As I mentioned in this blog, the morning portion of the Chinese wedding tradition seemed to strike me as the most fun. At least, with a design twist, that is. As I was assembling my psychological armour for this event, I would classify the morning as my helmet: it kept me sane. In traditional Chinese culture, the wedding event starts…   …read more.

As I mentioned in this blog, I started panic when the wedding bobbed its enormous, spinning head on the horizon. I remember also feeling like I was on a collision course with it and I began to look around desperately for crash pads and a helmet and culturally appropriate armour—appropriate to my culture. And what culture is that? I’m Western,…   …read more.

Fumbling in a second language (or third, in my case) often has its moments of hilarity. I wish I could have written them all down. By now, I’m more than functional in Mandarin and the hilariousness has calmed down, but back in the first couple of years of being in China, I must have had cause to laugh at language…   …read more.

The issue of the dress quickly became a mess, one that I liken to knocking over coloured paints onto the floor and watching the cultural collisions swirl into each other, the colours all powerless in the merge. I got fitted for a qipao 旗袍 or Chinese silk gown about a month before the wedding. My mother-in-law and I chose a…   …read more.

Back in the first year with Guo Jian, when my Chinese was so remedial, he and I would sometimes spend long chunks of time in silence. We would walk together without words or enjoy a meal with only exchanged smiles between us and the occasional “hhm” or “ah-ha” about the food. Back then, we often used music to communicate. We…   …read more.

Newsletter Final Thought: April 2012 The spring rains have come to Beijing. For at least one day every spring, it rains all day long here and then leaves puddles, like in Canada, for the sun to glint off of the next day. I love it because it reminds me of home. A puddle of yesterday’s rain water on the roof…   …read more.

After we got engaged and the hustle and bustle of the proposal settled down, I realized exactly why I didn’t ever want to get married. Despite having proclaimed that I “didn’t believe in marriage” in the past—mostly as an opposition to the (then) “officially unrecognizable” nature of my same-sex unions by the government—the thing that I really didn’t believe in,…   …read more.

Ever since I came out, the discussion of butch/femme has been a common one in the queer community. It seems to have lessened over the years as a central identity point, meaning: people don’t seem as hung up about it as they used to be. Then again, that could just be my particular perspective. In the fifties, the gay community…   …read more.

  On my second trip back to Guo Jian’s hometown, the family announced one night that we should all go to the bathhouse. I had experienced a Chinese spa before and so I imagined a similar environment of whirlpools and various scented hot tubs. Basically, a collective bathing experience between men and women—in swimsuits. When we arrived at the place,…   …read more.

The first time “Tomb Sweeping Day” arrived in China while I was there, I had no idea what people were talking about. Guo Jian described it as China’s “Hallowe’en” and I was expecting costumes and candy. It was spring of 2009 and we were back to visit his parents in Shandong. As per the translation of the holiday (Qing Ming…   …read more.