Reticent poetics, queer politics

The attitude of the Chinese tradition towards sexual matters between the same sex is to silently tolerate rather than to openly accept. Ever since [I] have had something to do with the subject of ‘tongzhi’, the three characters, ‘same sex love’, has like a curse been tattooed to my face, with the rest of my body rendered invisible [. . .]. In any situation, this ‘tattoo’ will follow me like a shadow its form. My colleagues say, ‘hey, there’s a guy waiting for you in the office’. My old schoolmates will insinuate, ‘don’t underestimate [your] mother, maybe you can just be honest and tell her’. My mother says, ‘if you continue to communicate with Beijing tongzhi after 1997, then you cannot stay on in this home’. Before that, she said, ‘if you are gay/homosexual, you are not my son’.