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
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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
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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
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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”.
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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
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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
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Shanghai Lalas
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Shanghai Lalas
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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