This post is in partnership with Worldcrunch, a new global-news site that translates stories of note in foreign languages into English. The article below was originally published in Economic Observer.
After he left Tianjin last year, Zhang Xiaobai realized that homosexuals are not “rare birds.”
When he was still in primary school, Zhang (not his real name) found that he was attracted to boys. Particularly after each physical-education class, when he looked at the sweat-soaked back of a boy he liked, he felt dazed. The feeling got stronger when he entered high school and fell secretly amorous of a tall and strong classmate. He was always eager to approach him and became fascinated with the occasional moment of physical contact.
That was in the mid-1990s, when the term homosexuality was far from ordinary in Chinese people’s life. Zhang couldn’t find anyone similar to him, and he thought he was strange. He couldn’t tell his parents, sure that they wouldn’t be able to understand. “I was trying to hide it from everybody. Nobody told me this is normal,” Zhang recalls. “I felt like I was sick.” (Watch a gay-marriage wedding video.)
After graduating from university, family and friends were enthusiastic to fix him up with a girl. He didn’t know how to refuse and finally yielded to the pressure, marrying a girl his parents liked. He was hounded by feelings of guilt and inadequacy. “But if I can’t possibly love her, I can at least try my best to be a good husband,” he says he told himself. So as not to disappoint his parents, Zhang and his wife had a son right after being married.
Each Valentine’s Day and on their wedding anniversary, Zhang would buy his wife flowers and gifts, trying to compensate materially for his missing heart.
Life went by. Nothing changed for more than 10 years. And then he started logging into the online world where gay Chinese interact. In some chat forums, people wanted to meet him, but he never accepted the invitation.
In 2009 Zhang took a work trip to Beijing. One night, after leaving a bar, he saw another bar at the other side of the road. He has seen the name so many times in a forum, a “shrine” for homosexuals, like Dongdan Park, said to be the biggest gathering place in the world for gays. (See a brief history of international gay marriage.)
He knew there were similar places back in Tianjin but thought it was too risky that he might bump into acquaintances in those spots.
The next day, he went to the bar without letting his colleague know. The atmosphere was relaxed. Like at other bars, there were people trying to strike up conversation and flirting. For the first time in his 30 years of life, he was not denying his identity. He talked to all kinds of people from different professions. There were company employees, lawyers and a lot of media people.
In comparison with the digital world, the live encounter with other gays was a shock to him. When he finished his mission and went back to Tianjin, he was determined to leave his job. He told his family he wanted to look for advancement in Beijing. Nobody understood why. He just told them, “I’m already 30-something. It will be too late if I don’t think for myself.”
See “Beijing’s Gay Community Fights Censorship.”
First Love
His wife stayed in Tianjin. They had gradually grown apart. She no longer demanded that he always come home. He made new acquaintances, and then found his lover, a designer in his 30s.
This was the first love of his life. Like other couples, they went to films and chose which restaurants to go to after work. Though they kept separate places, Zhang was stable in his relations. He felt that he had found a new direction for his life. For the first time, he didn’t feel so bad being gay. His friends and colleagues accepted him. He was finally completely relaxed.
It went on in this way for about a year, until 2010. He felt he was no longer able to leave his boyfriend and went home to Tianjin less frequently. He decided it was time to tell his family. (See why Asia’s gays are starting to win acceptance.)
“I knew I had to be courageous,” he says. “It was too difficult for me to continue with two emotions at the same time. I was prepared to break up with my family.”
After New Year’s Day this year, Zhang invited his wife, his parents and his parents-in-law to dinner. He announced the truth near the end of the meal. The fathers didn’t quite believe him, and everybody at the table was startled. Then his mother, who has a hypertension problem, fainted. His wife smacked his face and left. He later cried and knelt in front of his father beside the hospital bed of his mother, asking for forgiveness.
“It was really like a second-rate TV drama,” he says. “The whole family was crying. I had never imagined that it would ever happen to me.”
Zhang’s wife divorced him without hesitation and won full custody of their son. Relatives scolded him, saying he was irresponsible. He tries to compensate everybody with money. He gave his house to his ex-wife and pays to support his parents, the cost of coming out. Zhang’s parents are still in a cold war with him: his mother won’t speak to him. He worries that his son will suffer from being laughed at when his friends find out that his father is gay.
Nevertheless, Zhang does not think his life is a tragedy and is relieved that at least now he is living according to his true identity. Every time he hears that some “comrade” plans to get married, he always tells them of his own experience: “Don’t try to solve the problem by getting married. It will only hurt more people.”
by A Kuai – Worldcrunch
Source – Time
