Hong Kong University Press Chapter Title: Introduction: Reconnecting Selves and Communities Book Title: Shanghai Lalas Book Subtitle: Female Tongzhi Communities and Politics in Urban China Book Author(s): Lucetta Yip Lo Kam Published by: Hong Kong University Press. (2013) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt2854g8.4 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Hong Kong University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Shanghai Lalas This content downloaded from 137.110.34.164 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 19:13:25 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Introduction: Reconnecting Selves and Communities On 4 June 2005, I was invited to a private party at a karaoke lounge in downtown Shanghai. I was told it was a surprise proposal party between two women. I followed my new lala1 friends to a splendidly decorated karaoke complex and entered one of the small rooms. More than ten women were already waiting inside. I saw candles and rose petals on the table. Without knowing who these women were or what was going to happen, I joined them in lighting up the candles and arranging them into two hearts, one big and one small. Rose petals were sprinkled around the candles and a bouquet of flowers was at the ready. Cameras were placed on standby. Not long after we finished decorating, the couple arrived. The one to be proposed to was stopped outside the door. The woman who was to propose entered the room. Lights switched off. We all stood in a circle around the candlelit hearts, expectant. Then the door was opened, and the woman knelt down and held out the bouquet to her lover. Her lover was totally caught by surprise. Everyone erupted into cheers of joy. This happened on the first day of my ethnographic research in Shanghai. As an ignorant newcomer who had just learnt the term “lala”, I did not expect to join such an intimate party with a group of lala women whom I had known for just a few hours. The two lovers in the party were both in heterosexual marriages. Looking back, this party directed me to a few themes that later became major areas of investigation in my research. These themes included the development of local lala communities, the institution of heterosexual family and marriage, the emerging tongzhi family and marriage, and lala women’s everyday strategies in coping with family, marriage and society. Begun in 2005, this ongoing research project is an ethnographic study of lala women in Shanghai and one of the first participatory investigations of emerging tongzhi politics and communities in China. It is being carried out at a time when individuals are being connected to form tongzhi communities, and when new identities are being created by previously stigmatized sexual subjects for self-empowerment. “Lala” has become a collective identity for women with same-sex desires and other non-normative gender and sexual identifications. “Tongzhi”, as a term originated in communist China and re-invented in Hong This content downloaded from 137.110.34.164 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 19:13:25 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Shanghai Lalas 2 Kong, has returned to its place of origin as an entirely rejuvenated public identity for a community of people who had for decades been denied visibility in society. These newly invented public identities for non-normative sexualities and genders have created new selves and subjectivities. New understandings of self lead to new aspirations of life which also introduce challenges to the existing norms of the heterosexual institution. The formation of tongzhi communities in post-reform China (after 1979) has highlighted the discrepancy between a self-assertive tongzhi subjecthood and the denial and rejection many tongzhi encounter in their families. This has led me to consider the changing forms of challenges faced by lala women in China. New discourses of subjectivity, new forms of intimacy and new ways of social networking have been made available by the tongzhi communities. New opportunities, together with new modes of regulation, are being presented in post-reform China. Given all these emergent resources and restrictions, in what ways are the lives of lala women different from those in the past? How would they deal with their newly adopted tongzhi identity and in particular, with the pressure to marry? This book aims to look at the negotiation between the new life aspirations of lala identified women and the existing heterosexual requirements imposed on them. In particular, when family and marriage are frequently reported as the major causes of stress in their everyday life, how do they reconcile their newly acquired understanding of the self with forces of heterosexual conformity? I intend to address the following questions: What impact do ongoing public discourses on homosexuality and tongzhi have on the everyday existence of lala women? How do public discourses inform and regulate the construction of a new tongzhi subjectivity and politics in China? In particular, how would this new tongzhi subjectivity affect lala women’s struggle against a culture that dismisses women’s sexual autonomy and subjectivity? In other words, what kind of tongzhi politics will be generated under the current social context of post-reform China? To individual lala women, what is the impact of the emergence of lala communities to their everyday lives, especially their coping strategies with the institution of heterosexuality? How can emerging forms of tongzhi intimacy, such as cooperative marriage (hezuohunyin or xingshihunyin),2 lead to a critical re-examination of the dominant rules of heteronormativity, and open up new imaginations of family and marriage? Most importantly, what kind of future can we imagine with all of the lived practices of intimacy and tongzhi activism in China? Project “Tongzhi” Among the numerous ongoing social changes in post-reform China, “tongzhi”— as a rejuvenated identity—is the focus of attention that is often viewed in close This content downloaded from 137.110.34.164 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 19:13:25 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Introduction: Reconnecting Selves and Communities 3 association with the transformation of China. It has been understood in the context of transnational LGBTQ movements and politics, and is often discussed in the context of the construction of new citizenship in post-reform China. As a newly introduced sexual subjectivity, “tongzhi” has emerged from a history of social and political stigmatization, and still remains a battlefield of discursive struggles among different actors in the public. Local tongzhi communities, the general public, experts, scholars, and the state are all eager to indoctrinate their own definitions of “tongzhi”. The contents of “tongzhi” are yet to be filled up. The year 2005 alone saw the formation of the first grassroots lala organization in Shanghai, the first meeting of female tongzhi groups from all over the country in Beijing and the birth of les+ (www.lesplus.org), the first lala magazine in China. So much happened in a single year. The last decade has been an important formative period of the tongzhi community in China. The last five years, in particular, has witnessed a rapid development of local lala communities in different parts of China. Communication technologies have played a vital role in connecting individuals and forming communities. When the Internet opened up to popular use in the late 1990s, discussions of homosexuality first appeared on forums with names understood only by insiders. Into the millennium, independent lala websites began to crop up. The three most popular lala websites for local women in Shanghai—Aladao (阿拉島), Shenqiuxiaowu (深秋小屋) and Huakaidedifang (花開的地方, also known as Huakai)—were all developed in the early 2000s. In 2005, Huakai had more than 40,000 registered members. The Internet also accelerated the interflow of tongzhi culture among Chinese societies. Due to linguistic, geographical and cultural affinities between the three societies, lesbian culture and activism in Hong Kong and Taiwan have always served as important reference points for lala women in China. With the organizing of regional activities, the interflow of information, texts and people intensified all the more. For instance, Lala Camp is a significant platform of cultural dialogue among lesbian communities in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. It is an annual training camp held in China for Chinese-speaking lesbian organizers from China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and the overseas. Started in 2007, when organizers of local lala communities in participating regions gathered in a southern city in China, Lala Camp has since become an important breeding ground for lala organizing in China. It has also acted as an important discursive site for Chinese tongzhi politics. To the general public, the latest popular use of “tongzhi” refers to “homosexual people”. To the younger generation, the term has successfully departed from the older meaning of communist “comrades”. More often, homosexual people are referred to as “tongxinglian” in public discussions. In mainland Chinese academia, “tongxinglian” is more widely used than “tongzhi”. This content downloaded from 137.110.34.164 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 19:13:25 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 4 Shanghai Lalas Therefore, “tongzhi” is more often synonymous with “tongxinglian” in everyday usage. While there have been efforts in tongzhi communities to expand the term to include homosexual, bisexual, asexual, transgender and queer identified individuals, however public discussions still predominantly use the term “tongxinglian”. The conflated use of the two terms is common. Homosexuality, especially male homosexuality, has caught much public attention in recent years. In the economic reform era, in a context of changing attitudes towards sex and private life in China, public understanding of homosexuality was under constant reinterpretation and debate in academic studies, and by popular culture and everyday conversations. State-run bookstores sold books on homosexuality. Surveys on the social acceptance of homosexuality were conducted by state media.3 Leading up to today, the growing amount of media coverage, the appearance of homosexual people on prime time television programmes, the heated debates on homosexuality on Internet forums, and the more recent popularity of “boy’s love” comics (or BL comics) and gay stories on micro-blogs (weibo) among the younger generation demonstrate the curiosity of the general public about the previously silenced subject matter. The new public interest in homosexuality has developed against a backdrop of changing social control in recent decades. Individual mobility, both geographical and social, had increased significantly during the reform period. Then, since the 1990s, increased geographical mobility of individuals has led to the emergence of urban tongzhi subcultures in many major cities in China. In addition, the opening up of the labour market has led to the weakening of direct state control through the danwei—the central job assignment system— over people’s private lives. On the ideological front, there has been a paradigmatic change in state control over homosexuality in China since the late 1990s. Two major changes have taken place at legal and medical establishments. Homosexuality was excluded from legal prosecution through the abolishment of “hooliganism” from Article 160 of the old Criminal Law in 1997, which was applied to male homosexual activities in the past. It was then further removed from the medical category of perverts by the Chinese Psychiatry Association in 2001. These two changes have been generally regarded as the decriminalization and depathologization of (male) homosexuality in China; however, legal, medical and other forms of state and social prohibition of homosexuality are still widely present. At the same time, social control of homosexuality has increasingly manifested through a rhetoric of public health and public security. Male homosexuality is particularly constructed by the state as a risk to public health and social stability. On the other hand, female homosexuality is marginalized in public discussion, and is rarely represented in mainstream media. This has generated two common observations made about the public discussion and representation of This content downloaded from 137.110.34.164 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 19:13:25 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Introduction: Reconnecting Selves and Communities 5 homosexuality in China: namely, an over-representation of views from a heterosexual position and a disproportionate amount of attention given to male homosexuality. Public discussions and academic studies on homosexuality and tongzhi overwhelmingly presume a heterosexual position. The fact that the tongzhi is always “talked about” and constructed as the “other”—as raised by Harriet Evans regarding earlier studies done by Chinese scholars—gives rise to “the potential of misinterpretation and distortion” (Evans 1997, p. 209). As an improvement, first-person accounts of same-sex relationships have entered the public spotlight in recent years. But the risk of othering and stereotypical representations still persist, with moralistic, heteronormative values underlying the majority of public voices. As for the under-exposure of female homosexuality in public discussions and academic studies, the reasons are multifold. Li Yinhe and Wang Xiaobo (1992), Ruan Fangfu (1991), Zhang Beichuan (1994) and Lisa Rofel (1997) mention the difficulty of locating “homosexual women” in China. Since these research studies were mostly conducted in the 1990s, one possible explanation is that lala communities with greater visibility have developed only after those of gay men. Another explanation is a prevalent cultural dismissal of female sexuality. In terms of legal control, female homosexual practices are generally considered to be a much lesser threat to public security than male homosexual practices. Therefore, it is comparatively rare for women to be penalized for same-sex sexual activities, though in the 1980s there were still cases of women being detained for homosexual “sex crimes”, as documented by Ruan (1991). The lenient treatment of female homosexuals by the authorities reflects a history of cultural dismissal of erotic activities between women. Being a subordinate group in the gender hierarchy, women’s “abnormal” sexual behaviour is considered less threatening to the dominant social order. This cultural prejudice against female sexuality provides a less regulated and less punitive social space for women with same-sex desires and practices. However, it also contributes to the symbolic erasure of female homosexuality in public imagination, and directly affects the development of local lala communities. It especially affects the funding sources of local lala groups. Tongzhi activism in China has largely originated and been carried out through the discourse of AIDS prevention and public health. Sources of funding within and outside the country have always been offered to sexual health projects for the homosexual population. Lala women are usually excluded from obtaining resources that are assigned to sexual health projects. As a result, they are not only disadvantaged in securing resources but are also marginalized from gaining public attention. In most cases, they have to rely on the material resources of gay men to carry out their projects and to develop communities. The “Tongxin Female Tongzhi Hotlines” and the more recent “800 Lala Hotline” in Shanghai are two typical This content downloaded from 137.110.34.164 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 19:13:25 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Shanghai Lalas 6 examples of how lala women rely on gay resources to offer support services for their own communities. Compulsory Marriage On the private front, one recurring theme that emerged over the course of my interviews was the conflict between lala women’s desire to have same-sex relationships and the familial expectation for them to get married. For married informants, the pressure was expressed in the conflict between a heterosexual marriage and an extra-marital same-sex relationship. As mentioned earlier, family and personal lives, strictly controlled and monitored by the danwei system and the community surveillance system before the reform era, have been largely released from direct state control during China’s economic transformation into a market economy. There has been a gradual shift from collective interests to individual rights and choices in the domain of private life. Direct state control of private lives has shifted to a more intimate form of daily scrutiny conducted by one’s immediate family and social networks. Family members, especially the seniors, act as inspectors of the private life of younger ones. For non-normative sexual subjects, the heterosexual family is usually the biggest source of stress in their daily lives. The heterosexual family and marriage are as important as various public forms of social control in contemporary China as major sources of heterosexual policing. The nature of their control over non-normative sexual subjects, for example, through the rhetoric of love and familial harmony, is yet to be fully examined. The compulsory nature of marriage puts lala women at a disadvantaged position. Lala women are denied recognition as autonomous sexual subjects in Chinese culture. While both unmarried women and men are considered as immature persons or not as autonomous beings, unmarried women are further rejected as autonomous sexual subjects. Women’s sexuality is not recognized under the cultural belief of a male-active/female-passive sexual model. The monogamous heterosexual marriage further naturalizes a woman’s receptive role in sexual relations with a man. In such a culture where women’s sexual inactivity is treated as the very foundation of gender relationships and hierarchies, it is tremendously difficult for non-heterosexual women to be recognized as active sexual subjects. One consequence is that it makes coming out a tricky and doubly difficult task for lala women. A lala woman has to come out not only as a homosexual subject, but also as foremost as a legitimate and autonomous sexual subject. Moreover, the stigma against unmarried or divorced women is still widely present even in cosmopolitan cities like Shanghai. Marriage is culturally understood as the rite of passage to adulthood. This belief particularly affects women’s autonomy in opting for alternative living arrangements. Many This content downloaded from 137.110.34.164 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 19:13:25 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Introduction: Reconnecting Selves and Communities 7 native Shanghai women told me that the only way for them to move out of their parents’ home would be to get married. Marriage is the only way for them to break away from parental control and be treated as autonomous individuals. For lala women married to heterosexual partners, divorce is not always a viable option. A divorce would involve families of both sides in a similar way as a marriage does, and consequently, a failed marriage would also be regarded as a failure to fulfil one’s familial expectation. The compulsory nature of marriage, its role as the only endorsement of adulthood, and the conjugal union as the only recognized form of family form a persistent and primary source of stress for tongzhi in China. One primary focus of this book is to critically examine the pressures of marriage faced by lala women and their coping strategies in resisting heteronormative social demands. Personal and Political Significance This research is significant to me both personally and politically. I am a Shanghai native who migrated to Hong Kong at an early age. I am also an active member of the tongzhi community in Hong Kong, and who later became involved in tongzhi activism in China. This research allowed a number of (re)connections involving personal experiences, cultural and political identifications. It reconnected me with my birthplace and my fading memories of a happy childhood in Shanghai during the 1970s. It connected my participation within different tongzhi communities. It was through this research that I was able to engage myself in a dialogue between tongzhi communities in Hong Kong and China. I indeed found myself constantly cross-referencing experiences in both communities. The research created an intellectual space for me to contemplate tongzhi politics in both societies from a position other than an insider. The exercise of (re)connecting and disconnecting among multiple roles and perspectives enriched my understanding beyond the self and tongzhi communities. It allowed me to engage in an inner dialogue with my own positions on gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class, age and cultural identity. It also sharpened my insights into both societies. Hong Kong is politically a part of China, and is connected with the mainland geographically, culturally, economically and relationally through the people. However, doing ethnography in China, even as it was in a city where I spent my childhood and have extensive family ties, was still a cultural adventure into a new old world. I had to keep my eyes open to minute everyday norms such as rituals of interpersonal interaction, hierarchies of social relations, perceptions of personal boundaries, down to unspoken rules about avoiding bicycles while walking on the pavement. The learning of micro customs in daily life proved to be instructive in understanding the everyday challenges tongzhi face in China. In particular, as a woman who is This content downloaded from 137.110.34.164 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 19:13:25 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 8 Shanghai Lalas not in a heterosexual marriage, I understood more how unmarried women are marginalized or sometimes even harassed in social situations because of their gender, age and marital status, and how people (especially those who are married) in their families, workplace or even on the streets pay a smothering concern to their personal lives and future life plans. My personal engagement in this research became even more pronounced after I became involved in tongzhi activism in China. Shortly after I started my research, I introduced a local Hong Kong oral history project of “women loving women”, in which I was a committee member, to the lala community in Shanghai.4 They later launched their own project documenting lala women’s life stories in Shanghai. It resulted in an internally circulated book entitled Talking about Their Love: An Oral History of Women Who Love Women in Shanghai I (Tamen de ai zaishuo: Aishang nüren de nüren. Shanghai. Koushulishi I) (2008) by Shanghai Nvai Lesbian Group, the first grassroots lala organization in Shanghai. I participated as a trainer for oral-history interview and, up until now, remain as a consultant to the project. Later, I became a committee member of the Chinese Lala Alliance (CLA), a cross-regional alliance of Chinese-speaking lesbian, bisexual and transgender women, and am still a member of its advisory board. The dual roles of a researcher and an activist generate concerns over research ethics. In my case, it required my constant effort in managing my roles in different contexts. As a researcher, the tongzhi community was a “field” to be studied, documented and analysed. As an activist, it was a community that I personally identified with. Tensions resulted at times when I needed to choose either role; while at other times, the two roles were smoothly combined. More reflections on role management are presented in “Notes on Methodology” on p. 12. Through engaging in tongzhi activism in China, I learnt about the diversities of lala women across regions, ages, classes, marital statuses, ethnicities, religions, educational backgrounds as well as sexual and gender identifications in China. Women with bisexual identification and biological women with transgender identifications are two emerging groups whose voices are gaining in the lala community. The development of local lala communities is also highly varied in different cities and regions. There are well-developed and visible lala communities and organizations in metropolitan centres such as Shanghai and Beijing. There are also plenty of lala women in smaller cities or counties struggling to connect with each other through less sophisticated social networking tools such as QQ. The regional discrepancy of tongzhi community development is significant. Working together with lala women from other parts of China extended the physical boundary of my primary research field. Those experiences directed me to look into the specific situations of lala women in different regions, and more importantly, to see a bigger picture of the mechanism of public and private regulations at work on lala women in China. The participants This content downloaded from 137.110.34.164 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 19:13:25 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Introduction: Reconnecting Selves and Communities 9 in my research can be further specified as women with the social and cultural backgrounds enabling their access to local lala communities. Their experiences can be referential to those who also live in cities of similar scale or those who are facing similar challenges from family and marriage. For detailed information on the major informants in this project, refer to the appendix “Profiles of Key Informants”. The political engagement of this research project started with an urge to document lesbian lives and emerging lala communities in China. Female homosexuality, bisexuality, FTM transgenderism and female tongzhi communities in China are persistently under-represented in both public discussions and academic studies. Full-length studies of the homosexual population in China first began in the 1990s. Early studies focused predominantly on the male homosexual groups in urban China (Zhang 1991; Li and Wang 1992; Chou 1996, 1997, 2000; Rofel 1999). There was only occasional or brief mention of female homosexuality in those publications or studies conducted in the 1990s (Ruan 1991; Liu 1992; Pan 1995; Evans 1997; Chou 1996, 2000; Li 2002a, 2002b). Ruan Fangfu, Zhang Beichuan, Li Yinhe and Lisa Rofel have mentioned the difficulties in accessing and interviewing women with same-sex relationships in China. It demonstrates that at least until the 1990s, female homosexuality was both invisible as a social issue and a distinctive social group. In her book published in 1997, Harriet Evans comments that having “very limited access to information, advice and support, few outlets for social activities, and living in constant fear of discovery, homosexuals are effectively denied a voice in public discourses about sexuality.” They are merely subjects that are most often “talked to, or talked about” (Evans 1997, p. 209). Evans expresses her concern over the othering of homosexuals in China—where homosexuality is always viewed as deviant or as a form of illness. Homosexuals are most often positioned as objects of academic or scientific studies, and in other cases, as subjects in need of public sympathy (Zhang 1991; Liu 1992; Li and Wang 1992). In the last decade, we can see a growing body of works on sexuality produced by local Chinese scholars in China (Liu 2000; Pan and Zeng 2000; Ma 2003; Fang 2005a, 2005b; Liu and Lu 2004; Pan et al. 2004; Pan and Yang 2004; Ma and Yang 2005; Pan 2005; Sun, Farrer and Choi 2005; Zhou 2006, 2009; Pan et al. 2008; Guo 2009; Ma 2011). These studies on Chinese sexuality produced in China after 2000 can be divided into two groups: extensive quantitative or qualitative studies of sexual behaviour among different social groups, and specialized studies of previously silent or emerging sexual practices or groups in post-reform China. Among them, sociological and legal studies of marginal sexuality represent the two most rapidly growing areas in Chinese academic scholarship in the field. Emerging sexual groups, sexual practices, new cultural representations and legal issues have become popular academic subjects. However, with the This content downloaded from 137.110.34.164 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 19:13:25 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Shanghai Lalas 10 growing number of local sexuality studies, the risk of “misrepresentation and distortion” as pointed out by Evans is still present in publications after 2000. In most studies, the framework of analysis and the assumed positioning of researchers are predominantly heterosexual. Sexually marginal groups such as sex workers are still under the risk of being objectified in the name of academic investigations. Recent studies of tongzhi in China, published in either Chinese or English, have covered cultural representation of same-sex desires in literature, cinema, cyberspace and studies of local tongzhi communities and culture (He 2002, 2010; Sang 2003; Sun, Farrer and Choi 2005; Chen and Chen 2006; Kam 2006, 2010; Li 2006; Rofel 2007; Eng 2010; Engebretsen 2009; Kang 2009; Ho 2010; Kong 2010, 2011). The number of studies or articles of female homosexuality in China has increased in recent years. But it is still significantly fewer than those on male homosexuality. Understanding of the newly emerging lala communities in China is extremely limited. Geographically, current research studies on gays and lesbians in China tend to be restricted to Beijing, the capital city of China, and few studies extend research to other parts of the country. One of the first book-length studies of lesbian culture in China is Tze-lan D. Sang’s The Emerging Lesbian: Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern China, published in 2003. The book traces female same-sex desire in Chinese literary texts that were produced from pre-modern to post-Mao China. It includes a brief field observation of “young cosmopolitan lesbian subjects” in Beijing in the late 1990s. According to Sang, the women she met were “spirited, confident lesbian-identified women in their early twenties who called themselves tongzhi”, and they had just started to communicate via the newly available Internet (Sang 2003, p. 171). The term “lala” was not used at that time. Another more recently published book on gay and lesbian subculture in China also offers a glimpse into lesbian life in Beijing, as well as limited analysis of emerging lala communities and politics (Ho 2010). Anthropologist Elizabeth Engebretsen (2009) conducted a comprehensive field study on the lala communities in Beijing by documenting the everyday life strategies lala women used to cope with the pressure to marry. It appears that ethnographic studies of women with non-normative sexualities or gender identifications in contemporary China, and culturally sensitive analysis of emerging tongzhi politics are critical for the present stage of sexuality studies in China. They are also important for the production of grounded knowledge of local tongzhi communities and everyday life practices of individual actors. Book Structure The book consists of five chapters and a conclusion. The opening chapter maps out the current scene of local lala communities in Shanghai and the social This content downloaded from 137.110.34.164 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 19:13:25 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Introduction: Reconnecting Selves and Communities 11 backdrop against which those communities and activities emerged. The following chapters examine the public discourses and popular understandings concerning tongzhi and homosexuality in post-reform China. In the past two decades, China has been characterized by a rapidly transforming social landscape and shifting paradigms of everyday surveillance of people’s private lives. Understandings towards self and aspirations of life have also been undergoing rapid transformation, especially among a generation of people whose everyday existence is much more mobile in terms of both geographical distance and emotional attachment. This poses new opportunities and challenges to people who aspire to lifestyles that deviate from the social norm. In addition, the formation of tongzhi community in post-reform China has vastly transformed the lives of people with non-normative desires and gender identifications. The book discusses in detail the impacts of those current public discourses and the emerging tongzhi communities on individual lala women and how they respond to those new changes and the demands of social conformity. The book concludes with an analysis of a predominant politics in tongzhi communities in China. I have named it “the politics of public correctness”. It is nurtured in the specific social and cultural context of post-reform China, and at the same time, is a response to the emerging challenges and opportunities presented to tongzhi individuals and community at this very historical juncture. Chapter 1 maps out the growing terrain of lala communities in Shanghai. I discuss the possible social, political and cultural influences that have contributed to the rapid development of tongzhi communities in contemporary China. Specifically, I provide an overview of the local lala communities in Shanghai between the years 2005 and 2011. Chapter 2 examines the changing public discourses of homosexuality during the economic reform period. They have profoundly transformed the ideological obligation governing public representation of homosexuality in previous decades. Homosexuals are increasingly constructed as a distinctive social group to be publicly scrutinized and regulated. Among the developments of this new public interest, we have seen the rapid growth of tongzhi communities both on cyberspace and offline spaces. Together with the general public and experts from different domains, the tongzhi community is keenly engaged in the formation of new public discourses on homosexuality. Chapter 3 looks at lala women in their private lives at a time when tongzhi communities are becoming increasingly accessible and the public awareness of homosexuality is significantly increased as compared with the past decade. I specifically examine the pressures of marriage and the ways by which lala women negotiate their non-normative gender and sexuality under the powerful rhetoric of family harmony and filial piety and within a culture that ideologically rejects women as active and legitimate sexual subjects. I also look This content downloaded from 137.110.34.164 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 19:13:25 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Shanghai Lalas 12 into how “silence” and “tolerance”, as culturally specific forms of homophobia, work to regulate lala women in family and marriage. Chapter 4 discusses the various ways that lala women use to cope with the pressures from family and marriage in their everyday lives. In the first part, I focus on the interactions between lala women and their natal families; and in the second part, I focus on the situation of married lala women and how they accommodate their same-sex relationships and heterosexual marriages. The last chapter examines dominant tongzhi politics in China. The formation of tongzhi communities has created a gap between an increased public awareness of homosexuality and the denial and silence of homosexuality in individual families. This existential rupture caused by the public/private divide has given rise to a culturally specific tongzhi politics in China, which I term “the politics of public correctness”. It refers to a logic of normalization that seeks to promote a “healthy” and “proper” image of tongzhi in order to acquire social and familial recognition, developed as a response to the changing forms of oppression and opportunity of tongzhi during the reform era. The most articulate expression of this politics is the practice of “cooperative marriage”. I look into the social and political context within which the politics of public correctness developed, and its impact on individual lives and the tongzhi communities in China. This book is an extensive qualitative study of the lala communities in Shanghai. Through engaging in participatory ethnography as a Shanghainative and lala-identified researcher, I provide an account of the formative stage of the local lala community in Shanghai and the everyday life struggles of its first-generation participants. Given the diversity in geography, culture, and in the social and economic fabric of China and the underlying unease these differences often embody, it is neither possible nor productive to deliver a macro analysis of tongzhi that addresses all internal differences within China and within local communities. Therefore, I specify my project as an ethnography of women with same-sex desires in urban China during the formative period of tongzhi community. It is also a research project that is informed by my participation in tongzhi communities outside Shanghai. The following part is a reflective discussion on methodology and my positioning as both a researcher/ community member and an insider/outsider. Notes on Methodology This book is based on an ongoing research started in 2005. Between 2005 and 2010, I carried out a number of field visits to Shanghai and conducted face-toface interviews and extensive participant observation. The duration of visits ranged from a few days to more than one month. I conducted formal recorded interviews with twenty-five self-identified lalas in Shanghai and a number This content downloaded from 137.110.34.164 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 19:13:25 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Introduction: Reconnecting Selves and Communities 13 of informal, unrecorded exchanges with lala women whom I met in different occasions. I entered the lala community in Shanghai first through a local organizer. She introduced to me some of the research informants, and later through mutual referrals, I came into contact with other informants. A number of them were introduced to me through different community activities. I remained in contact with some of the major informants after the first interviews to document changes in their lives and in the local lala communities. Most interviews were conducted in putonghua and a few were done in the Shanghai dialect or Cantonese, according to the language preference of individual informants. On average, a single interview lasted one to two hours. For some informants, a second interview was conducted to gather updated information about their lives and to follow up on topics that were unfinished in the first meeting. In a few cases, I interviewed couples together. This is usually because they expected to be interviewed together. Other times, I did couple interviews because I wanted interviewees to discuss their relationship. I carried out individual interviews of each partner before or after the couple interview to obtain personal insights and private information. For participant observation, I attended major community events and social gatherings organized in Shanghai and other cities in China. These included lesbian parties, salon gatherings (shalong, topical seminars and sharing), work meetings of lala groups, a university lecture on homosexuality, a country-wide queer film festival, queer art exhibitions, tongzhi conferences, workshops, training camps and casual social gatherings. During one of my field trips to Shanghai, I shared an apartment with a group of lala women. I took part in their day-to-day lives and social gatherings with lala friends. I also participated in the oral history project of Shanghai Nvai Lesbian Group to document lives of lala women in Shanghai, acting as an academic consultant and instructor of workshops for volunteer helpers in the project. Research Positions It is both my political and academic motivation to contribute to ethnographic details and field-derived analyses of lesbian individuals and communities in urban China. In order to obtain in-depth ethnographical information, I needed to first build up mutually trustful rapport with informants. In this respect, my gender, ethnicity, community identifications with informants and my language ability proved to be productive in rapport building. These shared identities also allowed me a relatively easier entry into the field. It is common that in feminist ethnographies and participatory research on minority populations, a gatekeeper is usually a key source in opening doors to other leads. I got in contact with a major organizer of the lala community in Shanghai through This content downloaded from 137.110.34.164 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 19:13:25 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 14 Shanghai Lalas my personal network of Chinese lesbian communities in Hong Kong and the United States. Throughout my research, I relied on this key person in the local lala community as a significant source of information and as a trustworthy guide to the community. In the early stage of my research, I introduced myself to informants as a graduate student from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a member of the lesbian community in Hong Kong. The primary role I took up in the interaction with my informants was a researcher with a background in tongzhi activism. I also revealed to informants my native Shanghai background and my ability to speak the local dialect. The fact that we shared the same geo-cultural background proved to be productive in my interactions with local Shanghai informants. On the other hand, I was aware of the differences between my informants and me. For example, the different accents of putonghua we spoke, the different terms and cultural references we used in conversations always reminded me of the fact that we came from different societies. Visible differences between a researcher and her informants such as gender, race, age, class, sexual identity, or in my case, cultural background, can be challenging to deal with during the early stage of rapport building. Being an insider and an outsider at the same time, my strategy was to avoid any false expectations from the informants about my knowledge of their society. I always made it clear during early meetings that I had left China as a child and therefore, even though I could speak the language quite fluently, I did not possess knowledge of the country as an insider. The outsider position allowed me to probe further into subject matters that would otherwise be taken for granted between insiders. For instance, the outsider position allowed me to invite informants to explain to me what was perceived to be “common sense” in their local society. By doing so, it also encouraged informants to look at notions of “common sense” in more reflexive ways. The distinctive features of feminist methodology include an egalitarian research process that values the reciprocality and intersubjectivity between the researcher and the researched (Stacey 1988, p. 22). Yet the intimate knowledge produced from intensive participatory field research also triggers many methodological concerns. Among them, the insider and outsider roles of researchers are much discussed in the feminist research tradition. For an insider researcher, which means she studies a culture that is similar to her own, she has to engage in a constant effort to “defamiliarize” herself from cultural practices or values that are “common sensual” to her; while being an outsider, a researcher needs to deal with her ignorance at the beginning, and later, the careful keeping of a sense of strangeness that might wear off during the research process (Acker 2000, p. 194). It is more complicated when a researcher is both an insider and This content downloaded from 137.110.34.164 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 19:13:25 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Introduction: Reconnecting Selves and Communities 15 outsider to her research informants, which was the case in my research. In order to generate more insights from this double position, I applied a method of cross-referencing. When sharing common everyday experiences, I would foreground the cultural differences between my informants and me by defamiliarizing their accounts through a productive comparison with similar experiences in Hong Kong. By cross-referencing the two Chinese societies, it sensitized my understanding of the cultural specificities in lala women’s experiences. On the other hand, in order not to let the cultural gap between us become obstacles to our interactions, I made conscious efforts to study local norms. Taking advantage of my family connections in Shanghai, I took every possible chance of meeting local inhabitants to get insider’s knowledge of Shanghai. For example, I learnt much about the marriage norms and culture of Shanghai by talking to local people in casual dinners and meetings. Also, writing field notes was another effective way to familiarize myself with local knowledge and to refresh my insights as an outsider. This technique is especially helpful for any longterm field study. Insights, comments and stories from sources other than my informants also enriched and triangulated my research findings. Entering the Community I conducted my first field visit to Shanghai in June 2005, during which I met Laoda (pseudonym), a major organizer of the lala community in Shanghai. Laoda was in her late twenties. She had moved to Shanghai from her hometown in another province a few years earlier. At the time I met her, she was running one of the most popular lala websites in China. It was an evening in June 2005 when I met Laoda for the first time after corresponding with her through emails. She asked me to join her for dinner with a few other lala women in a restaurant in downtown Shanghai. I was uncertain if Laoda and her lala friends would feel comfortable meeting a stranger from Hong Kong. That evening, I wore a necklace bearing a female sex sign as a quiet declaration of my identification with them. Later, I discovered that the trick worked—one of the women later told me they had noticed my necklace, and were able to confirm more of where I stood. This made them feel more at ease with me and also more interested in me personally. When I got to the restaurant, Laoda and a small group of friends were already there waiting for me. She introduced me to her friends as a researcher from Hong Kong. All of us were a bit nervous and shy at the beginning, but very soon the atmosphere lightened up when I took out a book I edited, Lunar Desire,5 which was published in 2001 in Hong Kong, comprising twenty-six love stories written by Chinese women from Hong Kong, Macau and overseas about their first same-sex romantic relationships. I had carried a few copies to Shanghai, intending them as gifts for This content downloaded from 137.110.34.164 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 19:13:25 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Shanghai Lalas 16 informants I would meet. They were very interested in the book, and some even began to read it during the dinner. By then, it was clear to all of them I was a member of their group. This made our interaction much easier. The fact that I could speak the Shanghai dialect was another ice-breaking revelation to those who were also Shanghai natives. My Shanghainese background further blurred the insider/outsider boundary. The moments when I opened my mouth and spoke in the dialect always caused a slight uproar in the group, and would significantly change the group dynamics. At other times in my field studies, I was the only person in the group who could speak the local dialect, as many of the participants in the lala community came from other parts of China. As a Hongkonger, I was a foreigner to them in most part, as there are manifest cultural differences across the border. Yet my ability to speak the local dialect made me more like an insider of the city than many of them. This hybrid cultural background, together with my lesbian identification, allowed me to merge much easier with lalas in Shanghai. The first time I was aware of this multi-directional ice-breaking effect was during that evening with Laoda and her friends. Our dinner was followed by a “lesbian night” in a downtown bar and a gathering with Laoda’s friends in a karaoke place till midnight. The weekly “lesbian night” was co-organized by Laoda’s website, Huakaidedifang (or Huakai in short, 花開的地方), and the ex-owner of “Bar 1088”, a once popular lesbian bar in the city, through a contractual deal with the private bar’s owner. The “lesbian nights” ran every Friday and Saturday. On these two evenings, the bar would be named “Huakai 1088”. The combination of “Huakai” and “1088” was a synonym of “lesbian bar” to insiders, and both were well-known “labels” in the community. Helpers from Laoda’s website sold tickets at the entrance. Tickets were priced at RMB30 each and included a free drink. Certain parts of the bar were allocated as a women-only zone for lesbian night-goers. I met more lalas through Laoda at “Huakai 1088”. The crowd there was mostly in their early twenties, with mixed regional backgrounds. There were women hailing from other cities, who were now working in Shanghai. A few of them worked and lived in nearby cities, and came to Shanghai only to spend weekends with lala friends. A few were local residents who would chat in the Shanghai dialect with each other. When we interacted in a group, we all talked in the national language, putonghua. Informants The key informants of my research were self-identified lala women active in the lala communities of Shanghai. For individual profiles of informants, read “Profiles of Key Informants”. I focused my choice of informants on those who This content downloaded from 137.110.34.164 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 19:13:25 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Introduction: Reconnecting Selves and Communities 17 were either employed or self-employed during the time of interview, and at the same time, attempted to stretch the age range as wide as possible. I did this with the view of recruiting informants with a certain degree of exposure in public at work. I wanted to investigate the aspect of social recognition and their existence in the so-called public domains. Therefore, I did not actively search for informants who had never been employed or who had never been involved in the labour market. As such, I did not include school-aged lalas in this research. Besides, the problems that young women face in primary, secondary or tertiary institutions concerning their same-sex desires are categorically different, given the different economic and social positions they occupy. Women in their twenties with post-secondary or university education and with a white-collar occupation proved to be the most visible group in the local offline lala communities. Those who were most active in community building—such as hotline workers or the organizing members of local working groups—were predominantly women from this age, educational and occupational group. Their regional affiliations varied, but all of them had urban residency. It was significantly much more difficult to find informants who were over thirty, and very unlikely to see any women over forty in public gatherings. One might catch glimpses of women from a senior age group in some lesbian parties in downtown Shanghai. I have met a group of women appeared to be over forty in one lesbian party held in an upscale bar in the downtown area. I was told by other informants that more private and invisible groups made up of affluent, mature lalas with professional backgrounds existed in Shanghai. They met each other in private gatherings, and hence, were harder to be seen publicly. Their class and professional backgrounds required a more discreet socializing style. I was unable to get in touch with any of them. It is not difficult to find that women who were the most visible and accessible in the lala community in Shanghai shared some common demographic characteristics. This is also reflected in the profiles of informants in this research. They were mostly in their early to late twenties. They were economically independent, with a university or at least post-secondary education background. They either held a white-collar job, mostly in private corporations, or were self-employed. They were predominantly urban residents. Many of them were living away from their home cities and families, and were working in Shanghai. Most of them had an independent living space, or could afford one if there was a need. Most of them were unmarried. They were a group of women who had benefitted the most from the economic reform and social changes that had occurred in the recent two decades. The social, economic and sexual freedoms they were enjoying were privileged ones that could not be generalized to women from other social and economic groups. The predominance of women with these demographic characteristics in this research is reflective This content downloaded from 137.110.34.164 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 19:13:25 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 18 Shanghai Lalas of the most visible and accessible group in the lala communities in Shanghai. However, their voices, though dominant, should not be taken as the only one for the entire community. This content downloaded from 137.110.34.164 on Mon, 26 Mar 2018 19:13:25 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
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