The second season of Qipa Shuo, a popular Chinese talk show, featured an episode on the issue of whether gays and lesbians should come out to their parents. It brought tens of millions of clicks to the online video platform iQiyi and quickly became a hot topic of conversation. Then the episode was taken down by censors, on the grounds that it dealt with “sensitive issues.”

In LGBTQ circles, coming out is a dividing line. Most of those who cross it have made up their minds to be themselves, or to free themselves from a long-held mental burden.

But what happens once you’re out?

Chinese society is becoming more and more tolerant, and online programs can now discuss issues like coming out. But tolerance isn’t the same as equality. You can talk about coming out, but you can’t openly embrace your identity.

According to the “Third Annual China LGBTQ Community Survey,” published by Work for LGBT in late 2016, in mainland China only very few LGBTQ people, around 5%, are fully out of the closet (to their families, friends, and coworkers). Around 20% have come out to some family members, 56% have come out to their friends, and 30% are entirely closeted.

We interviewed seven members of the younger generation who have already come out to at least one of their parents. While none of the seven were rejected by their families, that doesn’t mean that everything’s out in the open.

Keep It to Yourself

“Over Chinese New Year I told my parents I wanted to meet them for dinner,” says Songbanniu, who’s in his thirties. “They were talking about who had gotten married, so I took the opportunity to say, ‘I’m not going to get married to a woman. But I’ll still get married, so don’t worry about me ending up alone.’ The mood turned serious. My mom cried out, ‘Are you trying to kill us?’ But my father said, ‘I always knew.'”

Even though he’d prepared, Songbanniu says he still broke out in a cold sweat at the table that day.

That dinner was, in essence, a way for Songbanniu to fulfill what he saw as his duty to be open with his parents. It was a roundabout but powerful way of saying, “Don’t worry, I’ve found love.” “I think they can probably accept it themselves, but they’re worried about other people. They don’t want me to tell anyone else—they’re afraid I could lose my job.”

Since dinner that evening, Songbanniu says, “my family has never mentioned it again.”

Sitting next to Songbanniu is his boyfriend, Daxiong. “I think that in China most people who face pressure choose not to come out,” he says. “That’s the case with almost all of my friends.”

Pressure often comes from parents’ worries about their children—especially in a country like China, where family occupies such an important place. In families that aren’t as close, by contrast, there’s naturally less pressure.

In his first year of university, Daxiong bought a DVD copy of the gay comedy Formula 17 and hid it in his backpack. It was soon discovered by his mother, who had a habit of going through his things. Yet mother and son tacitly agreed not to bring it up.

“Then one evening much later, when we were lying in bed together, back to back. Out of the blue, she asked me, ‘You like boys, don’t you?’ I began to sweat! I said, ‘I’m still not sure what I like.’ A year later, when she asked me again, I said ‘Yes, I do.'”

Today Daxiong and his mother, who’s divorced, still have a good relationship. “At home, I never encountered anything negative because of my sexuality. My mom practically raised me as a girl. When I was a kid she had me wear dresses—I guess she thought it was fun. Now the only thing she’s worried about is that I’ll get sick,” Daxiong laughs.

But Daxiong’s father, who’s not really involved in his life, is still unaware of his son’s sexuality. “Actually, when my parents got divorced, I went to live with my dad. I think he definitely knows, we just haven’t come out and said it.”

Having open-minded parents isn’t necessarily a precondition for coming out. In fact, there’s a certain correlation between how distant family relationships are and how easy it is to come out.

Parents who are distant from their children often lead very independent lives. Whether or not their children are queer is like whether or not they have a tattoo, or which city they live in: it’s their life.

Le, a teacher in his thirties, says, “When I came out I didn’t feel any pressure. Now my parents know. After I told them, nothing changed, because I was never very close to them . . . My parents are the kind of people who don’t want trouble. They’re open-minded in the sense that they don’t want to be bothered.”

Acceptance

In China, who decide to come out to their family often think their parents will eventually come around since they love them so much. And most parents of LGBTQ children do in fact accept them. Yet such acceptance comes qualified with a request: keep it quiet. It’s as though they don’t want the family’s dirty laundry to be aired in public.

Almost every young person in China today is an only child, and most parents have poured all their love and energy into them. No matter what their child does, they’re forgiving, tolerant, and accepting. But even though parents can find a way to accept their children, once they face the outside world, they’re again beset by worries: “This isn’t good,” they think. “This isn’t natural.”

Unlike the men above, Chuizi has always been close to her parents. When she was growing up, there was nothing they couldn’t talk about.

“When I was in middle school, I told my teacher to make my parents take me to a psychologist,” recalls Chuizi.

She was in boarding school when she first realized she was different. “I confessed to my parents that I liked girls. I was really sad . . . I don’t know what prompted it, probably a kind of middle-school terror.”

A visit to the doctor didn’t reveal any medical problems, of course. “In the hallway of the clinic, waiting for the so-called doctor to talk to me, it suddenly made sense: I liked girls, so what?”

“But back then I was still young. Maybe my parents thought I was joking—they didn’t take it very seriously,” she says. “But they must have known. I wasn’t like other kids, I gave them more than a few headaches . . . Actually I planted a seed, and they began to worry.”

Chuizi’s parents really came to understand her sexual orientation when she was in college because she’d often talk to them about her romantic problems. “I used to take walks with my mom, and I’d talk about which girls I liked, that sort of thing. I wanted to share it with them. That’s also why I came out: I wanted to be closer to them,” she recalls.

Her whole coming out process, and her parents’ process of acceptance, took a long time, but eventually, they came around.

“Now, at family gatherings during Chinese New Year, when my relatives ask questions like when I’m planning to get married, they’ll deflect them for me, and say ‘she’s still young, she still needs to work,’ that sort of thing,” says Chuizi. “Though even that’s really great.”

Crown had a very different experience. Her mother took the news very calmly, in an ordinary moment over a meal. “She just asked me point-blank—’Are you?’ She said my grandmother wanted to know. I said I was. Then she replied, ‘Oh,’ and went on eating her noodles.”

It was Crown who didn’t take it calmly. The next day, she excitedly told her friends. It just seemed so rare: not every mother can ask such a question and calmly accept the answer. Crown says her mother has a very Western way of thinking. “She really respects my private life. She rarely stops by, and even when she does, she politely waits at the door. She’s not like other parents, who just intrude. I think my mom is unusually open-minded—she’s really awesome.”

Like Chuizi, Crown feels she’s had a closer relationship with her mom since she opened up about her sexuality. A lot of things she couldn’t say in the past she can now gradually start to talk about. “But sometimes my mom thinks she did something wrong, or wonders whether I turned out a lesbian because of something she did,” she says. “Whenever she says that, I always object, and say, ‘No, it’s not! I was born this way.'”

Side by Side

For LGBTQ groups, the challenge is to overcome society’s prejudice and injustice, and to speak out for themselves—for ourselves—and for the community.

For the parents of LGBTQ people, the question is how to accept something that doesn’t fit with—or is even at odds with—their values, how to accept being forced to mentally change sides.

It’s hard to reexamine an entire value system and overturn long-held beliefs. In this sense, it’s not LGBTQ people themselves who face the biggest challenge in coming out—it’s their parents.

Bon’s mother learned of her sexual orientation when she eloped with her college girlfriend.

“I was with my girlfriend at the time, and her parents were opposed to us being together, so we eloped. After that, both sets of parents met and made a scene—it was really ugly,” she recalls. “But my parents actually didn’t put up any opposition. They’re very open-minded, so there was no struggle. Looking back on it now, I think the way I acted was really not right. Later on, my mother met other girlfriends of mine.”

Now that Bon has a stable girlfriend, her mother often comes to eat with them,  and she treats them as a couple.

At breakfast one day, her mother said, “I accept you. Unlike other parents, I accept you. I just want you to be happy. For me, it’s like I have two daughters now—I’m pretty lucky.”

“I just want you to be happy”: often parents say this for their own sake. But wanting their children to be happy is reason enough for them to stand by their side—and to stand up to the world’s prejudices.

Of all the people we interviewed, only Kiya had experience with a sham marriage.

The marriage was mainly her family’s idea. They didn’t pressure Kiya herself but targeted her mother, who was in poor health. “Look what you did to your daughter!” they’d say. “At her age, she’ll never get married.” Such comments had their effect. “My mom’s the kind of person who cares about appearances,” Kiya says. “So she also wanted me to get married. She said that if I didn’t, she would never be able to look them in the eye.”

She decided to get married when she was 33. “The pressure from my mother was too great,” she says.

“I found a gay man, and we started planning a sham marriage. At first, everything was very clear. I said I wasn’t going to have children, so we’d split everything split down the middle. Then everything would be handled normally. We did a lot of preparatory work,” she says.

She also talked to a lawyer friend about many of the issues involved. Almost everything was ready. But then something inside snapped.

“My lawyer friend said, ‘an agreement is just an agreement. If you go ahead and get legally married, everything is subject to the law.’ When I got home that day, I’m not sure why, I suddenly broke down. I went back to my mom and said, ‘Mom! I’m not getting married, okay?’ I remember I spent the whole day crying. I just can’t lie. I thought, if I get married, how many excuses will I have to come up with to fill out that lie? What’s the point in putting on this show?”

Seeing her daughter burst into sobs, Kiya’s mother also began crying.

Through tears, mother and daughter finally saw eye to eye.

The day we stopped by Kiya’s home, her mother happened to be there too, and she knew why we’d come. She greeted us with excitement, then quietly closed the door behind her and went to cook dinner for her daughter. As dinner time approached, she opened the door again and asked if we’d like to eat with them.

Her mother’s accepting attitude had gradually formed a protective cover around Kiya, providing a source of strength and motivation. She’ll no longer have to fight alone. When neighbors see Kiya and her girlfriend nearby and start to ask nosy questions, her mother makes a point of saying, “That’s my adopted daughter!” and Kiya beams with delight.

How Much Further?

Many LGBTQ people in China encounter incomprehension, coldness, or verbal abuse when they come out to their parents. Sometimes parents even break off contact. The seven people we interviewed happen to all be fortunate, but their good fortune is a far cry from widespread acceptance.

The parents of the people we interviewed mostly had the following reactions:

“I see.”

“I still love you.”

“Your happiness is all that’s important.”

Yet even the most accepting parents are seldom willing to say, “Gays and lesbians are regular people. I’ll come out with you.” They accept their children, but ultimately what they’re accepting is how their children are different, not how they’re the same as everybody else. Their acceptance comes most often out of love.

This shows that there’s hope, but also that progress in society at large still has a long way to go.

Our last interviewee, Kiya, told us, “Just two months ago, I accidentally hurt my foot and had to get surgery. At the time I really wanted my girlfriend to sign some consent forms for me at the hospital, but they wouldn’t let her. I can’t help but think, when I’m older, if something really serious happens, my girlfriend will have no way to sign in my place, since she’s not my ‘family.’ Maybe they won’t even let her in the operating room. What do I do then?”

After coming out, there’s still a long road ahead.

On this long road, hopefully the people you love and who love you will walk alongside you, lighting your way.

Contributor: Chen Yuan
Interviewer: Shou Xing,  Chen Yuan
Photographers: David Yen, Crown Wang