maybe some people I’m close to, and I go like this [in female attire and with long
hair], but that won’t work with people I’m not close to [relatives and neighbors],
because if others see me, they’ll start gossiping about my family, and I don’t
want to embarrass my family. I have to think of my parents’ feelings.”83
The family is the foundation of Chinese society. Marrying and having children and
carrying on the blood line are expectations that Chinese society places on adult men
and women. Consequently, the pressure to marry on transgender people is equally
intense. Jin Fei comes from Shandong, and as soon as she goes home, she’s pressured
to marry:
“My family members know I’m a performer, but they don’t know I’m this kind of
person [transgender]. My home is in the countryside, so people are always trying
to fix me up. I just act very picky and criticize the other person’s shortcomings.
As soon as I get home they’re making me meet a prospective spouse, and all I
can do is to find fault with them. I don’t dare tell my family, because they all live
in the countryside; my brother and sister are uneducated and don’t understand.
They feel I need to marry and have children and carry on the family line. They
don’t think the way I do, and even if I told them, they wouldn’t understand.”84
In Chinese culture, a person is not an isolated individual, but part of a family and clan
network. If a person’s behavior doesn’t conform to
social mores, it brings shame on the entire family.
Xiao Huli spends all year in Shanghai:
“In Chinese culture, a
person is not an isolated
“I have very little contact with my family.
Maybe the occasional phone call in the
course of the year. After being away
so long, a person’s thinking becomes
different from the family’s, and we just can’t
communicate. They don’t know my identity,
and I don’t want them to know. If you let
individual, but part of a
family and clan network.
If a person’s behavior
doesn’t conform to
social mores, it brings
shame on the entire
family.”
them know, your status in the family, and
the weight of what you say, decreases more
and more. If they knew you’d had breast implants, they would really look down
on you, and they’d feel you made the whole family lose face.”85
83 Interview with Xiaomeng, Beijing, April 29, 2014.
84 Interview with Jin Fei, Shanghai, July 15, 2014.
85 Interview with Xiao Huli, Shanghai, May 27, 2014.
23