A day in the life of jiujitsu abroad

Thursday, May 28, 2015: Urumchi, China

This is a day in the life of my time training jiujitsu in China. This particular post was written during my second of four trips to Urumchi. This was the first day of training since returning to Urumchi after I had been in the States for five months. 

I walked into the jiujitsu dojo and immediately noticed that Coach Wang had lost a ton of weight. His potbelly was gone and his face was slim. Compared to last fall, he was extremely youthful looking. He looked very small and almost skinny! “26 pounds,” he told me when I exclaimed about it. He said he was cutting weight for an upcoming competition in Shanghai and he was still one kilo overweight. We caught up. Then we rolled. He was slow and calculating in his movements, and eventually he submitted me. I was happy and impressed by his improvement. He said I had gotten stronger, and my technique had improved. He reported that the power and skill of my legs in particular had gotten better. I said that I'd participated in three competitions in the States since I'd been gone. Coach Zhi asked me to give him some advice: What do you do against a stronger opponent? What about an opponent who has better technique than you? I didn't really know how to answer. I told him that in competition and on the street, you don't have time to stop and think, you just have to think to yourself, “I gotta kill this person.” "But don't actually kill them, right?" he joked, laughing. I also rolled with Lin, a white belt, and submitted him. I told him he'd improved. “You're only 19!” I said, “You have so much time. You see I'm 26 and I'm still a blue belt!” “And I'm 35 and I'm a white belt!” Yin Jiaolian said, laughing. “If only I'd met you when I was 26!” he said. Age and progress is a funny thing. When you start something new means a lot and also doesn't mean anything at all at the same time. I dId a few more rolls with Lin, who submitted me at one point. Everyone said, “hasn't he improved so much so quickly?” I agreed. I helped Coach Wang a little bit more. He wanted tips on guard passing, mount escapes and the front collar choke. When we rolled, I passed his guard several times, and we worked on side control, and we worked on some escapes and I rolled with each of them once more. The adorable, skinny girl with braces came up to me. I gave her a hug, and she said, "Oh! You're back!" She put both hands on her face and jumped up and down with her mouth open. She asked me some more questions in the locker room later: "Did you enjoy Christmas with your family? How long will you stay? When and how did you get here?" She looked shocked when I told her I'd come on the train from Nanjing: "That's so far and such a long ride!" 42 hours exactly. Before I left, I gave Coach Wang two hugs. Lin hugged me a couple times too, saying he was so glad to have me back. I wished them safety on their road home. It was so nice to see them and have a little community, a little jiujitsu family, people I can feel comfortable hugging, and people I'm genuinely excited to see and who are genuinely excited to see me. People who want to see me.

Language and Jiujitsu

Xosh! Zaijian! Poka! Bye!

When training jiujitsu in Urumchi, my teammates and I used these four words to say “goodbye.”

When we walked out of the gym each night and stood outside the front door, we delayed for a few moments before we went our separate ways for the night. With small talk and with assurances of “I’ll see you on Tuesday at 6!” (or whenever the next training session was), we idled a bit longer than necessary, each of us reluctant to disconnect. A small part of me acknowledged the anxiety rising in my chest as I thought about the return to the loneliness of my empty home. As we started walking our separate directions, we would call out to each other, waving the entire time, in these four different languages as we parted ways: Uyghur, Chinese, Russian, and English.

We consistently conversed in these four languages. The only language I didn’t know was Russian. I always felt a bit pouty being left out of those conversations.

I guess it made sense why the Chinese people got jealous of my conversations in Uyghur, and those who didn’t speak English looked upon enviously when I chatted fluently with the Filipinos.

Training jiujitsu in a melting pot

Urumchi sits at one of the farthest points on earth from an ocean (1500 miles). But that does not mean that the city is isolated by any means. Situated along the ancient Silk Road, Urumchi sits at the intersection of many different trade routes and cultures as it has for millennia: Chinese, Turkish, Russian, and Indian, just to name a few. With globalization and modernity—the city was a hub for trade, transportation, oil, natural gas, and other industries—many had flocked to the region for school, work, or business, and I trained with Kazakhs, Tajiks, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Filipinos, Belarusians, Russians, Ukrainians, Americans, Ausssies, and Brits.

The question people always ask me is: What was it like to train with different cultures? As I’ve written about before in another article, the answer is: Jiujitsu really wasn’t that different across cultures. Jiujitsu is a universal language. It is a language of chess, of give and take, of submission and of defense. It is a language of vulnerability and trust. It is a language of community and support. It is a gentle art that embraces flow. We are not so different as human beings when it comes down to it. And we are all one.

The biggest difference was that being a woman in China meant that some people thought I was weird, some people flirted with me, some people ignored me, some people avoided me. But otherwise, we were there to train jiujitsu and focused on that goal.

Coaching jiujitsu in Chinese

When I coached jiujitsu, I taught in Chinese. By the time I moved to Urumchi, I had lived in China for 3 years. I was almost fluent in Chinese and very comfortable speaking and coaching in that language. I didn’t have to think about it—I thought in Chinese and therefore speaking it came very easy to me.

Most of the expats that lived in Xinjiang spoke Chinese, so this was not a problem. Their Chinese was better than their English. Many of them did not speak English at all, so it was more convenient for me to teach in Chinese than any other language. If there was someone in the class that didn’t speak Chinese but did speak English, I would teach the lesson in both languages. With jiujitsu, you have to show the technique at least three times, so I would show it in Chinese twice and English once if need be.

Training and coaching jiujitsu definitely helped me learn to speak better Chinese. From the vocabulary to the verbs, I thoroughly enjoyed challenging myself in this way. I basked in the thrill of putting myself on the spotlight in front of a group of people to teach jiujitsu four times a week. In addition to jiujitsu class, simply the everyday talk in the locker room, dinners after training, and parties on the weekend helped with my fluency as well.

Learning jiujitsu moves and positions in Chinese put a smile on my face the first time I heard them translated. For example, with the armbar in jiujitsu, the key part of the move is to position your body perpendicular to your partner, creating a cross shape with your body and your partners body. In Chinese, the character for the number 10 is a cross [十]. So, the name of that lock in Chinese is not armbar, it’s “10 character lock,” or “十字固 shi zi gu.”

Learning Uyghur

When I moved to Xinjiang, I started learning Uyghur as my third language and this added an extra dimension to my jiujitsu training.

It took about three months of full language immersion before I could start having full conversations in Uyghur, and after that, my roommate, Guzelnur, who also trained jiujitsu, and I conversed exclusively in Uyghur.

When I say full language immersion, I mean that I spent about 6 hours a day studying the language.

I took professional Uyghur language classes at the local college 4 hours a day, 4 days a week. It was there that I learned the alphabet, as well as went over key grammar concepts and vocab, forming a foundation for my language ability.

I also had four textbooks I had brought over from the United States. Using those, I self-taught and drilled the grammar concepts—conjugations, suffixes, and directional words—over and over again. I had a private tutor I met with for two hours once a week, and we came up with everyday useful phrases for me to memorize (At first, “I’m sorry, excuse me, Sorry, I don’t speak Uyghur” and later, directions for taxi drivers and conversations with cashiers), and went over the grammar for them.

I used Anki, a flashcard software for language learning, and drilled 50 new vocab words each week. I also bought some children’s books, listened to Uyghur music and audiobooks and Uyghur radio, and practiced with my roommate, Guzelnur. I also had a language partner I met with once a week for several hours. We would spend about 4 hours speaking in Uyghur and 4 hours speaking in English. He was so patient with me and never broke out of speaking in Uyghur the entire time.

I was completely obsessed with and devoted all of my time to learning Uyghur—there was virtually no other job or goal I had until I obtained proficiency enough to conduct interviews.

Learning foreign languages: A return to humanity and childhood

It was SO fun. I loved learning a new language. First of all, I felt like a child again, and that was freeing. Life became very simple. When speaking in Uyghur, I was in flow state, completely present. Frustrated at times, of course, when someone didn’t understand me, but for the most part, completely attentive. You have to be totally in the moment because you are focusing on the pronunciation, grammar and new vocab all at once. It also made me feel fun and funny, as I would say funny things that would make people collapse into laughter on a frequent basis, whether from a mispronunciation or a grammar mistake that just sounded ridiculous. For example, in Chinese and Uyghur they say, “I drink soup.” So, when I said “eat soup” as we would in English, they would crack up.

You go back to the roots of being human this way. I was young again, curious and constantly learning new things. I felt like my brain was expanding, ready to absorb everything around me like a sponge and this also made me feel young and energized again. Of course, it was exhausting too, and I needed copious amounts of alone time to re-charge. At the end of every day, I collapsed into my mat on the floor and fell asleep instantly.

Once I learned Uyghur, Uyghur people loved me. They giggled and smiled and were sometimes shocked that a foreigner could speak their language. They were fascinated by me and eager to speak to me in their mother tongues. It gave us a sense of privacy too, since if we were around Chinese people, they knew that if the Chinese people overheard us saying something politically incorrect, they wouldn’t be able to understand us.

When I was doing my language pledges (once in 2015 and again in 2016), I only spoke, listened, wrote, or read in Uyghur for six weeks. During that time, during jiujitsu class I only spoke Uyghur to the Uyghurs there.

In the end, I loved training jiujitsu in Urumchi because it brought out the diversity of the city, a cosmopolitan melting pot of many different cultures and languages. It was a privilege to be able to teach jiujitsu in Chinese while I was there, and have the opportunity to completely immerse myself in the Uyghur language during the rest of my life as well.

Most importantly, I met a diverse group of people from all around the world, young people who had moved away from home in search of adventure and a livelihood. They were all seeking work and a better future for themselves and their families and were willing to do anything to improve themselves and their lives. There was a constant feeling of energy and aliveness in the air, a presence that invoked a sense of humanity and embraced the uncertainty of our future.

I wonder what they are doing now, and if they still think of our jiujitsu club. I wonder if they remember those days as a time we were connected and celebrated our humanity and presence.

Propaganda

From Summer 2017.

The “Chinese People’s Manifesto”^[1] song played non-stop in every store and every restaurant. The tune blasted from huge black stereo speakers at every bus stop and from megaphones at every police station. There was no escaping it, even when I went to the park. The song played on a repeating loop from little speakers tied to every other tree. The lyrics were sung by the “Multi-Minzu Children’s Choir”^[2] in rapid, high-pitched tones that reminded me of Tweety Bird:

Rich and powerful, democratic, civilized, harmonious, free, equal,

just, ruled by law, patriotic, dedicated to work, honest, friendly!

This is the epic of Eastern Civilization,

This is the manifesto of the Chinese person’s soul,

This is the first class we learn in school,

From the time we are small, we will remember this system of values!

Put her carved inscription in your brain;

Let her melt into the middle of your soul.

The sounds penetrated my ears. No matter what I did, I could not block the tune out. I rolled my eyes and sighed. Then I wanted to scream.

Similar to the situation in Tibet, China is nervous about its control over this border region. Playing the “Chinese People’s Manifesto” song to be heard on every square meter of the city was the latest in a series of policies that summer meant to indoctrinate people into the ideology of the Party.

Walking through my neighborhood, I saw a poster reading, among other messages, “Without the Communist Party, The New China Would Not Exist” (see Figure 1). Along with the song, propaganda signs like these covered every exposed surface possible. 

Below that, the poster continued its message: “The Communist Party labors for the nationalities, the heart of the Communist Party has rescued China, He has provided the people the road of liberation, He is leading China toward radiance.” The bottom right of the poster attributes its creator: “The Chinese Communist Party Council of the City of Urumqi Propaganda Bureau.”

Figure 1: Among other messages, this propaganda poster reads: “The Communist Party labors for the nationalities, the heart of the Communist Party has rescued China; They have provided the people the road of liberation; They are leading China toward radiance.” Source: Photo by author, April 2017.

Then, I heard them before I saw them. Loud sirens blaring as though in emergency. The military brigade was going south on Solidarity Road: police cars, tanks, and Hummer jeeps. All of them with their red and blue lights flashing and their sirens making an annoying cacophony of alarms crawling down the street at a snail’s pace.

Military patrols on the streets were a common sight. Tanks, jeeps, and dark green khaki colored hummer vehicles blocked traffic and their sirens wailed, carrying propaganda signs reading messages such as, “Don’t be afraid to shed blood and sacrifice a life in the War on Terrorism.”^[3]

By this point, it was so normal that most people on the street did not even look up from their phones as it passed. Some looked on with no reaction, just staring. It was as if nobody even heard it. One mother said to her toddler in the stroller, “Look at all the pretty lights! Do you hear the sirens? Woo woo woo woo.” 

After a couple minutes of the brigade, some shook their heads and clucked their tongues. One woman shook her head and laughed. One woman said under her breath with a sly smile, “Apparently they’re being careful, aren’t they?”^[4] Besides those two comments and the sirens, the street was completely silent. I kept walking toward home. The sirens were part of our everyday vocabulary of sounds.

After the brigade eventually passed, I kept walking. A barbershop blasted a Uyghur radio station on its amplifier as men sat inside getting their faces shaved. The sounds combined with “The Chinese People’s Manifesto” from the police station across the street in a harsh din. Each police station, located every 100 yards or so, had the same scrolling message on an electronic board at the top: “Social Stability, Long-Term Governance and Long-Time Peace.”^[5]

Every 50 meters I passed the entrance to a back alley that was blocked off with a large cement wall and barbed wire. Behind the walls were huge ghettos. In them, Uyghur homes and families were closed in by fences. There was only one entrance and exit, which was guarded by security. The security check stations were similar to the turnstiles at a subway station that open when one scans their national ID card. There was another section where a long arm goes up and down to let cars through, as in a parking garage.

I walked past the walls every day and did not give them much thought. “We’re used to it,”^[6] everyone agreed. Each wall had a different message painted in red Chinese characters. The Uyghur translation was also written in red, in smaller Arabic letters, above the Chinese characters. One read: “Stable Harmony is Fortune, Divisive Destruction is Disaster!” (see Figure 2).^[7] Below the message, in the bottom right corner, reads the source of the message: “Nanwan North Street Community Center Announcements.”

Figure 2: Example of propaganda on a wall topped with barbed wire blocking the entrance to a residential alley. Source: Photo by author. 

Some (as pictured below) also included pictures of Uyghur and Han people smiling together: A Han person bending over an open book, for example, pointing to it while two women with headscarves smile widely. The message read, “Speak of Solidarity, Study the Archetype, Be a Model of Ethnic Solidarity”^[8] and “Strengthen the Shared Construction of a Family Garden of Ethnic Solidarity and Harmony.”^[9]

• Ethnic harmony and solidarity between majority Han and ethnic minorities were main themes in the government’s propaganda in the region, where Uyghurs and Han have clashed for centuries. The ironic thing was, this propaganda and the military brigades only made obvious that China was deeply insecure about its control over the region. The toxic mix of strong state power combined with insecurity and fear is a recipe for ethnic genocide and violence. 

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[1]《中国人的宣言》View the official music video at: https://www.iqiyi.com/w_19rv96iawt.html

[2] Socialist System Core Values Theme Song: Recruitment and Propaganda Campaign of the Central Civilization Office, Central People’s Broadcasting Station and Chinese Civilization Central Broadcasting Network, 2017

^[3] Ch: 不怕流血牺牲反恐战争

[4] Uy: Ular hemmisini bayqap qapti—deee?

[5] Ch: 社会稳定 长治久安

[6] Uy: Konup kettuk

[7] Ch: 和谐稳定是福，分裂破坏是祸！Uy: Inaqliq, muqimliq-amet, bolgunchilik, buzghunchilig-apet!

[8] Ch: 讲团结 学典型 争当民族团结楷模

[9] Ch: 加强民族团结共建和谐家园

Lesbian Culture in China: How My Definition of Freedom Changed, Part 5

Big Yao’s friend, Little Ma, then arrived and slipped her broad and stocky frame into the booth next to Big Yao and across from me. She brought sunflower seeds for us, and we chatted as we cracked the salty shells between our teeth. We spit the shells out on the table between us, while ingesting the nutty center. I welcomed something to do with my restless hands.

Little Ma smiled from across the table. She was wearing a baggy black t-shirt and long board shorts, one earring in her left ear, hair shaved close on the sides, and the top gelled and combed back.

“It’s not often that we get foreigners in here,” Little Ma commented. “You’re so fortunate that gay marriage is legal in your country! Did you hear about Taiwan? They just legalized gay marriage last week [May 24, 2017], which gives me hope. I think I will probably be dead before I witness anything like that in my lifetime, but it’s promising,” Little Ma pondered.^[1]

Same-sex sexual activity was illegal in mainland China until 1997 and classified as a mental disorder until 2001.^[2] For many of the LGBTQ+ people I met in China, they believed that legalizing gay marriage is still a long time in the future for mainland China. (Hong Kong and Taiwan, which now have legal gay marriage, are under separate legal jurisdictions than mainland China.)

“So, are you out to your parents?” Big Yao asked me. I lied and said I was. The truth was that I was still scared to come out to my conservative and religious parents back home.   

“Americans sure are more open and accepting than Chinese people are!” Little Ma said while both nodded.

My heart sank with shame in my lie.

America’s inheritance of Puritan values and a recent rise of the conservative and religious right meant that in some ways the US was far behind China when it came to social acceptance of LGBTQ+ populations. China’s atheist culture made it slightly easier in some ways, but its filial piety combined with the One Child Policy meant that many younger Chinese people had a lot of pressure from their parents to get married and have a kid to carry on the ancestral line.

But those, too, are generalizations. The reality is that gay culture is complex in both countries, and many still face discrimination and oppression in both institutional and cultural ways, while some experience freedom in other ways.

Still, I felt like a coward, hiding in the closet when I felt that they were so much braver than I to come out in a more hostile environment.

“So. Can you own a gun in America?” Little Ma asked, breaking my daydream.

I explained gun ownership in the US—how people see them as symbols of freedom and some people feel safer with them than without them. I told them about the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando. Big Yao and Little Ma looked at each other with their mouths open, and then turned back to me with their mouths tightened into frowns.

“That is so scary!”

“In America, freedom comes first. In China, safety comes first,” I said.

“What good is freedom if you’re dead?” Little Ma asked.

I laughed and shook my head, at a loss for words.

In the US, we have institutional protections on many freedoms, such as gay marriage and gun ownership. China has few homicides by gun compared to the US and has an almost universal health care system. In America, freedom can be impinged by fear of losing healthcare or gun violence. On the other hand, the Chinese government impinges on freedom in other ways, such as freedom of speech.

In the end, what does freedom really mean? As my time in China continued, the concept of freedom became more subjective than I had realized. For some, having a xinghun marriage was a mode of freedom. For others, legalizing gay marriage was a symbol of freedom. For me, finally coming out to my parents was a decision about liberation as well. For all of us queers around the world, freedom and oppression come in many forms from the family to society.  

How do we understand the human condition and human stories without reducing them down to generalizations and stereotypes? We can understand that behind every country, culture, and government, are individual humans with their own stories of love and loss, of freedom and suffering, of liberation and safety.

I ended up coming out to my family later that summer of 2017.

---

[1] Chappell, Bill. “Taiwan's High Court Rules Same-Sex Marriage Is Legal, In A First For Asia.”

NPR, 24 May 2017, https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/24/529841027/taiwans-high-court-rules-same-sex-marriage-is-legal-in-a-first-for-asia. Accessed 8 May 2020.

[2] Rofel, Lisa. Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture. Duke

University, 2007.

Lesbian Culture in China: How My Definition of Freedom Changed, Part 4

In China, the word for “bar” sometimes means a large club with disco balls and loud music, so I was pleasantly surprised to find a relaxing, intimate pub environment. The room was dark, with softly lit lamps on each table and a couple colorful, rotating lights on the wall. Soft rock in English played at a reasonable volume in the background. Quirky and funny decorations covered the walls, including pictures of naked women. On the far side of the dimly lit room sat a lit-up stage with balloons for Karaoke.

I was the first and only person in the place, so I sat down with a beer and my phone. I did some breathing exercises to calm my rapidly beating heart.

After a time, a tall woman approached the table, her hips swaying toward me. Holding her bottle of beer, she whipped her short bob back.

“Come sit with me,” she invited. She extended a hand in greeting: “You can call me ‘Big Yao.’” Chinese people often add “Big” (da) or “Little” (xiao) to the beginning of their first name as a type of casual nickname.

I got up, walked over to her table, slipped into the booth across from her, and introduced myself. 

“Where are you from?” I asked, wiping my sweaty palms on my jeans, willing my breathing to calm.

Big Yao took a long drag of her cigarette and leaned her head back. She blew the exhaled smoke up towards the ceiling. Her short bob rested just below her chin, her red lipstick lining her tiny mouth that sat between two chubby cheeks and above a double chin.

She explained that she recently moved to this city to be closer to her elderly parents and lived in a small city about 30 minutes away.

Green and pink disco ball lights rotating slowly around the dark room reflected off the smoke as it slowly rose upward. I fidgeted with my idle hands. She poured beer into my glass until it threatened to overflow, and then into her own. I picked up my glass and gestured it towards her. She followed, picking up her glass, and holding it below mine to show respect, clinked it with mine and took a sip.

Her gaze left mine as she began scrolling and tapping on her phone, taking long drags of her cigarette.

Feeling awkward in the silence, I desperately searched for something to continue my discovery of this familiar and yet unfamiliar world. 

 “Does your mom ever pressure you to get married?” I asked, a common topic of conversation among women of all sexualities and ages between 20-40 years in China.

“I am married! I have a 4-year old son.”

“Oh,” I nodded and took another gulp of beer, looking down at the table again.

“In China, we believe that because our parents gave us life, we have to give them back some things in return. Mostly, they need us to have children for them, to carry on their family name and to honor the family ancestors through filial piety. Like many my age in China, I’m their only child, so I had no other choice. I got married and I had a son for them.” She shrugged.

Although many in China identify as atheists, the tradition of filial piety is its own form of religiosity that has implications for LGBTQ+ people.

“Now that I’ve done that, I can pursue my own needs,” she explained.

“So…is your husband gay?”

Big Yao stared at me for a moment, holding eye contact with wide eyes until I looked down.

Perhaps my question was inappropriate, I thought self-consciously. I later found out that this was normal conversation for queer people in China, but Big Yao was perhaps taken aback or amused by this question from a foreigner she had just met.

“He’s not gay. It’s not a xinghun exactly,” she finally said. 

Xinghun^[1] translated into English literally means “marriage in appearance.” In the Chinese-English dictionary, the definition given for xinghun is: “a marriage between a gay man and a lesbian arranged in response to parental expectations of a conventional marriage.”

Xinghun, while still the norm in many parts of China, has recently become a controversial topic in the LGBTQ+ community in China. In a social media thread in the Xinjiang JOY LESba Group Chat several weeks after my conversation with Big Yao, one group chat member responded to a gay man’s solicitation on the thread for a xinghun with the following reaction:

“Maybe it’s because I’m out of the closet—my work unit, my boss, and my co-workers all know—but I kind of reject xinghun. It’s not very responsible. I think lesbians and gays should just get married, I mean get married for real, not xinghun. I also feel like if you xinghun, then you shouldn’t have kids. Children should be the fruit of love, not an episode of sacrificial scamming.”

Others disagreed with her, however.

“I think xinghun is still okay if you want kids. You know my little bro [a term butch lesbians use with each other], she did xinghun, and now she has a kid that’s already two years old. I have another bro who got married last year and now is already five months pregnant. As long as you communicate well with the husband, it’s okay. If parents on both sides really want a grandchild, I think it can be a good thing for one’s future,” the user wrote on the group chat thread.

Big Yao stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray and, after first offering me one, pulled out another, lighting it and leaning back against the booth covered with purple felt upholstery fastened with huge fake rhinestones.

“My husband is one of those IT guys. All he needs is his computer and his video games, and he’s completely satisfied,” she said, giggling and shaking her head. “We don’t live together. I live with my mother and my son, and he lives in his own apartment. He understands me and my…situation, my needs. He doesn’t care. We have an agreement where I don’t bother him and he doesn’t bother me.”

“Are you out to your parents?” I asked.

A loud laugh erupted from Big Yao and she covered her mouth with manicured fingers adorned with long, white fake nails.

“Are you kidding me? My parents have no idea. They would for sure not be able to accept this lifestyle,” Big Yao rolled her eyes and clinked her glass with mine again before taking a sip.

My awkwardness started fade and my heartbeat slowed. I was starting to feel warm and dizzy, my head pounding a bit, the warmth of the alcohol in my belly willing me to be more confident. 

---

[1] 形婚

Lesbian Culture in China: How My Definition of Freedom Changed, Part 3

I walked around campus that Thursday with an extra spring in my step. For the first time in a long time, I had something to look forward to. I was excited and nervous. Throughout the day, I could feel my face starting to flush. I tried to calm down by taking deep breaths.

I decided to go early to find the place while it was still light out.

While I was on the bus, my stomach filled with butterflies and my chest was tight. I kept looking at the directions I had copied down in my best handwriting, the Chinese characters scrawled on a piece of lined paper like a grade-schooler. I was a little confused by the directions, however. I feared that I was on the bus going in the wrong direction. But when I got off the bus, I saw that I was right across from the mall that the directions had mentioned.

The main street stretched out in front of me, crowded and bustling with activity. Narrow alleys winded off the main drag.

I walked down the main street, hoping I would see a sign or an alley that was like the one described in the directions. All the directions said was, “After you get to the mall, it’s down an alley next to a small store,” but there were six alleys and all of them had stores. They purposefully made it hard to find. 

“How was I supposed to find it? This is crazy,” I thought. But I was too scared to ask for directions.

I turned down one of the alleys. I passed shops’ advertisements for “adult health preservation products,”^[1] which is a euphemism in Chinese for sex toys. I passed massage parlors and hair salons. I passed hotels advertising one- or two-hour stays.

I walked to one end of the alley. It was getting dark.

Finally, I noticed the English word JOY spray-painted on a wall with a sign on the door saying, “Only adults can enter.” I knew then that I was in the right place.

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[1] 成人保健品

Lesbian Culture in China: How My Definition of Freedom Changed, Part 2

Despite having the new vocabulary, I still hadn’t taken the necessary steps to seek out the relatively hidden queer community in China yet. I kept procrastinating, justifying my reluctance with excuses: I was too tired. I was too busy.

I finally searched for “female homosexual bars near me” on Baidu, the Chinese version of Google.

The results immediately revealed that, besides T and P which are gendered slang terms for lesbians, the general non-gendered slang for “female homosexual” in Chinese is most commonly “LaLa”^[1] or simply “Les.” While clicking around the results, I found an online group for Les in my region. I discovered addresses for four different Les Ba^[2]—what queer women in China call a “Lesbian Bar”—around the city in online forums. I picked one called “Joy”^[3] with the most detailed directions—they intentionally kept the directions ambiguous and address hidden to keep the locations secret—and decided to go on the upcoming Thursday.

[1] 拉拉

[2] Les吧

[3] All people and places are pseudonyms, and identifying information including locations has been changed to protect the identity of the individuals at risk. To protect the people and places in this article, I do not use photos.

Lesbian Culture in China: How My Definition of Freedom Changed, Part 1

Note: The stories contained here happened over the course of a year in 2017.
“My parents think I’m weird.”

My petite Chinese friend in her thirties sat across from me, her arms and legs like sticks poking out from her baggy black t-shirt and long cargo shorts. Her hair, long and straight, was pulled back into a tight ponytail on the back of her head.

“They think I’m a T,” she rolled her eyes and shrugged.

“What’s a T?” I asked.

“A female homosexual,” she said with a small smile the way people often do when they teach me Chinese slang. “Nvde tongxinglian.”

“Oh,” I said, nodding. I faced my soup bowl and slurped on my noodles.

I was in China conducting field research for my doctoral dissertation. I had been living in China on and off for almost four years already. I am proficient in the language, but at the time of this conversation was not familiar with “T” as a slang term yet.  

“Yeah,” she continued. “Whenever I’m with a female friend who wants to hold my hand, I always slap it away and tell her to stop because people are going to think I’m a T.” She indicated a slapping motion and mimed pulling her hand away quickly as she frowned.

In China, it’s common for straight girls to hold hands when walking together. But for a tomboy like my friend, people probably would assume she was a lesbian. And that concerned her.

My friend’s fear that someone might think she was a lesbian indicated that she had experienced and/or witnessed homophobia and discrimination against queer people in China, just like in the United States.

Based on conversations like this one, I had for many years assumed that Chinese culture was significantly more “backward” than the United States when it came to accepting LGBTQ+ culture.

On that day slurping noodles, however, my friend gave me that simple vocabulary word, “T.” This word allowed me a feeling of possibility: If there was slang for it, there was a culture for it.

I soon found my assumptions about queer culture specifically and freedom more generally were challenged while living in China. I assumed that LGBTQ+ people in China lived lives of secrecy and oppression. I found something much more complex. Culture was not so black-and-white as that limited knowledge of a "freedom" and "oppression" dichotomy. I had put backward and progressive into neat boxes, but it was more complicated than that.

I later learned that Ts are masculine-presenting lesbians (T for Tomboy) and Ps are feminine-presenting lesbians (P for Pretty). Me? I’m an H because, being bi and androgynous, I’m “Half.” (Chinese often incorporates slang from English using the first letter of the English word.)