connections, human meaning, and tragedy

Tonight I met up with this woman introduced by another Shanghainese dyke I know from Boston QAPA, and had a deeper conversation with her than I've had in a long time. She studied in the U.S. for 6 years and plans on going back, and I found a lot of commonality with and interesting characteristics about her. After a group of us had dinner, she invited me back to her place, and we sat on the floor drinking tea listening to music and talking about really personal stuff for a long time. She wrote her Master's on social factors that influence Chinese women's likelihood of compliance with the One-Child policy - I'm totally a fool for academic feminist stuff. Plus she's quite pretty. Then I found out she's married. But she still has this ambiguous relationship with the girlfriend she met in college, 11 years ago. And I thought, there's potential, she's not the overly monogamous type. But then I'm reminded that, even though I don't care, other people still keeps seeing me as a young kid. She kept talking about memories of what she was like when she "was my age"... Ay. However, unlike most other people, she was kind enough to grant that, maybe I'm more mature than she was at my age.

We both had an early-on experience with a passionate, crazy, life-consuming love that ended very badly, but with very different effects. The funny thing is, for her, she says the relationship with that girlfriend was so traumatic that it pushed her towards the straighter end - now she's about 70% straight and 30% lesbian. Her current husband knows about everything, and is actually almost friends with her (ex)girlfriend. When they have a fight, he gets online (from the U.S.) and this girlfriend (from Shanghai) comforts him. I think it's her independent nature that makes them so peaceful. This kind of person makes others feel like, you can't own her, she's so hard to hold on to that if you don't accept the other person in her life, you'd completely lose her. She's been married for 2 years and has spent one of those 2 years living a solitary life in Shanghai. I identify with her so much when she describes how it gets lonely once in a while, but she still likes it better this way. And maybe, we both don't really want/need to be in love head over heels with anybody, anymore, because we've had it and had enough (at least for a while). I borrowed a great book from her, we both like to move cities/countries a lot, don't want kids, and ordered the same thing at dinner, etc.

I also learned a lot about the dyke I know from Boston, who introduced her to me as someone who can help me get to know people in the LaLa (Chinese: lesbian) circle. Well, Sophie (the woman tonight) is not really a lesian or active in the circle. Instead, I realized that my Boston friend contacted Sophie because they once had something and she (the Boston one)'s not over it. It's funny, this dyke from Boston will visit Shanghai soon. Then the three of us can get together, and I can watch some interesting dynamics.

The couple we had dinner together with has been together for 6 years. Apparently, they're married to this gay couple. How hilarious and ingenius! This way, the parents and family are satisfied, and if they have a child in the future, it won't be legally illegitimate.



On a sad note, XA's girlfriend has decided to get married. I don't know how XA is handling this so well; it'd be worse than just getting dumped for me, it'd be like a punch to the stomach, like losing the personal/political war. They had a fight the other night, and XA called me to ask if she can stay at my place for a few nights. I met her up for dinner (Hot Pot, yum, filled with huge pork bones to chew clean. It comes complete with plastic gloves so you can really get your hands into it, and a tiny straw to help you suck the sweet marrow out of the bones). She drank bottle after bottle of beer and complained to me. I'm happy and honored that she'd share these things with me. But at the same time, I don't really know how to advise her. It seems that Chinese people usually try to encourage peace and discourage splits. I tend to default on not advising people explicitly: that'd be applying my own values to other people with different preferences, and I don't want to be responsible for messing up others' lives. Otherwise, I'm pretty ready to advice splits too. Well, XA went home out of convenience and went straight to bed drunk. But she stayed over on Friday night. We did fun, good-friend things like watching movies in bed, shopping for rabbit food, and talking about sex toys. We would've went shopping for sex toys too if we could've found a shop close enough. By the end of the day, my god, I had shown her my strap-on and small collection of dyke porn. The movies were only upon her request. I've never watched non-laughable porn with somebody else before, but it turned out to be quite platonic, and funny, cuz sex is a pretty strange thing if you watch it from an objective point of view. XA leisurely smoked a couple of cigarettes and fast-forwarded thru a lot of parts, and decided in the end that she didn't like them enough to borrow them -- too un-aesthetic, and too hard, she says.

Well, eventually, she went home to her girlfriend, uncertain of what her girlfriend is going to decide. They haven't formally broken-up, but there's no future for sure, since her girlfriend is planning to find some guy and get married. Family pressure. I can't fully sympathize with how tragic this is, because this is not my life, not my circumstances. I can't really imagine it, because I'm so lucky that I have so little emotional attachment to my parents, and I don't ever have to do anything because of them. The worrisome thing is, my mother's been calling and talking to me about feminism/gender expression lately. The week that I spent with my sister (and mother, unfortunately) in Fujian meant that my mother got a glimpse of what I'm like now, and I don't know why I entertained her enough to actually debate a little about gender oppression with her. This hits way too close to home - as in, stuff I care about, stuff too personal to let her criticize me with. Anyways, I thought that XA's girlfriend's family was supportive of them, because her girlfriend's mother likes XA and often came over to their apartment to visit, cook, and take trips together. But I was wrong. The mother only knows XA as a really really good friend living with her daughter. If the actual relationship was spoken out loud, it'd be very different... So since they are having problems already, XA's girlfriend is just going to get married.

It's not all this bad. XA's family knows. Even though they are against it, there's nothing they can do about it. There's this other lala couple I met. They've never spoken out loud the nature of their relationship to their family, but her mother says:" When you two buy a house together, I'll come live with you and help you with the chores (a normal, caring thing for mothers to do for young married couples). It's okay if you don't get married; as long as you have somebody to be your companion and take care you for the rest of your life, then I'm not worried anymore." Just rewriting this has gotten me moved. I agree with them - they don't need to ever say out loud in words what their relationship is. Their parents can't accept the label and the concept, if you name it. But they do tacitly approve, in reality, in action, if you just allow them to stay in their knowing denial.

Plus, there're no hate crimes based on sexual orientation. I don't have statistics or proof, but I'm pretty confident of this fact so far. Gay bashing does not exist here. And that counts for a lot.

whoa, i just realized that it's 11/22, which is warren's birthday. what a freaky coincidence

"androgyny is trendy"??!

That's what Fang Fang keeps insisting: "androgyny is trendy lately." Then she applies it too much, cuz when I point out to her really obvious dykes that we pass by on the street, she says, "no, she doesn't look like it to me. It's just that androgyny has been really popular and there're lots of girls dressed like boys lately." That annoys me. She even insists on denying that 李宇春 is NOT one (Li YuChun is the winner of the American-Idol equivalent here; she's unbelievably popular and still topping the charts, and has millions of young teenage girls as her fan base).

She is partly right, though, in that androgyny is not viewed negatively at all. This is a beautiful cultural phenomenon. Last night I watched a singing-competition on TV with this girl that I totally thought was a boy for the longest time. She talked and rapped with a voice that's lower and rougher than a lot of Chinese men. But then she switches from rap to a melody with a really sweet, girly voice, then switches back again. I was really impressed. I can change a lot of things about myself, over time, but never so instantly. If I sing a song in a high pitch, then my speaking voice is going to remain higher than usual for a while; and vice versa. Well, the host of the show asked her about her "androgynous" look, but of course nobody makes any links to sexuality. That's both an up-side and a down-side: you get this safe and convenient invisibility, but then you're also invisible.

I have to say, I really appreciate how a lot of men care about style and fashion here. So there's a lot of cloths available to me that are not so drab and overly baggy, but colorful and hip. And it makes it really convenient that men's cloths actually fit me. Sometimes I even have to buy a Medium size in men's shirts!

Dream consciousness

As I've been staying up all night playing the Sims and sleeping into the afternoon, in the two days since my cousin Fang Fang left Shanghai, I keep having long, realistic dreams about people from all different parts of my life. So much that, when my cousin A Yu called, I groggily answered the phone with an English "hello" instead of a Chinese "wei", because my mind was floating in the English world.

I dreamt about Warren. That hardly happens nowadays, I never think about him when I'm awake, but I guess 2 and 1/2 years would etch a lot of memory pathways into your brain that resurfaces randomly at night. In the dream, I felt really distant from him, (which is a good thing), and simultaneously full of pity (which I'm not sure if I want). There's no longer hate, disgust, sorrow, anything that indicates that I care, but the dream was still filled with this sad pity for him, who was, well, i can't deny, hurt really badly. It's definitely limited though; I believe really firmly that SYMPATHY has been the downfall of women for thousands of years. Women like to feel sorry for men, feel pity, see the potential for change in men that actively hurt them, and they forget about themselves. It's self-sacrifice, and I hate it. It's why women stupidly let themselves be screwed over time and time again. This is utterly un-Christian of me :)

trans-women in a lesbian club

The lesbian club I went to on Saturday night featured a performance by these two transwomen. They started out with very flowy, feminine, traditional chinese dress, and then stripped down to less and less, to rounds of cheers from the all-girl audience. It's an interesting dynamic. One of the transwomen said that she's done the surgery already and "is a real girl, but my friend hasn't gotten the surgery yet, so you all should look carefully and tell me, is s/he a boy or a girl?" They made themselves into a show, with the pre-operative one strutting around everyone in a skimpy outfit, shaking hands w/ everyone. I thought the general atmosphere was really supportive, with everyone applauding and cheering 'yes' when she asked, "so do i look like a real girl or not?" But when she grabbed this girl in my group to slow dance, the girl from my group was obviously weirded out by the physical contact with this 人妖 (this name sorta means "human-monster" and usually refers only to people who haven't had the surgery and is therefore considered neither male or female).

Picture Albums on facebook

Here are two photo albums I just uploaded onto the facebook, with a random selection of pictures from my last 2 months in China. Public links for those who don't have facebook:

http://harvard.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2050758&l=b7273&id=11288

http://harvard.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2050753&l=147fa&id=11288

I'm not young!

I can't stand being called "young"! Why do people keep insisting on applying their timeline of level of maturity to me? Come to think of it, since the beginning of this year, all the new friends I've met are older than me, from just graduated to 10 years older. But lately, people are so quick to judge and say, oh, you're still a kid, as soon as they found out my age. Which they tend to ask early on, since I look young. In the U.S., the youngest I've been called is a 12-year old boy. They wondered why I was out on the street so late at night! I've attributed that to the Asian factor and the gender expression factor. But apparently, I look young here too. People keep guessing that I'm 16 or so. Telling people that I'm 20, almost 21, doens't help much. One of my apartment-mates said to me, "your eyes look really innocent, like you haven't had much life experiences yet." That didn't actually bother me because she made that ridiculous guess w/out knowing me at all, and I'm confident enough in my own knowledge that I have had a more interesting life and more maturity than most other people my age. I care more when the 27-year old lesbians I've been trying to befriend call me a "young'en" though. If I protest how they think I'm a kid, then I'd just seem more like an insecure young'en who's struggling for adult recognition and approval. But it's not like I can break out into a speech and start listing the "evidences" and life "events" I've had to prove otherwise. That'd just seem obnoxious. Really, I just need them to take me seriously! Grrr.

Vacationing and socializing

That's what i'm doing here, vacationing and socializing. I've been meeting up with different people this week, including a few ABC's (american-born chinese) who are working here, and a different group of Shanghainese dykes. These are two such different worlds. I got a glimpse of what the English-speaking Chinese American live here is like, and I'm really glad that I'm not living that. They teach English in international schools attended by spoiled, rich brats, interact with other expats, who are mostly obnoxious, ugly white business men with a fetish for Asian girls, and eat at/go out to crazy expensive places that are attended by mostly foreigners. In a way, I can't be so harsh cause I can only manage to do somewhat better if/when I go to a culture completely foreign to me. But it is shocking how sheltered you can be. They've built their own buildings with European cafes and lampposts, serving American food, with menus in English, etc.
It feels really inappropriate to go to those places.

I felt really Chinese, really authentic when I'm around these people, but around Chinese people, I start to feel like an outsider too. Like I'm desperately trying to blend in, but once the biographical facts come out, I have to unwillingly divulge the fact that I've been in the U.S. for 1/2 of my life, and I worry that they immediately see me as a kind of foreigner... I spent the afternoon in a KTV (karaoke) with these dykes, who are great fun. But I was embarassed that I couldn't sing, because I didn't know the current popular songs. I was only able to sing an English song and a couple of hella old Chinese songs, that were popular over a decade ago. Now I have to go home and studiously study the current songs.

I joined a wushu class today. It's been my childhood fantasy, but unfortunately it's not as sweet to realize it. I wanted to learn wushu so bad when i was little, but my mother made me take accordion (a concert instrument, its status similar to the violin) classes instead. The accordion class is in the same youth community center as the wushu class, and I'd walk by the courtyard where they practiced and watch with such longing. I vaguely remember this little girl my age who was really good, and did all these cool tumbles with a long spear, that impressed me so much. Maybe a first crush? Well, now I realize that wushu is really an art, for performance. It emphasizes form and isn't really fit for fighting. Today we started out with stretches and all kinds of crazy splits, which I can't do at all. It felt more a ballet class, standing in a row next to a bar and trying to reach my toes. But later on, when the kids that have been at it for years broke out the weapons, swords, knives, spears, I was totally into it again!

back to school

I went to Fudan University for the 1st time on Wednesday. I've been telling ppl, especially relatives, when they ask exactly WHAT do I plan on doing with all this time in Shanghai, that I'm going to audit classes at Fudan. I finally dragged my ass over there, after being here for 3 weeks. It was sorta nostalgic for Harvard. It's great to be in a campus environment with all these youthful looking students, people my age everywhere. I got a meal card and ate dinner in the cafeteria. Though the food's much cheaper, it tasted a million times better, homier, than anything I've ever had in Adams!

I randomly showed up at a class about Marxism (a basic, required core class here). I sat in the back and fell asleep within half an hour... My first class in 5 months and it's still boring :) So during the bathroom break, I grabbed my bag and left. I love that freedom of not actually being in school, so I don't have to sit through anything I don't feel like! On my way out of campus, I saw a poster about the Mexican University of Colima fokloric dance group performing, right then. So I rushed over to the auditorium and saw a great show. It was packed, and apparently, Chinese students were all in love with the brilliantly colored cloths and the exciting atmosphere they generated, even though the technical skills were nothing compared to Chinese performances. It's heartwarming to see this authentic cultural exchange that happens directly between two periphery nations, w/out going through the center of the world/the West. But, they did communicate with each other in English, the common language...

I feel really happy and satisfied that I'm living my life this way at the moment. Not being in school is great. I really had enough of wasting my life in such an academic bubble and getting wrapped up in all the extracurriculars as if they really mattered like the real world. I love this free flowing lifestyle of being able to do whatever I want, waking up whenever, just learning and experiencing and getting in touch with this world of mine that has been so far away for so many years. Of course, I had to prepare for this by working and saving up a lot of money, but it's totally worth it.

A city with constant construction (and demolition)

I finished reading Shanghai Baby 上海宝贝 by Wei Hui today. I randomly picked up a copy, translated into English, at a used bookstore in San Francisco, and it happened to be a controversial bestseller. It's so beautifully written, but it's entirely pretentious and self-conscious. Wei Hui, the author, writes about herself writing the book. It's obvious that every random thing that happens in the book comes from her own life, and she admits it too. But she manages to makes it endearing by being blatantly honest about her self-consciousness, with sentences like "I'm writing a book with metaphysical thoughts and raw sex" and "after I wrote this paragraph, Tian Tian came over"... It's exciting to think that the lives in this book takes place in Shanghai, in the same city I'm living in right now. Cities have such interesting personalities. I've really enjoyed getting to know them: Houston, San Francisco, Shanghai, Fuzhou. Only Boston is the most boring place ever. Shanghai is so alive. Just look outside my window. 成都北路 is a huge highway lighted up with traffic as late as 3 AM, and next to it is an old-fashioned area with clay-tiled roofs, alleys, markets with vegetables and meat hanging out. Because it's near such a busy area, you just know that it won't be long until they're successfully bought out by developers who will build skyscrapers here. Then I'm in this 33-story high building down the block, looking down on this small river, where junk boats will pass by everyday, loaded down with sand and stone. There's the constant sound of construction: drilling, digging, all night long. It's pretty annoying. On the sidewalk downstairs where I pass everyday, these temporary shelters for construction workers sprang up overnight and blocked the whole path. They're these pathetic, thin tin sheets with bunk beds inside. The workers are all migrant workers from rural places, without legal residence cards for Shanghai, camping here right by their worksite. It's a pretty grim lifestyle. Not necessarily the material conditions--I think I could slowly adjust to living with so few luxuries, but the exhausting work and the boring nature of it would be truly unbearable for me. The other day, I suddenly decided to dress up girly, with flowy shirt, dangling earrings, and girly hat to cover up my completely unfeminine haircut. So when I walked by, some of the workers made a pass at me, with a thick, obvious rural accent. That's something I'm not used to getting anymore!

Speaking of annoying men, I'm practically getting stalked by this guy David, whom I met the first week in Shanghai, when I was bored and in need of friends. I couldn't be too picky, I thought, and I got a possible gay vibe off of him, which was why I was really friendly and eager to find out if he really was gay or not. Turned out he's not. I only hung out with him a couple of times. But as soon as I met hot dykes and more interesting people, I really had no interest in hanging out with him anymore. It's exhausting to interact with straight men. Completely unattractive--so there's nothing visually enjoyable, and always talking on and on, as if he owns the air time and always deserves your complete attention. By the 2nd time I went out with him, I had already started making half-joking/half-snarky comments at the way he boasts about himself. But for 2 weeks now, he keeps calling me, sending me text msges, emailing me non-stop. I've never responded, but he keeps on ringing my phone. It's super annoying, especially cause it reminds me of how my mother stalks me and calls me 5 times in a row, without me ever picking up. Don't they get the message? How clear do I have to say "leave me alone"?

queer community thanks to technology

Talking to XA today, i learned more and more about how everyone in the lesbian circle met each other -- through complicated, extended relations, where one person introduces another friend to another friend, who meets another friend... Somehow, you find your way in to the community. I met XA through an acquaintance's friend's friend.

She first came out 7 or 8 years ago, back in '98. That was really the beginning of it all, she says. There were no lala community back then. No clubs/bars, no circles, except for maybe some tiny circle of friends of an older generation that she doesn't know about. She got a computer earlier than most people, and she went online and researched it. Through lala chatrooms, she met people, and then slowly met up in person and became good friends. That's how the community got started. She told me about this one time, at Ren Min Guang Chang/People's Square, where I go practically everyday, she met up with two other women for the first time in person. And from then on, the group acquired more and more people. Sometimes the new people get along with the group, and become good friends, some of whom I met at the bar last weekend. Sometimes the new people don't get along with the group, so sooner or later they aren't welcome anymore, and they're left to their own devices, since there aren't other groups to choose from. There's only one. XA described that first meeting at People's Square, half-jokingly, as a "historic" moment, and it's true. It's unbelievable. I feel like I'm standing in the face of such vital history, talking to a friend who happens to have been there from the beginning of it all, in such a casual atmosphere. It's kinda like a fairy tale, how computers enabled the beginning of a social phenomenon that changes the lives of many women. Technology stimulated the start of a community that's growing like wild fire now.

photography, meat, emotions

My bunny is growing so fast. She's eating bushels of vegetables and doubling her weight. I think it's barely a month old and was probably taken away from its mother way too early. The subject of what to do with after 3 months, when I have to leave, comes up a lot. I keep joking that, well, in the worst case scenario, if nobody will take it, then I'll just have to eat it. I remember once upon a time when my dad threatened me with that, and I was seriously afraid that he would do it, and actually eat my rabbits. But now I'm the one joking about it. I couldn't actually do it though. Even with the meat-eating frenzy I've been having. Even Chinese friends have commented on how much I like meat. Food has been such a major center of pleasure every day. May and I have been eating up a storm throughout Shanghai, and I've been especially keen on having different kinds of meat. At the "Brazilian" barbeque place, I had maybe 2 dozen chicken hearts... absolutely delicious. When we went to Zhou Zhuang 周庄, this touristy, historic town connected by canals and cute bridges, we had blowfish, fresh from the tank by the window. Veal, goat skewers, frog legs, lots and lots of pork... Chicken meat tastes so boring now.









But before I got sidetracked by the thought of food: this bunny is adorable, a great companion now that May went back to Singapore and I'm living by myself again. But honestly, I don't feel as affectionate towards it as I did towards my pets when I was little. I just realized that, I have so much less affection in general than in the past... After hearing all about my dating history, May commented that it doesn't seem like I 惦记/miss/feel attached to people very much. I have to admit that it does sound that way, with the fact that I haven't dated any girl for longer than a month, and I've been traveling and saying goodbyes so much that I'm almost used to it. But I do remember everyone fondly, and care a lot about a few people. It's also been intentional that i didn't want to get into any serious emotional relationships for a while, after getting out of such a long, overly-intense one. And I really value my independence, freedom, and self-reliance. But hearing the way other people described it, it makes me sound quite cold. I don't know what to make of that. Cause I don't plan on getting all sappy and stable anytime soon...

I've been learning a lot of random things about photography from May, who does it professionally. We hunted down this particular kind of houses that she wanted to photograph: houses built exactly like American suburbs, in rows that are all identical and utterly boring, but built in Shanghai. We pretended to be interested in buying in order to get in - it's a gated community with 24 hour guards who live on site. The guards are Chinese and live in these little huts on the edge of the overgrown field, well out of site of the pretend-suburb. Most residents are foreigners, or, to be more precise, white European or American, rich, businessmen, their housewives, kids, and maybe some business women too. This is such a scary neighborhood. It's taken over by rich expats with a lot of financial power, who are living in China in order to do business. They live such an insular lifestyle, separated from normal China, in houses with red rooftops, neat lawns out front, European chandeliers and furniture, with an International school next door to sent their filthy rich kids to. It's funny to think, these are the kind of kids who make-up most of the "international student" population at harvard. They seem sorta interesting, from the surface, cuz they've lived all over the world, following their parents, but all the while they're hella privileged, spoiled brats who have never lacked a good education in English-language schools, wherever they are, and never really became a part of anywhere they've lived. I was really glad when May finished taking her pictures. Just being in those suburban rows of identical, fake-perfect, symmetrical houses made me feel suppressed. Like I couldn't breathe.