Introduction to Dykes and Revolutions


It's been 3 days since A Yu and her boyfriend left Shanghai to go back to work, and even though I was kept busy shopping and getting my room set-up, I was starting to talk to myself. Telling stories in my own head. But I spent today with an acquaintance from Boston. A is a Chinese dyke who's from Shanghai and happens to be visiting. And sure enough, she introduced me to this other dyke who lives here, who will in turn take me to local lesbian stuff. It's good to be in the company of fellow dykes again, after a whole month! Even though, I've passed by hella dykes on the street here. Over a dozen I'd say. And I'm not counting any femmes or androgynous ones that I'm not sure about.

When I first met up with A, we talked in English. It's also been a month since I've conversed in English. It felt so strange, and for a moment there I thought I had an accent again, which really frightens me--can I only maintain one language at the expense of another? But after a while it felt slightly more natural. She had some free VIP tickets to an opera show by some soprano black American woman named Jessye Norman. It was decent, but we got bored pretty quick and left at the interval. After we left, we noticed on the program that apparently, she's the world's first ranked soprano?!

Also walked through a show at the Shanghai Art Museum. There was a black/white charcoal-drawn short film that told the story of human kind's destruction of the world through industrialization and war. It featured a scene near the end where two giant evil birds flew into the new york twin towers. Also, battle tanks were tub-like elephants whose shoot out of their trunks. It's cartoonish and creepy at the same time.

(I realized that I default on journaling about my personal thoughts, but leave out the interesting external stuff that I learn. But there's no reason for that).

A. and her friend (let's call her XA) are 29. Once they learned my age, they kept referring to me as a "kid" 小朋友. They both automatically assumed that I'm a baby T, interestingly. (background: T=tomboy=butch, P=po=婆=wife=femme, Bufen=不分=inbetween=androgynous. Those are really approximate equal-signs, of course. The specific gender role implications aren't the same.) They also assumed that I had never been with boys before, for some reason. When I corrected that, XA happily clapped my back and said, wow, here we have a real lala 拉拉 (lesbian)!" What i gathered from the conversation today is that a lot of queer women here get married once they reach a certain age and family pressure gets intense, especially the P's (femmes), a lot of whom are bi. After getting married, a lot of them goes back out and secretly finds girlfriends again. But some will not get divorced, leaving many T's frustrated. So these two thought that the best kind of dyke is one who's married and divorced - tried men/marriage and firmly rejected it.

We ate dinner at XA's little apartment, where she lives w/ her long-term girlfirned. XA cooked a delicious meal, with vegetables and meat bought fresh (and cheaply) from the market near by. Nothing frozen or dead. Live fish, live clams, freshly cut meat, newly picked vegetables. It's quite a nice little domestic life they have. Sure, XA's parents know and strongly object. But they have their circle of lesbian friends to hang out with, and an automatic invisibility in greater public that affords them complete safety. I've yet to hear of a gay bashing/hate crime in China.

A month ago I would never even have entertained the possibility of moving back to China -- that'd be like moving to a new culture again. But now... It's not that i want to move back, but it's not as remote of a possibility anymore. The culture may not be that much of an obstacle. But my activism would be.

The word "revolution" is hella confusing right now. Back in the U.S., I considered myself more radical than most people I knew. I was committed to my causes and felt ready to do almost anything. I loved the word "revolution." That's where people of color rise up, queer people, poor people, and women rise up, where oppressed people fight back. Like the Tracy Chapman song, "Talkin bout a revolution." But here, the ideal of revolution, 革命 is not really a minority. It's been said and done before! It's the logan that rules! It's strange to think that several decades ago, there were enough people who wanted a revolution, who wanted to overthrow the class system and give women rights, with enough dedication and momentum to fight a real war, where countless people who professed marxist ideologies and literally died for it. They were actually successful, in taking over political power. They actually won. But this is not inspiring -- this is rather disillusioning. It's been tried and done. They won, and yet they failed... Cause this country that we've got right now is certainly not perfect. It makes me feel like--a revolution may not be the solution! But intellectually, my ideology hasn't changed. Also, there are people, not very different from me, who had visions for society and specifically chose to die for it. I thought that I had the same dedication to my politics, but, looking at this choice up close and real, I'm not so sure anymore. It's so easy to sit at school and theorize, and feel all pumped up about fighting oppression, no matter how much it takes. It's also easy to theorize about how ivy towers are sheltering, while sitting in them, and write in every paper we write that we're in a position of privilege and little risk and apologize for it. But it's chilling to hear that, someone i know had co-workers who were in the Communist Party, way back when it was an illegal underground party whose members certainly faced the death penalty if discovered. They refused to let this person become connected in anyway, because this person was the only child (keeping in mind the utter importance of Chinese families leaving progeny and continuing the blood line). This is an example of how ultimate that choice is: how joining the party equals almost certain death... I don't know if I could also make that choice!

I'm not too wary about my privacy and political persecution, but from time to time I will be intentional ambiguous and change names. You never know. I'm politically vulnerable in plenty of ways.