A Wedding Story

Note on language: I’m using third person pronouns according to the way people in this post have told me that they identify, which is sometimes the choice of “they, their” for butch lesbians (and sometimes not). In spoken Chinese, there is no difference in pronunciation between the male and female third person pronoun, which is pronounced “ta” in the first tone. However, there is a difference in written Chinese, with the male third person pronoun written with a “person” radical on the left side (他), and the female third person pronoun written with a “female” radical on the left side (她). However, butch lesbians sometimes prefer that they are referred to in the third person written form (like in a text message) as “TA” (yes, in capital letters), written just so using the roman alphabet, and in this way using a gender-neutral form for the third person. TA is also used in contexts where the gender of the person is unknown by the writer (this is standard form in advertisements, software, or newspapers where the gender is unknown). When I write in English, I use the “they/their” pronoun for these individuals. Also note that the wedding was between a butch lesbian and a feminine lesbian. During and after the ceremony, they referred to the butch as the “groom” or “husband” and the fem as the “bride” or “wife,” and I use those terms in English as they used them in Chinese.

LaLa (拉拉) and Les are some of the common Chinese slang words for lesbian. Quanzi (圈子) is another slang term lesbians use to refer to each other, which literally means “social circle.” For example, “do your parents know you are a quanzi?” would translate as “do your parents know that you’re part of the community?” The official term, 女同性恋, which literally means “female homosexual,” is almost never used in spoken word, as this term has become somewhat derogatory and is uncomfortable for people to say (we would almost never say “homosexual” in English either, unless it was in an academic or scientific context). 

They also sometimes use the borrowed term “lesbian” from English, shortening it to “les” (in China, the word English word “gay” is only used in the context of gay men). They also use the term “T” for butch lesbian and “P” for fem lesbian. Some use the term “balangzi,” which is a derogatory term meaning “dyke” that the lesbians have co-opted for their own use and will use amongst themselves to refer to butch lesbians (Note for readers from other parts of China: “balangzi” might be a term that is only used in Xinjiang because it is a transliteration from a Uyghur word meaning “kids”). LaLas almost always use the term “对象 duixiang” to refer to their significant other. Duixiang translates literally as “partner,” often a fiancée/fiancé in the heterosexual world. But in the lesbian context, it is a gender-neutral term used by LaLas to mean, “significant other,” and can mean anyone you are dating casually or seriously. In this article, I translate duixiang into “significant other,” or SO.

Anyway, onto the wedding story.

I had the privilege of attending a lesbian wedding ceremony in my city. YY had invited me to the wedding a few days prior, insisting that anyone who wanted to come could attend since I didn’t actually know the couple. YY knew the couple, however (their ex was the maid of honor). It was being held on the upcoming Saturday night at a lesbian bar in Urumqi’s red light district. The bar is pretty tiny—it’s more like a pub—with a tiny stage used for karaoke and about 10 separate tables with booths, so I knew it would be an intimate gathering, not a huge to-do like most weddings I’ve been to here are.

“Are their parents coming?” I asked hopefully. Earlier that week I had seen a video that had gone viral on the Chinese internet of a marriage between two Chinese lesbians, a ceremony which had included the bride’s family. “Of course not!” YY scoffed, rolling their eyes.

Nevertheless excited, of course, I invited three friends to join me. Two of them, a couple living in my city, said okay, and the other, who lives in a village not far from Urumqi, had lots of questions for me. I invited them saying, “There is a lesbian wedding on Saturday night, let’s go together.”

“Are they Uyghur? And are the two of them both girls??”

“One is Uyghur, one is Han. One is a girl, the other is a butch lesbian.”

“Where is it being held?”

“At a lesbian bar in Urumqi.”

“Are they getting a wedding certificate from the government? I mean, are they holding this wedding secretly?”

“No, it’s not secret, but it’s also not official either. It’s not being done for the wedding certificate, gay people can only do that in Taiwan and Hong Kong right now. It’s just a ceremony, a casual party with friends.”

In the end, they decided not to come, saying they were sick.  

My other two Uyghur friends, E and M, however, did agree to come and came over to my house before hand for dinner. When I approached my house after picking up take-out for us, E was waiting outside with multiple bags of fruit in a bright pink blouse and blue contacts, and with her huge eyes and bright smile and light brown hair, she could have easily been mistaken for an American. M, her SO, joined us at my home a few minutes later. 

“I never heard of anything like this happening before,” E told me.  

“I’ve heard of it in Hong Kong and Taiwan, but not in China,” I said.

“Yeah, same here,” she said.

We took a taxi and got to the wedding about 20 minutes early, walking down a small alley filled with noodle restaurants, sex toy shops, and women walking around in high heels and too much make-up. We went up a small metal staircase on the side of one of the buildings to the second floor where the bar is located. When we got to the top of the staircase, at the far end of the hallway we could see a 4-foot long poster of the bride and groom’s wedding photo—the groom looking handsome and chill in a tux and the bride, a Uyghur with large round eyes and a full figure, looking seductively behind her in a stunning wedding dress—white, strapless, and lacy with a full train (they have asked me not to include pictures so you’ll have to make-do with my descriptions).  

When we got there, the bar owner, XM, was a little pissed. “You didn’t tell me you were reserving a seat nor that you were bringing two people!” they scolded me. “All of the seats are already reserved and filled!”

“Sorry… we can go if you want,” I said, embarrassed.

“No, it’s fine, I’ll arrange some stools for you,” they said, sighing loudly and rolling their eyes. “Give me a second,” they said as they stared intently at their computer for several minutes.

I ordered a bottle of wine and sunflower seeds with shells (shelling sunflower seeds is a popular bar activity as it gives you sometimes to do with your hands). XM wiped off a bench and a table that was behind a projector screen, and brought us two stools.

We cracked sunflower seeds and sipped red wine while watching the projector, which was playing a slideshow of traditional Chinese wedding photos. Such photos, which are usually taken a few months before the wedding, show off the bride and groom in different outfits (including the traditional Western style white dress with lacey train and veil, as well as traditional Chinese marriage clothing of red and yellow silk outfits), and in various photo-shopped settings and situations, often staring romantically in each other’s eyes or other conventional “we-are-so-happy-and-carefree-and-in love-as-we-dance-in-a-meadow” poses and styles. There was even a photo of them “swimming” together underwater and some of them in 1920s American outfits, sexily smoking cigarettes. Very cute and very professionally done. They told me later that one of the photographers was a lesbian, so they had intentionally chosen that specific place as they knew it would be gay friendly. They also said they spent 10,000 RMB on the photos (!?!?!?).

The bride was sitting in one of the booths wearing a very traditional white Western wedding strapless dress with a train. M, E, and I were talking in Uyghur, and she looked over at us, so I took that as my opportunity to approach her and congratulate her. I approached her by greeting her in Uyghur with essalamu eleykum (Arabic for “May god be with you”), and she responded in kind. I greeted her with soft grasp of the right hand and two cheek-to-cheek touches on either side, and like E earlier, I was careful not to actually touch her face as girls with foundation on prefer to do, but just brought my face close enough to almost touch. I said in Uyghur, “I hope you don’t mind that, even though I don’t know you, I came and brought two friends with me… they’re like us.” She said, “no, not all, it’s totally fine for you guys to be here, we’re happy that you guys are here!” She was really nice, smiling and seemed genuinely happy to have us there. E and M approached us then, also greeting and congratulating her in Uyghur. After exchanging some pleasantries and congratulations, I asked her if we could take a picture together, and she said, “you can’t put it on social media though, we can’t let any of this getting out onto the internet,” she said, furrowing her brows in concern. “I would never,” I promised her. “Okay, then,” she agreed and we took a selfie together.

E, M, and I sat back down to wait for it to start. Not too long after that, they invited all the guys (there were some straight and gay men there as well) and butch lesbians present to go outside with the groom, who would then perform the traditional ceremony of “breaking into” the bride’s home to ask for her hand in marriage. This is a Han ceremony that is traditionally performed the day of the wedding (and is still done to this day as a crucial part of the wedding ceremony). I have seen these done before in the Uyghur and Han weddings I have gone to before.

I joined M outside with the guys, everyone giggling excitedly and congregating in the hall outside the entrance of the bar. Although this is traditionally done at the girls’ house, in this case, the bar was the “house,” where the bride would wait, and we would have to try to “break in” while the girls tried to bar the door and not let us in. It is important for the groom to show how much he loves her by putting in lots of physical and mental effort to get past the barricades in order to ask the bride’s hand in marriage, while the girls try to prevent him from doing so. I asked the groom and the best man (also a butch lesbian) if I could take a picture of them, as they looked handsome in full 3-piece suits and mascara. The groom just responded with, “No pictures please, we can’t let it getting out on the internet for the reason that we could lose our jobs.” “Don’t worry, I won’t put it online,” I promised, but still didn’t take any pictures at that moment because I didn’t want to make them uncomfortable. A few moments later, I was asked to take videos of the breaking in and proposal ceremony using the groom’s phone, “since you’re the tallest,” they explained to me. But I didn’t mind at all, happy that I could be useful for them by performing this job. I couldn’t really take part in the ceremony anyway since I wasn’t super familiar with the customs of what to do or what to say.   

They proceeded with the ceremony like a well-orchestrated game, the groom yelling at the top of their lungs, “嫁给我吧！我想娶你！Jia gei wo ba! Wo xiang qu ni!” which translates as, “Marry me! I want to marry you!”

(Brief pause for a discussion of gender and language: The two key words here being 嫁jia and 娶qu. 嫁, or jia, is the female radical next to the home character. Read: marry=to make a family with a woman. This character literally means, “to marry off a daughter,” and is used in the context of “marrying off a daughter to a boy.” So “嫁给我吧 jia gei wo ba” would only be conventionally used by a man to a woman and means, “give me your female hand in marriage [make a home with me]).”  The character that men use to marry a woman is 娶 qu, which is the character for “take, get, or fetch,” over the female radical. Read: marry for a man=to fetch or get a woman, and is used by men when describing to get a wife. So in saying, “我想娶你 wo xiang qu ni” they were literally saying, “I want to fetch you in marriage.”)

There was a “master of ceremonies” (this was not the MC yet, but another woman in charge of the “proposal game”), who would yell back at the top of her lungs, “that’s not good enough, I can’t hear you, you have to prove yourself, how are you going to prove that you really want to marry her? Who is going to cook?”

“Me!” the groom shouted back. 

“How many meals a day?”

“3!” he yelled, to which the bride shouted back from behind the closed doors, “that’s one too few!” much to everyone’s laughter.

“Who is going to do the laundry?”

“Me!” the groom shouted back.

“Who is going to bear the children?”

“Me!” the groom shouted back and everyone roared in laughter.

The whole throng of us in the hallway crowded around the door to the bar and pushed…and pushed…and pushed, with much screaming and pushing back against the door by the girls inside. Finally, we got the door open and were able to enter the bar. But the girls still wouldn’t let us reach the bride without more fun and games. The groom and best man, along with some of the others, had to perform various stunts, including dancing in a hoola skirt, doing push-ups while eating peanuts out of a bowl on the ground like a dog, putting lipstick on each other, brushing their teeth with wasabi, and drinking bottles of pure vinegar, all to prove their love and worthiness. Finally, we were allowed access to the bride, and the groom got down on one knee to propose. They read off a script, which was like a wedding vow, during which they proclaimed their love for her and told them about how they would take care of her for the rest of their life and they would be companions for life, both with tears rolling down their cheeks. The proposal ended with the groom taking out a ring and putting it on the bride’s finger. The ceremony finished when the groom’s party found a pair of hidden red high heels, and the groom had to put them on her feet. This is also a symbolic way of showing that the groom will take care of her. Once she had shoes on, they lifted her up on her feet and they kissed.

After that, there was the wedding ceremony on the tiny stage, which like all Han weddings, is performed by a comedic MC, who performs the role that the priest would have in a Western wedding. The MC in this case was a trans woman/drag queen. (E commented, “she does her make-up even better than me!”). The MC had a really nice voice, smooth and husky. During this part of the ceremony, the bride put a ring on the groom’s finger, and the best man and best woman gave moving speeches about how happy they were and what a good partner they had chosen. The MC also performed the role of a comedian where lots of jokes were exchanged, including, “so how long were you dating before you slept together?” and “how many people did you date before you were together?” (To which the groom responded, “I’m not sure, I lost count,” much to everyone’s laughter and amusement). They also performed a Chinese tea ceremony, which is about the bride and groom kowtowing in respect to their living relatives. With no family present, they both had chosen teachers to sit in their parents’ place, which they referred to as “师傅 shifu” (translates into English as “master”) to fill this role, as they were their favorite and most influential teachers in their lives.

After that, the bride changed into a red dress (also a traditional thing to do in Chinese weddings for the second half of the night) and they walked to all the tables toasting with wine to each and every table of guests (also Chinese tradition). After that, we had cake, and everyone proceeded to get very drunk, and we had a dance party. Only minor drama ensued with YY and their ex. AKA it was basically a pretty normal, traditional wedding. I was sad when I went home and saw that both the bride and groom’s social media accounts were blank, knowing that they couldn’t share this special day with everyone. The next day however, they both posted a couple of discreet pictures, thanking everyone for the “wonderful party last night.” Later the groom told me that somehow their boss found out about the wedding and they had to deny everything to keep their job.