Based on a combination of empirical fieldwork, secondary research, and cyber research, Tiantian Zheng's new book examines the tongzhi living in the metropolitan city of Dalian in northeast China. I fully appreciate many insights in her book as well as her efforts to give a voice to a marginalized group. However, unlike self-identified LGBT researchers (including myself) who have published monographs on Chinese lesbian and gay communities, Zheng's “outsider” status (p. 23) not only creates difficulties in gaining access to the local gay community (p. 20), but also leads to some serious misperception and misrepresentation of the community.
One highlight of Zheng's book (chapter 3) is the discussion of the 1/0 system pervasive among same-sex-attracted men in her research. Referring to sexual positions during penetrative sex—1 symbolizes penis and 0 symbolizes anus (rather than “vagina” as Zheng states, p. 6)—the 1/0 system does have implications for gender roles “out of bed,” but it cannot be overemphasized. She makes the overly bold claim that 1s and 0s do not share a common identity based on sexual orientation but differ from each other as two different gendered identities (pp. 13, 191). Instead of entertaining the idea that 0s are taking a “female role” and are regarded as “women” and “wives” by 1s (p. 7), a gay man in today's China is more likely to assert that he is a homosexual because he is attracted to men who self-identify as and act like men. In addition, the 1/0 division is quite fluid, since counter-examples like flamboyant 1s and butch 0s are not rare, including some informants appearing in Zheng's own book (p. 88). By arguing that the 1/0 division is rooted in the local cultural system, Zheng refers to other cultural contexts that contain similar gender-denoted same-sex relationships, but she misses the most comparable counterpart: the “top”/“bottom” division (including the category of “versatile,” which is equivalent to “0.5”) in American gay communities. While the clear-cut gender division between 1 and 0 might exist as a myth in the community, the essentialization of such myth in a scholarly work is highly problematic.
Maybe due to some “path dependency” from her previous works, sex plays a big part in Zheng's portrait of tongzhi living, from sexual transactions involving tongzhi of different class backgrounds (chapter 4) to all manner of sexual cruising and encountering, from tongzhi’s improper sexual advances towards her while she was in the field (p. 22) to sexual dramas between two tongzhi in a long-term relationship (p. 91). I am not denying reality; I am more concerned with the politics behind these representations. Since the book is titled Tongzhi Living, I wonder to what extent such a sexualized representation reflects the everyday life of ordinary tongzhi. Queer space is often erotically charged. Nevertheless, we cannot equate queer communality with sex alone—indeed, doing so is one of the most insidious facets of homophobia.
Social stigmas inhibit identification. Zheng finds that self-shame and self-negation among tongzhi lead to an ambivalent attitude toward the gay community, which undermines the building of collective solidarity (pp. 31, 154–59). Meanwhile, her characterization of tongzhi living—as a bleak reality and a hopeless future—is not that different from the one delineated in Li Yinhe's pioneering work in the early 1990s. This is certainly an inaccurate portrayal. The overemphasis on tongzhi’s self-criticisms and preoccupation with the hostile environment prevent Zheng from seeing the tremendous changes that have taken place within Chinese lesbian and gay communities over the past decade. Without those changes, the events Zheng briefly notes at the end of the book, such as hundreds of parents of tongzhi appealing for same-sex marriage and the winning lawsuit against conversion therapy, would not be happening. I would further suggest it is generational cohort, rather than class (as Zheng stresses), that shapes current tongzhi living in the most significant way.
This book seems like a byproduct of Zheng's primary project on HIV/AIDS in the sex industry. This explains why the chapter on HIV and safe sex among tongzhi (chapter 7) is the best one of the book, but the accuracy of data interpretation and bibliographic information needs to be improved. For instance, Chou's important book on tongzhi politics appears twice in the bibliography under two different names: Chou Wah-shan (pp. 5, 213) and Zhou Huashan (pp. 5, 239). It is the same Chinese name, with different pronunciations in Mandarin and Cantonese.
Given that China is a big country with considerable internal diversity, including locally situated same-sex behaviors, relationships, and identities, Tongzhi Living adds to a growing body of literature on contemporary Chinese lesbian and gay communities that should be more sensitive to local and regional difference. The insights on tongzhi’s daily negotiation of condom use will also be useful for scholars who are interested in HIV/AIDS intervention in the community.
