We decided we’d split up for good once our child went off to college and all our parents had passed away. Instead, we agreed that I would move to another city for work.Ī man holds a rainbow-colored fan during the annual gay pride parade in Hong Kong, Nov. We worried it would devastate our parents, since three of them were in poor health. The court ruled that homosexuality is not a mental illness - it had been removed from China’s classification of mental disorders in 2001 - and ordered the clinic to apologize and compensate the plaintiff. Sixth Tone: Many clinics in China continue to offer therapy to “turn gays and lesbians straight.” In 2014, a gay man successfully sued a clinic that had conducted electroshock “conversion” therapy on him. “You need to correct it” was her initial reaction. I ended up telling her I was gay and wanted a divorce in 2007, during a petty fight when I was drunk. I asked myself: Should I keep this a secret until I’m on my deathbed, and then confess to my wife, “You’re the person I feel the deepest remorse toward because I love men”? I didn’t realize I was gay until 1999, when I first surfed the internet. My wife and I were introduced to each other by our desperate parents in 1992 when we were both 24, and we got married a few months later. Nowadays, young gays and lesbians struggle with whether they should enter a heterosexual marriage because they’re self-aware, but back then I didn’t feel any pain or conflict because I didn’t know any different. I told myself everything would be fine once I got married, even though I couldn’t stop thinking about men. The others grew up straight and married women, so I thought it was just curiosity and raging hormones. I thought that was just how boys played and behaved. I had my first sexual experience at age 11 when an older boy gave me a hand job, and then I tried it with other boys. I was born in 1968 in a small city in Hebei province, in China’s north. I was fond of girls then, and I remember I even said to my mother that I wanted to marry the prettiest girl in my class. When I was a child, I had no idea that boys could like boys. The names of all family members, including Jiancheng and Qing, have been changed to protect their privacy. Pronouns are not gendered in spoken Chinese, but we have used “she” when Jiancheng refers to Qing as his daughter and “he” when referring to Qing in the present day. This is their family’s story, as told to Sixth Tone and edited for brevity and clarity. It was through researching together online in 2014 that Qing came to recognize himself as a transgender man. But over time, Jiancheng and his child, Qing, found they could draw on each other for strength and understanding. “I worried my child might be a lesbian, and I really didn’t want to see her following in my footsteps,” Jiancheng says. But he, too, struggled to support his son, who was raised as a girl. Jiancheng’s own sexual orientation has given him firsthand experience of the silence, hurt, and judgement that LGBT individuals face. Three Chinese mothers talk about their LGBT children coming out. In May, a group of PFLAG mothers were forced out of People’s Park in Shanghai when they tried to participate in the city’s longstanding matchmaking market to increase the visibility of LGBT people. The network has since grown in size and geographic spread to more than 1,200 volunteers nationwide, with regular meetings in around 50 cities, including Jiancheng’s hometown in northern China’s Hebei province. PFLAG China was established in 2008, inspired by other PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) groups worldwide. Since 2013, Jiancheng has volunteered with PFLAG China to help parents accept their LGBT children. He’s also gay himself - a fact to which his wife is glumly resigned.
Jiancheng is the father of a 23-year-old transgender man.
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