Leftover in China

by Roseann Lake

  The home front, however, is a different story entirely. Though the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its index of mental disorders in 1990, homosexuality was officially classified as a disease in China until 2001. Depictions of homosexuality on television have long been banned in China, but starting in July 2017, the China Netcasting Services Association (CNSA) prohibited the portrayal of “abnormal sexual lifestyles” in Internet video content—a category that, in the eyes of the censors, includes homosexuality.* Needless to say, homosexuality is still not very well understood, especially by parents who are all very keen to have their children married, but not to the extent that they’d tolerate their child marrying a member of the same sex, if that were even possible. The curious thing about the parental opposition to gay marriage, however, is that it is as much moral or ethical as it is a matter of losing face; it’s seen as something that mars a family’s reputation and jeopardizes its ability to function as part of the social order.

  To get Suki’s new business revving, I introduce her to my friend Leo, a gay Chinese man who has been with his partner for three years. “My mother knows I’m gay,” he tells us, “and she kind of accepts it, but she still keeps hounding me to marry a woman. When I reminded her that I like men, she said, ‘I don’t care what you like, just give me a grandchild!’ ” She went so far as to suggest that Leo get married and have a baby with his partner’s older sister (a leftover woman), as if that would lead to the creation of one, big, happy family.

  The content of this conversation is rocking Suki’s world. “There are gay men married to straight women?” she asks me later, in private. “Sixteen million of them,” I tell her. She looks at me wide-eyed, realizing that her market potential is much larger than she had ever imagined.

  Zhang Beichuan is the sexologist at Qingdao University who calculated the 16 million statistic based on his twenty-plus years of demographic research centered on China’s gay community. He’s not a gay activist nor gay himself, but explains that this area of research interested him because there was so little information available, and very few people working in it. He tells me that in the 1990s, an estimated 40 percent of the gay men he interviewed reported having suicidal thoughts. Over time, that percentage dropped to 20 percent, but Beichuan’s work has shown a consistent rise in the depression rates of another group: China’s tong qi or “comrade wives”—straight women married to gay men.

  Despite their rather friendly moniker, most tong qi women don’t often live happy lives as wives. Very few are aware of their husband’s sexuality before marriage, something that, when it is eventually discovered, comes as a hard blow. By Zhang’s estimates, 90 percent of tong qi are depressed, 70 percent report having experienced long-term emotional abuse, 40 percent experience suicidal thoughts, and 20 percent have experienced repeated physical violence from their husbands. His numbers are based on a sample of 150 tong qi wives who had been married an average of four years, with an average age of thirty-one. He also tells me that eighty of the women in his study discovered their husbands were gay as the result of intervention from a private detective. Roughly three women knew of their husband’s homosexuality before their marriage, but didn’t see it as an issue. “I thought I could ‘fix’ it,” said one of his sources, who, Beichuan points out, was an accomplished college graduate.

  Because the stigma surrounding homosexuality in China is still so strong (except for the nightclub scene, as mentioned earlier), many comrade wives don’t know what to do when they discover they’re married to a gay man. Christy, for one, was in complete shock.

  I’d known Christy well over two years before she told me about her previous marriage. Over this time period, we’d become good friends, and she’d even been the inspiration for Chaoji Shengnu, a playful cartoon series that I created, almost as a precursor to this book.† Most of our meetings were high-octane ones. We’d sometimes catch up quickly at events or locations where she was in charge of the PR—fashion shows, nightclub anniversary parties, and boutique and gallery openings. Often, these events were attended by gay men—models, designers, art patrons, and owners of over-the-top entertainment establishments. She often joked that she knew more gay men than straight ones, but she had never mentioned that she’d once been married to one.

  Christy met her former husband at a very young age, and according to her, it was love at first sight. “He was so sweet and handsome, I married him within three months of meeting him.” Their relationship had been chaste prior to marriage, but following a few complications with small cysts on her ovaries, Christy’s husband decided that the couple should stop being intimate until she was feeling better. Her doctor never told her to stop having intercourse, but as she was very young and somewhat startled by her condition, she decided to err on the side of caution. As Christy’s sabbatical from sex approached the two-year mark, however, she became suspicious. Each time she attempted an advance on her husband, she would be dismissed, and he’d bring up the cysts on her ovaries, which had long ceased to be a matter of concern. “I started to think there was another woman,” she recalls. “So I started checking his phone.”

  No leads.

  “I always thought of him as someone very simple,” explains Christy, “happy to just hang out with the guys.” It wasn’t until he left a chat program on his laptop open one day that she discovered his penchant for teenagers.

  “My first reaction was total disbelief,” she said, “but then I started connecting all the dots from our years together and things started to make sense. There was absolutely nobody I could tell though—my parents would be outraged, and he was begging me not to out him. I decided to treat it like an affair, telling him we could still guo rizi, or ‘spend our days together.’ He agreed most penitently, telling me he would give up his ‘dirty habit.’ ”

  Christy wanted to believe her husband, but she didn’t trust him, so she kept an eye on his computer. There was no activity for two months, but then his lascivious chats with young men picked up again. Feeling distraught and helpless, she took refuge in the anonymity of the Internet, where she tracked down a support hotline for women in her situation.

  Xiao Xiong’s was the comforting voice on the other line that helped Christy cope with everything she was experiencing. Christy believed that she had “made” her husband gay because she was unattractive and inattentive to his needs. Xiao Xiong’s counseling allowed her to understand that women don’t make men gay. She listened, advised, and gently gave Christy the courage to peaceably end a marriage that was depleting her sense of self-worth, her confidence, and her happiness.

  It’s only a few minutes into my conversation with Xiao Xiong before I realize that she’s also married to a gay man. The conditions of their marriage, however, are radically different from Christy’s. Xiao Xiong is a lesbian, and she and her gay husband have what is commonly referred to in China as a xing hun or a “cooperative marriage.” Though Xiao Xiong vehemently opposes marriages in which gay men are dishonest about their sexuality and wed straight women, she happens to be one of China’s greatest facilitators of marriages between openly gay men and lesbian women looking to tie the knot with a member of the opposite sex in order to keep up appearances. In 2007, Xiao Xiong created the first QQ group for gay men and women in the market for a fake spouse. “Like any marriage,” she explains, “both parties must really get to know one another and be very clear as to what their objectives are. But if men and women are honest with one another and have common goals and values, these arrangements can actually end up being a good way of mitigating the marriage pressure they face.”

  To date, over three hundred “cooperative marriages” have taken place between couples who met on the site, and Xiao Xiong is so familiar with the spouse-selection process, she practically has it down to a formula. The five most important questions a couple needs to discuss before deciding to get married are:

  1.Will we live together? (she says not many couples do)

  2.Will we have a child? (
she says most Northerners don’t want to have any children, but Southerners are more likely to want one)

  3.Will we pool our finances? (usually couples living together may want to share finances)

  4.Will we get a real marriage certificate? (many couples—especially those who opt to be childless—prefer to get a fake marriage certificate, so they are not legally bound to each other. These fake certificates, often prepared by special agencies, cost around 200 RMB, (US $30), or twenty-five times the price of a real one)

  5.Will we get a divorce? (some couples marry only temporarily to appease their parents, and then divorce after a year or two; other people have a big wedding for their parents to enjoy, then come out of the closet a few years later, once they feel they’ve done enough for their family and are entitled to do something for themselves)

  Xiao Xiong reports that, overwhelmingly, couples decide to enter cooperative marriages due to pressure from their families. “Some parents even know their kids are gay, but they still want them to go through the hoops,” she explains.

  In Xiao Xiong’s case, her parents have no idea that she is a lesbian. Marrying a gay man was simply the least confrontational way to address her obligation to get married. Her parents spent 200,000 RMB on the reception, and still don’t know that the woman helping Xiao Xiong into her wedding dress was her partner.

  She maintains a friendly relationship with her husband, but not a close one. “We each have our own lives,” says Xiao Xiong, who lives with her partner. “We basically just see each other for meals over the holidays with our families,” she says. “We don’t communicate much otherwise, but my husband is great. When my mom got sick last year, he came with me to take care of her for a few days. I’ve done the same for his parents in the past.”

  As I listen to the terms and conditions of Xiao Xiong’s marriage, I begin to realize that it’s starting to sound like the most distilled version of what many Chinese marriages are—units of social organization whereby holidays are celebrated and elderly parents are taken care of. Our conversation reminds me of one I had with a friend of Christy’s, who, because of her job, lives in a different city from her husband and has a long-term lover with whom she spends most of her free time. She’s thought about getting a divorce but can’t be bothered because, as she said to Christy, “then where would I spend the holidays?”

  Still, I can’t help but ask Xiao Xiong if it’s difficult to keep “putting on a show” after more than five years of marriage. She responds with total nonchalance—“It’s like being with a friend. If you’re comfortable around the person, it’s not difficult.”

  Xiao Xiong is lucky in that her parents aren’t too pushy when it comes to her having a baby. “I have a friend whose mother is on a mission to have a grandchild,” she says. “So my friend plays the ‘we’re trying’ card. She even cries about it in front of her mother, complaining that fertility treatments are invasive and expensive.

  “Obviously, this excuse wouldn’t work for everyone,” continues Xiao Xiong. Some women say their work conditions aren’t favorable to having a child at the moment, others blame the air pollution for their struggles with conception. “We help each other brainstorm for the most believable ideas.”

  Throughout our conversation, Xiao Xiong is careful to reiterate that marrying a gay man is certainly not the ideal, but if two parties can come to an understanding, it’s probably the most convenient solution to a “problem” that doesn’t seem like it will go away anytime soon.

  Dr. He Xiaopei is a friend of Xiao Xiong’s, as well as the founder of Pink Space, an organization that promotes sexual rights, based in Beijing. When I catch up with her, she’s just finished editing a documentary called Our Marriages: When Lesbians Marry Gay Men, which chronicles the cooperative marriages of four lesbians. The film includes footage of a cooperative wedding where there were six hundred guests in attendance. “Many of the bride’s friends knew of her sexuality, but her parents and most of her family members are still completely in the dark,” explained Dr. Xiaopei.

  She then tells me about another wedding featured in the film, where the gay groom’s mother is aware of her son’s preference for men, but the bride prefers to keep her homosexuality a secret. Upon meeting her future daughter-in-law, the groom’s mother apparently tries to persuade the couple “to have a normal life,” but senses that her plea is falling on deaf ears. She cries and cries, until one morning, it occurs to her to go to a temple and have the ba zi of her son and his soon-to-be lesbian wife consulted. Ba zi, or “eight characters” are a complex system of numbers and symbols upon which the Chinese base a range of decisions, including marriage compatibility between potential partners. After the ba zi master describes the match as “tip-top” and the wife as “a real find,” all of the groom’s mother’s apprehensions go out the window. On the wedding day, according to Dr. Xiaopei, the mother was among one of the merriest guests at the ceremony.

  As part of her work with Pink Space, Dr. Xiaopei has also counseled many “comrade wives” like Christy, and as our conversation about them evolves, I can’t help but ask her: are there also comrade husbands?

  “We don’t have the numbers, but I believe that men have greater pressure to produce an heir, and can divorce with less consequence,” she says. “Not as many lesbians want to have a child, so gay men must find straight women. They also just think it’s easier and less time consuming to lie and maintain a secret life on the side.”

  Would legalizing gay marriage in China make the situation better? Dr. Xiaopei really doesn’t think so. As one of the women in her documentary said, “Even if gay marriage were legal, I’d still marry a gay man because cultures don’t change overnight, and homosexuality will remain taboo for a long time.”

  Dr. Xiaopei elaborates: the biggest obstacle to gay marriage in China isn’t legal, it’s social. In the grand scheme of taboos, having a homosexual child trumps having an unmarried child in China. She explains that “homosexual,” or , which translates as “love for the same sex,” still sounds wrong to most Chinese ears. This is true to the extent that the word cannot even appear in Chinese official media, be it in newspapers or magazines or on the radio. “Even if gay marriage were legalized, many Chinese would still think gays are ‘sick,’ ” adds Dr. Xiaopei. And of course, she is very careful to point out, there’s the larger underlying problem that affects everyone in China, gay or straight: the compulsory nature of marriage.

  “If gays could marry, parents might just say, ‘Well, then why don’t you get married?’ And of course there are also gay people out there who don’t necessarily want to wed,” she says.

  “Marital pressures here are so strong, we even get inquiries from straight people looking for fake marriage partners. The pressure to get married in China—for both gay and straight members of society—simply does not allow one to live as a single and complete person.”

  I mention my conversation with Dr. Xiaopei to Christy, and she’s not at all surprised. “Many of my friends have brought it up as a solution to their marriage woes,” she says. “To be honest, it has even crossed my mind—marrying a gay man again—a friend, perhaps, but this time, with the full knowledge that he’s gay, and a very thoroughly discussed marriage agreement. But then I think, what for? I too have the right to a more complete happiness.”

  * In a telling example of how quickly the censorship tides change in China, they seem to have looked the other way when just a year earlier, Beijing Kunlun Tech Company—a Chinese gaming company—bought a majority stake in Grindr, perhaps the world’s most iconic dating and social networking app for gay men.

  † The full Chaoji Shengnu cartoon series was published in The World of Chinese magazine.

  6

  FREEDOM AND SUBMISSION

  Marrying off a daughter is like pouring water out of a jug.

  —CHINESE PROVERB

  Chinese New Year was just around the corner, and Zhang Mei was still without a plus-one. The rent-a-boyfriend she was considering
ended up being booked for the holidays, something that Zhang Mei took as a sign from the heavens that she should just buck it alone. “Suan le” (“forget it”), she said decisively as she made arrangements to book train tickets that would get her into the icy city of Harbin after dusk.

  When she arrived home for the holiday, she couldn’t possibly have imagined what was waiting for her. One of her mother’s friends—whom I’ll just refer to as “the matchmaker”—had arranged for Zhang Mei to go on a blind date with a man from Hong Kong. The matchmaker proposed that they meet the following afternoon at a local teahouse; an invitation that Zhang Mei’s mother gleefully accepted on her daughter’s behalf.

  As is customary on blind dates in China, five people—Zhang Mei, her mother, the matchmaker, the young gentleman from Hong Kong, and his mother—gathered around a table, and awkwardness ensued. Most of the conversation transpired between the mothers and the matchmaker, while Zhang Mei and her potential suitor were sidelined on their own date. They sat in silence.

  Zhang Mei could sense that her prospective mother-in-law had a steely exterior and was very protective of her son. She had been divorced for twenty years—something quite uncommon for her time—and had spent most of her adult years running the cosmetics empire she had founded as a young woman. Made up like a Peking Opera star, she eyed Zhang Mei suspiciously as the matchmaker very matter-of-factly summarized the supreme marriageability of the shy, borderline shell-shocked young man at the table: he owned a car, a large home, and held valuable stock in his mother’s company. Zhang Mei glanced quietly at the man as this recitation was happening. They eventually exchanged a few polite words about their respective taste in movies, and by the end of the evening—when they were finally left alone—she even grew to like him, a tiny bit. “He’s a very good listener,” she reported. “I could tell he was sensitive and paying attention to what I was saying. He wouldn’t cut me off, like some other men have.” Just as I started to get hopeful that their first meeting might lead to a second, she added, “That’s probably because he’s been completely dominated by his tiger mother. She’s terrifying.”