Fasting

I learned about the Muslim rite of fasting when I first visited northwest China in July 2014, as my trip partially coincided with the annual 30-day Ramadan observance. Although I had read about Ramadan fasting, one of the five pillars of the Islamic faith, during world history classes in high school, my initial trip in 2014 was the first time I had personally witnessed it.

An American acquaintance—a friend of a friend of a friend who was living in the area at the time and had connected with me a few months prior on WeChat—briefly introduced me to the concept when we met up in person one morning: “You don’t eat or drink when the sun is out—which is from 2 am until 8 pm in Urumqi—for 30 days. I’m thinking about trying it out,” she told me. I was confused. Why would anyone want to try that? Sounded like some sort of cruel form of torture to me. I had done such things—not eating or drinking for about 24 hours—a few times before when cutting weight before jiujitsu tournaments, but I was bewildered why anyone would do that for 30 straight days without such a good reason as trying to make one’s weight bracket.  

The next year, in summer of 2015, I was in Kashgar for the start of Ramadan. One evening on my way back to the hostel, a young boy was standing on a cart in the middle of the sidewalk, handing out bags of cold noodles soaked in vinegar to a huge crowd that was buying them faster than he could give them out, while screaming out, “5 koy, 5 koy, 5 koy!” My trip around Kashgar commenced the next day, and I remembered my friend's advice—don’t carry around water bottles or drink in front of people during the day during Ramadan. It’s rude, she informed me. So I followed her advice, and my mouth was parched during many a bus ride.

I felt left out. In the evenings, the whole community would go down to the bazaar, breaking their fast with watermelon and cold noodles. It was like a huge party every night and I wasn’t invited. I couldn’t celebrate with the glee and sugar highs and celebrations that come after gorging oneself after a day of fasting. I was always on the outside looking in, and I wanted to party too. I didn’t want to be like the other tourists who took pictures and videos of the breaking of the fast with laughter and smiles like they were witnessing a barbaric event, objectifying their culture and their religion by trying to capture it on camera to make someone else’s life into a story to tell their friends. I wanted to live the experience like a “true” ethnographer. 

I tried fasting a few times on that solo trip, but I would always cave in the middle of the day. Why couldn’t I do it? I’d always been able to do it before jiujitsu tournaments. But without the fear of God or fear of surpassing my competition’s bracket weight limits in my mind, and fasting all alone with no accountability, it was hard to engage the necessary self-control. I would still go to the bazaar at breaking fast time, and eat along with everyone else, but it wasn’t the same. I felt like a cheater and a fraud, eating along with everyone else without the fasting part beforehand.

The next year, in 2016, I was determined to try fasting at least once. I had at some points entertained lofty visions of myself fasting the entire 30 days as two American friends I knew had done in previous years, but always caved when I realized that meant I wouldn’t be able to exercise. 

I also was worried that I wouldn’t have the energy to do my research work as normal (note that although Muslims do continue to work normally during Ramadan, one of the points of fasting is to spend time with family and community while resting and praying—it’s an opportunity to rest. My Western-centric mind couldn't see this though, and all I could think about was all the work I wouldn’t be getting done). 

And again, that year I felt terribly left out. Every evening, families and communities, neighborhoods and friends, would gather together on tables or picnic blankets outside, and eating watermelon and naan and soup, would break fast together. It was a happy, communal time, where shops and restaurants gave out free watermelon, water, and naan on their front stoops all over my neighborhood. At breaking fast time, you could see people huddled around the tables set up outside the shops, praying and biting into their first piece of naan and taking a sip of water like it was the best thing they’d ever tasted in their lives, and it probably was. I wanted so badly to join in, but I knew that watermelon was not put out there for me, it was put out there for those who were breaking fast. 

P had told me a story about a restaurant that was giving out free meals to people who were fasting, and some Han people tried to take some for free too, saying, “But I want free food too! This is discrimination!” (and everyone collectively rolls eyes at majority oppressor claiming their hardships). I didn’t want to be THAT guy.

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But I fasted for the last day of Ramadan that year, and it was a good experience. There were two main impressions about it that stuck with me for a long time: 

1) This is how huge numbers of people around the world who are starving feel every single day—whether from lack of food or lack of access to clean water, or both. This is a hardship that I chose to engage in, but lots of people around the world don’t have that choice. The hunger that resounds in your stomach and the dryness on your tongue leaves a desperate and urgent call to your brain that when you have no choice but to ignore, leaves you weak, fatigued, and a little crazy (e.g., when I saw people on the street drinking water or eating ice cream, I had to fight the urge to grab it out of their hands mid-bite. It’s not such a mystery why people are led to steal when they are brought to the physical desperation of hunger). I think it’s important for all of us to understand that feeling to better control food waste, recognize our privilege in having more than enough to eat every day, and empathize with the poor who are driven to desperation due to starvation. 

2) It was a lesson in the old adage “This Too Shall Pass.” Fasting is a lesson in self-discipline and patience that few other exercises can replicate. When that feeling of desperation and “I want to give up because this is so miserable” overcomes us, that little phrase, “this too shall pass,” carries a lot of power, both in comfort and in learning how to allow the uncomfortable in our lives and accept that which we cannot change. So often we push discomfort away—by overeating, drinking alcohol, or binging on Netflix. But when we can sit with our discomfort and allow it, maybe we can also more easily allow the happy times (or at least that’s what I hear from my guided meditation tracks--I haven't mastered this myself yet!). 

The lesson of “This Too Shall Pass” is thus equally as important for the breaking fast time: the high that follows the breaking fast--the happiness, the lightness, the fullness, the foggy headspace--will end too: we are reminded again and again that this too shall pass as we will fast again tomorrow.

A Uyghur Wedding Story

Note: this is a story from my notes of a hetero wedding that took place a couple years ago. I wanted to publish it to compare and contrast with the wedding story I posted a few days ago.  

E and I are late—running down the street flailing as we carry our bags in one hand. When we arrive at the wedding hall, A, whose younger sister is getting married today, leads us into a random stranger’s two-room house next to the wedding hall to change. Earlier that morning, E and I had gotten off the plane in the city of Aksu (Xinjiang is huge and there are airports in every major city with flights to Urumqi) and then driven the two and a half hours to A’s village. We hadn’t changed into our wedding guest attire yet. The stranger male resident of the house, who I had assumed was a family friend but later found out was just a random person who A had asked to let us change in his house, retreats into the back room and closes the door. We change into our dresses and crowd next to a tiny mirror to apply our make-up. 15-minutes later we are done, and A leads us into the wedding hall.

It’s a little after noon and the hall is packed full of women with faces caked in make-up and eyes bulging with eyeliner and false eyelashes, dressed in sparkly glittered and sequined dresses. The tables are packed with food being served family style on large dishes on a lazy susan in the middle of the table—cold noodles with vinegar, meat-stuffed buns, corn on the cob, and lamb pot roast. We are invited to sit, and E and I scarf down rice pilaf with lamb and carrots and steamed squash, two of the most common traditional Uyghur dishes. A girl across the table takes a picture of me without asking while I’m eating and just giggles when I call her out on it. A girl arrives with a notebook, taking our obligatory cash wedding gift of 200 yuan and marking down our names and dollar contribution in the notebook. A gives E and I our wedding favor, a piece of Atlas silk, a traditional Uyghur design.

The bride is dressed in a white traditional Western wedding dress with an Atlas top that covers her shoulders. She is sitting next to the groom at a long rectangular table with their closest friends in the back left of the room, the bride looking down at her hands folded in her lap, unsmiling with her face covered in a veil. The veil is see-through enough that you can see the contours of her face and can see she is not smiling. The bride is supposed to sit unsmiling for this first part of the ceremony, as she is to express sorrow on this day where she is leaving her birth mother and family.   

The noon ceremony is primarily for the bride’s mother and her friends, and close family and relatives (we are here on special invitation because E has been invited to sing and she’s asked me to tag along). As soon as a slow Uyghur song comes on, the dance floor—a small space in front of a tiny stage in the middle of the room—is soon filled with middle-aged women waltzing with each other. The next song is a Uyghur song, and the women change to traditional Uyghur dance, which involves slowly walking and twirling in a circular formation around the dance floor as you wave your hands around. E invites me to dance with her and we join the small crowd moving our arms and feet to the music. People walk around handing out free scarves, placing them around our necks as we dance, as a wedding favor and token of appreciation for dancing well. The few men in attendance, mostly the groom’s friends, don’t join in on dancing, this is mostly for the bride’s mother’s friends.  

About 1 hour later, the noon ceremony wraps up with the symbolic passing on of the daughter to the groom’s family. With Uyghur music blasting in the background, the bride is invited to step onto the dance floor upon which the mother pulls her veil back and reveals her face. 

The bride and groom dance their first dance together in the traditional Uyghur style, the bride still looking serious and unsmiling, while we stand in a circle surrounding them and clapping to the beat. I wonder how she can dance in those high heels. Then, it is time for the bridal party to leave and this is the symbolic parting of mother and daughter. As the mother passes her daughters hands off to the groom’s, mother and daughter weep openly. Not out of happiness, but out of sadness that the daughter is leaving this family and entering a new one. “It is expected that the daughter look very sad and she must cry with real tears. Otherwise, it is looked down on as very shameful of the daughter not to be sad to leave her mother,” E explains in my ear as I look on with horror as the bride weeps on what is, in our Western vision, supposed to be the “happiest day of her life.”

E and I leave with the bridal party and we go up to the second floor where we sit with the bridal party (but not the boys or the groom), dance, take pictures, chat, and eat more food. Eventually the boys come, knocking on the door and forcing it open, taking the bride away like it is done in traditional Chinese weddings. We leave the restaurant with music blasting from amplifiers that a couple of the guys are carrying, and we get in cars and go to another location. It’s evening now, and we eat another big dinner at a smaller club in a basement. I’m so tired I try to get out of it by saying that I’m feeling sick, but they insist that I stay anyway. This one is the reception for the younguns, as they explain to me, where the bride finally breaks out into wide smiles and laughter, and the men and women dance together while the men secretly drink alcohol on one side of the room.

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.