A Dose of Variety

So there I was watching an episode of this well-known entertainment/variety show in Taiwan called KangXi Lai Le (康熙來了). There are two hosts and often there are famous celebrities from the Chinese-speaking entertainment world who come as guests, most often to promote their latest CD or movie. A director came with two actresses and two actors. The movie, however was not the central focus of this episode.

Instead, on one side of the set, there was a group of (presumably) queer Taiwanese men who would be the “Beautiful men-appreciation jury” (美男鑑賞團). Four famous male celebrities, two of whom were actors in the movie being promoted, would one-by-one stand in a door frame on the set, with the curtain pulled all the way down. At the show hosts’ command, the curtain would be released to reveal the male celebrity’s legs, up to his waist, then up to his chin, then his face. At each point, the hosts would ask the jury, would you go for that? Are sneakers or boots a plus? Skinny or well-built? [If you’re curious, the male celebs involved were:張孝全, 郭彥均,韓志杰, 范植偉, with 張孝全 being the most handsome, of course]. And yes, they were all fully dressed.

This episode really turned the tables and forced the handsome, (presumably) heterosexual men to “come out”. Literally, the term in Chinese, 現身 is to reveal the body into the here and now. That’s exactly what the male celebs were doing when they were being slowly “revealed” by the curtain. These male celebrities were put under scrutiny. The show host selected a “jury member” to be carried by the celebrity (the prince saving a princess hold) or the jury member could try to carry the celebrity. Each time a male celebrity was “revealed”, the show hosts would ask the jury members to raise their hands if that male celebrity was on their “fantasy list”. The queer Taiwanese men were allowed to explain their tastes, as well as shout out the occasional comment (“Take off the suit, you look better without it!” “Whoa, turn around again. Extra points for that behind!”).

This was mainstream Taiwanese television. I don’t see this episode being aired in the U.S. In the U.S. where LGBT organizations often fall prone to prevalent white hegemonic notions of “queerness,” it’s important to keep in mind different models of being as well as different backgrounds of queers in the United States, especially in light of histories of immigrants from non-Western countries. Variety and diversity is the way to go. Don’t place the U.S. as the only shining gay beacon shining its way into the dark corners of the so-called Third World. We don’t need to globalize those Post-Stonewall ideas of queerness in a way that transplants U.S. customs and norms into other countries and denies agency of other countries.

Don’t give me that. Taiwan is pretty fuckin’ impressive.

*Note: Though this episode occasionally uses the word “gay”, most of the time the word tongzhi 同志 is used. The word literally means comrade. The first character tong 同, means same, and is the same character used for the Chinese word for homosexual 同性戀. The second character zhi 志, means ideal, will or purpose. Put together, the word literally describes people with the same purpose and ideals. Historically, Dr. Sun Yat Sen, founder of the Republic of China in 1911, said at his deathbed, “Comrades, keep struggling, the fight is not over” [paraphrased]. Later, during the Mao era, the term comrade was used in the communist sense – a word used to stir people to work for their country. Using the word tongzhi to describe the LGBT community in Taiwan is significant, for this word seeks to insert itself in the national psyche and redefine terms  in order to link to a broader historical timeline. While the term was first introduced in the the Hong Kong film festival in the 1990s, tongzhi has now been reappropriated as a politically-charged term of empowerment used in Taiwan that differentiates TW (+ to a certain extent, HK) from Mainland China, undermining the national “sanctity” of the word comrade as used in Communist terminology. Also significant, the term tongzhi then signifies a framework of queerness that is not always Western-centric.

*P.S. what the male host (Cai Yong Kang 蔡永康) is wearing is hideous. Half-toga, anyone?

The Hunger of Memory

I’ve been really excited about the PBS series “Faces of America” hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (yes, the one who was involved in that bitter dispute with Obama last summer). It explores the histories of the families of famous celebrities including Stephen Colbert, Eva Longoria, Kristi Yamaguchi, Meryl Streep, Louise Erdrich, Yo Yo Ma, just to name a few. . .

I’ve watched up to Episode 3 and wow, let me tell you, the stories are beautifully woven together. There was one part where they traced Meryl Streep’s ancestors to the founders of Pennsylvania who fought in a bloody war against the Native Americans fighting for their land. And immediately afterward, Louise Erdrich explains about her Native Americans’ ancestors experience of being exploited by colonial settlers to give up their land.

Gates even visited China to uncover the past of Yo Yo Ma’s history that Ma’s father never told him. At first Gates was unlucky in finding written historical records (though he found graves and empty houses), but by a stroke of luck, Gates was contacted when they found the Ma family book dating back to the 1300s. Ma’s 7th great-grandfather recorded short biographies of males in each generation (unfortunately, no females), the family poem, and values to be passed on from generation to generation. The book was hidden behind a wall during the Communist Revolution and forgotten about until it fell out one day during demolition of the building. Ma, whose father was always so tight-lipped about the China he left behind, was suddenly left with hundreds of family history that he had never heard of before. I was sooo close to crying tears of emotion! Yo was so earnest in his thanks to Gates for providing him a paper-bound copy of his family history as well as uncovering this inheritance. I have so much respect for Yo, though I am not a fan of classical music.

Yo Yo Ma reflects on his Asian American identity and thinks about “home”

This really ties in to the multi-narrative, multi-generational narratives that I’ve been reading for my classes, such as Southland by Nina Revoyr (Japanese and African Americans in Los Angeles from the 1900s-1990s),Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia (the families affected by Communist Cuba, within and outside of Cuba), as well as other books I’ve read before such as Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club and Junot Diaz’s The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Grandparents, parents, children all tell their stories, sharing their perspectives on huge historical events. They think about identity – as immigrants (or children of immigrants) living away from the ancestral homeland, learning their role in society in this newer homeland of the United States. . .

How important is memory in remembering/knowing “home”, where that may be? How does remembering really invest oneself in a familial legacy?

And then it hit me. I should begin to record oral histories of my relatives. Start compiling the Lins’ (my mother and father had the same last name before marriage, but they’re not cousins from my knowledge) family tree. My paternal grandparents live in Flushing, a 10-minute drive away, I could bring my handy-dandy tape recorder, transcribe and translate for future generations to come. My grandmother and my great-grandfather in Taiwan are far away, but I could contact my cousin in Taiwan to do that assignment for me since he obviously speaks Mandarin and Taiwanese a lot better than me. Coincidentally, he had actually told me in the summer when I was in Taipei that he had been wanting to interview them for the longest time. Just gotta get his e-mail from my mother. . .

To my knowledge, this is what I have so far:

My great-grandfather and grandmother had lived in Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule, my great-grandfather had fought for the Japanese in some war (no idea?) and my grandmother growing up under the Japanese education system (the Chinese ceded Taiwan to Japan in 1895), back then when speaking Taiwanese was banned. In 1949, my paternal grandparents fled with the Nationalists (Kuomintang) from Communist China to Taiwan – my grandmother a Cantonese Hakka and daughter of a ranking Nationalist officer; my grandfather a Fukkienese son of a wealthy father who had willingly shared his wealth with the poor residents of his village.

And so the project begins. Remembering begins now.