather did not approve of my father and forced him to sign a contract agreeing that he will never come near my mother again. Soon after, my mother left for America with her entire family and my father, since this relationship was not meant to be, had already forgotten about my mother. My mother, however, in her new home in Sacramento, California, could not forget about my father. A family friend noticed that my mother was upset and she asked her if she had a boyfriend. My mother said, "Even if I did, why does it matter?" It was this family friend who convinced my grandfather to allow the marriage. After one year, my mother flew back to China and married my father... and the rest is history. But what if the contract my father signed stood? What if my grandfather was America and my father was me seeking to marry a Chinese man? Where would I be? Where would we all be?
For my Directed Independent Research Project, I am creating a short film documenting how the MSM (men who sleep with men) community in Beijing are impacted by HIV/AIDS and by what means sexual health information is disseminated and retrieved. Last night I went to the lake at Tsinghua University to do some research. The Lake is a cruising ground for MSM and before China, I had never seen anything like it. The first time I went, I brought my Chinese-speaking friend so it wasn't as frightening then. Some pretty interesting things happened that night, but more notably we met three gay guys who were about our age. They wouldn't tell us their names, nor what they did, but they said that although people come to this Lake primarily looking for sex, they come because it is a place where they can hang out and be themselves because in the day time they cannot.
I decided to go alone last night. When I arrived, I wondered around with my friend on the other line of my cell phone because I wasn't yet brave enough to try and "adapt" to this environment. It was dark and the sound of feet shuffling came in different directions. There were men slowly walking around, some hiding behind the trees and bushes on the high level platforms of the area. I felt their eyes on me and I was afraid because I did not know what to expect if I started conversations with anyone there--so I didn't. I just sat there and within five or ten minutes, a man approached me and we started a Chinese-English, broken conversation when he found out I was from the outside.
He was a fourth year engineering student at Tsinghua University. He would not tell me his full name because he is afraid that people, like his peers, would find out. He is from the countryside and has a brother. He had just come back from jumping rope. He likes ping pong and badminton. He found out about this cruising ground from a friend just recently. He said that he always has safe sex and that he knows about STD's and pulled out a condom to show me what he was talking about. He said he gets most of his sexual health information from the Internet and that there is a place close to campus where people get tested. Most MSM get this knowledge from the internet. He has been both a 1 (top) and a 0 (bottom) and enjoys both. It was just last year when he started experimenting with men. He has never done anything with a woman so he might be gay but he may marry a woman and have kids in the future. He has gay friends whom he met through "QQ" messenger. He took me to an area a little distance away where we were pretty much surrounded 360 by rose bushes. He said, "Look! There are papers everywhere." I took my cell phone out to light up the ground and there were tissues and condom wrappers littered all about. While he walked me back to the West Gate, I asked about potential consequences of coming to a place like this and he said that it's generally safe but you may get bad people who try to steal your money.
Next week I plan to go to Destination, Beijing's most famous gay club. It will be fun to see how the people there are like. It angers me that international recognition of love is gendered, yet when there is injustice, there will always be resistance. As long as people keep fucking in the Lake at Tsinghua University, as long as they keep dancing the night away at Destination, as long as they express their love toward who they are meant to love, as long as they resist, then there is hope for a more sexually inclusive world. "Hao Han" means "true man" but it also means "hero" and in terms of becoming a "hao han," I believe it takes more than taking a cable car up the Great Wall, taking a cart down, and buying a t-shirt from English-speaking merchants. I very much believe that to be a hero you recognize the sacrifices made by the counterparts of our past, like those who died building the Great Wall, and continue to strive for a goal that may seem impossible to achieve, like ungendered, unbias recognition of love, but is actually very possible, like the completion of the Great Wall.
