• May 30 – June 15: Bay Area
• June 15 – June 18: Marseille
• June 27 – July 1: Aarhus
• July 3 – July 8: Zurich
• July 8 – July 13: Berlin
• July 14 – July 24: Boston & New York
• August 5 – August 20: Bay Area, Santa Barbara, LA (dates tentative)

How do you undo eighteen years of a Chinese upbringing?

I’m pretty sure that I’m not taking this out of context when I say that this article states this goal as a given.  I didn’t see any part of the article question whether or not it’s really the right way to approach the problem.

It seems to me that trying to undo a Chinese upbringing is stupid and useless.  There are clearly some things that the characters mentioned in the article should work on; if your friends can’t tell whether or not your angry or depressed or just catatonic, then you probably have a problem.  But that problem has nothing to do with a Chinese upbringing.  Anyone who’s been to a Chinese city or a Chinese-American function can attest that Chinese people are far from being quiet and impassive.

Second, what good will erasing a Chinese upbringing do?  Is he suggesting that Asian-Americans should strive to be more “white” (whatever that means)?  First, the reaction people usually have to someone who strives to erase their own racial identity is ridicule, not respect.  It makes me think of an Asian-to-white version of the Offspring’s “Pretty Fly for a White Guy”.

Second, as I mentioned in the previous post, I think there are plenty of Asian or Chinese values that are perfectly legitimate and worth cherishing, including some of the ones that he implied were holding Asian/Chinese-Americans back.  There’s no reason to throw out those values; instead I think we should work harder to show that they are universal values, not just Asian values, and that everyone should appreciate and strive towards them more.

My main impression however was how many teenagers were putzing around the mall.  Somehow living in Manhattan I’d forgotten that there was this awful stage of human development called adolescence… you don’t really see many teenagers hanging out in New York.  Either they don’t exist, or they’re much better at pretending to be grown-up than the suburban variety.  But here they were, in the Natick Mall, in all their hormonally confused, sexually frustrated, acne-ridden, and socially awkward glory.  There were the skanky hos, wearing neon tube-tops and short shorts as if they were going out in Ibiza (in 1985), the slackers in their hoodies, the wannabe thugs in their gold chains and baggy pants, the goths, the jocks, the lipsticks, and so on and so forth.  I’d forgotten about all these little tribes and how much they meant back in high school… not that we don’t have our own tribes now, but somehow we seem to be able to get along better ever so slightly.  Maybe we do grow up at some point… or at least we get better at pretending to get along.

In fact, those bonds of family are our anchors in this age where everything moves increasingly faster, where our lives can change overnight with a layoff, a cancer diagnosis, or an order to go to Iraq, and we are helplessly swept along in the tide of vicissitudes and upheavals.  Those bonds of family are what keep us grounded, keep us sane, and provide us a bit of shelter in this cold, difficult world.

Family is all the more precious to those of who are gay because so many of us risk losing them simply because of who we are.  I dreaded my parents’ reaction when I came out to them… for a few days, a few weeks even I thought that I might have permanently damaged those bonds.  I can’t say that those bonds have fully healed, but at least the immediate danger of losing them completely is gone.  There’s nothing scarier in this world than to think your parents might abandon you simply for who you are, and it’s something that I wouldn’t wish on anyone else.

With very few exceptions, we are born with our family, we can’t choose them.  We can’t go down the street to the courthouse to get a new mom or dad, a new brother or sister.  We have to make the best of what we’re given at birth, come what may.

There is only one exception to this rule, one family member that we all have the right to choose.  Well, I should say that YOU have the right to choose since we don’t.  You have one choice, one chance in this life to share with someone the intimacy, shelter, love, and companionship of being married, of forming your own family.

That’s what marriage today is about.  Whether it’s just the two of you or you have kids, whatever your race or religion might be, whether you married your high-school sweetheart or found a new love in your golden years, however you choose to express your love and commitment to each other, your marriage is your choice to share your life with someone and to build one together.

Your husband or wife is the one family member that you get to pick.  That’s your choice, your chance.  Shouldn’t we get that chance too?

As I discovered during this trip things are not so rosy for Chinese travelers.  Not only do they need visas to go almost everywhere (even Hong Kong which is technically part of the same country!), most places refuse to grant them tourist visas unless they’re taking part of a tour group.  And lest you think that wearing ugly uniforms and following a loud obnoxious flag-waving tour guide are the only drawbacks of joining a tour group, consider also that to go to America (and also the EU, I believe) they have to hand over their passport for the duration of their trip as well as pay a large security deposit ensuring that they don’t stray from the tour group during their stay.

Now I know how many of you love to travel with tour groups (cue crickets chirping) but this is outrageous.  I understand that the USA doesn’t want people to overstay their visits, but isn’t the deposit enough?  Why force people to join tour groups?  Do they really think that the number of Chinese people willing to pay $xxx to overstay their hard-earned tourist visa is any more than the number of Brits or Aussies or Japanese who overstay their automatic 90 day tourist visas?  I’m not saying that no one is going to take advantage of the situation to overstay, but overstaying is already a problem with other nationalities too.  It seems to me that this is doubly penalizing citizens of countries like China.

I didn’t realize this was even an issue until I started mentioning to friends like LB and MP that they should come with me to Japan, or they should visit me later in America, and all they could say was that they couldn’t get a visa.  That had never struck me as even being a problem before, but then I was in my privileged little American bubble and never had to think twice about going abroad.

It’s sad mostly because I meet so many people like LB and GXW here who honestly want to see what the West (and the rest of the world, too) is like on their own terms, with no desire to overstay their visits, and yet being unable to do so because they happened to be born in the wrong country.  Now I know many other injustices befall people because they’re born in the wrong country, injustice that are much more tragic than just not being able to visit Europe or America, but this seems like something that could be easily remedied by some better planning and goodwill on the part of the rich countries that have closed their doors on the rest of the world.