Being Transgender in East Asia

This means, among other things, that I didn't know what the TG situation in Taiwan would be like. It could have been exactly the same as it was in China, or exactly the opposite. Before I got there, I had no firm idea, although I had inklings.

One major hint was the reactions my Taiwanese friends had had when I told them I'm TS. One of my best friends, whose English name is Alice (although I keep trying to convince her to change it to Eileen), had a great response when I told her. She had my favorite reaction, actually -- honest, compassionate, good-natured curiosity. Telling her was a strange experience -- I told her out loud, in public, in Chinese.

So then, it came about that, three years after I had returned from China, I went to Taiwan. I packed up lots of femme clothing among my dictionaries and travel guides. I didn't know if I was going to have opportunity to use it, but I knew I was going to be prepared in case an opportunity came up.

Taipei felt like the average of Beijing and the US in many ways. There were convenience stores -- 7-11 has more than 1000 stores in Taiwan -- but they had ramen where the Campbell's Soup would've been. There were tons of neon around, but all of it was in Chinese. But in many ways, Taiwan was totally unlike China. People were dressed amazingly fashionably, far more than in the US People were also, generally speaking, at least as capitalistic as they are in the US, if not more so.

But onto my specifically-TG experiences. Where do I start? The thing is, this time, I was consciously and purposefully trying to look for the TG scene from the beginning, so my experiences were so numerous that they're almost hard to count.

Probably the first major impression I got was that Taiwanese people, in general, have expectations very much like those of Chinese people when it comes to strange foreigners. I was, again, a weirdo -- the Caucasian outcast, in many ways. Although I could see that some people were looking at me as an example of fashion, as a guide for how they should look, rather than as an example of the strangeness of foreigners. Again, I got used to thinking or muttering under my breath, "What's your damned problem? Why the hell are you staring at me?"

But there were also some very nice people when it came to TG experiences. When you don't know a Taiwanese person, they will treat you like pot-scrapings, but when you get to know them, they will protect your relationship with them fiercely. I got to know several people well enough that I felt comfortable telling them I'm TS, and their reaction was almost universally that honest and well-motivated curiosity I love so much.

I also happened to be in Taiwan when a great deal of TG-related events happened, it would seem. I think that the TG movement in Taiwan is just beginning to start, but I think I may also have just noticed things because I was conscious of them, not because there was a preponderance of them.

One of the first things that happened when I got there was that a male got arrested for crossdressing in public. My first thought was "Oh, crap, Taiwan is not as free as I thought it might be," but it turned out that the person had been previously arrested several times. I still haven't sorted out the facts of the case, but it appears that the police may have arrested this person for an actual crime, not for crossdressing.

On The Air

I of course could not let this by-pass me. I rushed downstairs to the phone (I was living in a dorm, and the only private phone was on the first floor, ten stories below me), forgetting my radio which would have allowed me to listen in while I tried to get through. But I was soon dialing furiously, trying to catch an open line, cursing the fact that I had forgotten the radio, but too nervous to rush up to get one.

After about fifteen minutes (I think it was that long, anyway -- I was too nervous to tell, really), I managed to get through. The engineer told me when I would be up, and asked me some basics about myself. I told him I was a foreigner, and that I was TS -- I was guaranteed to get a chance to talk with a resume like that.

After waiting nervously, doodling in my notebook, the engineer clicked on to tell me I was next. My adrenaline shot up, and in a few moments, the host was there. She asked me my name -- I'm still not sure if she got my Chinese surname right. I said I was a foreigner, and she said the cliched old thing about how "Oh, your Chinese is so good..." She also said I was the first foreigner to call in to her show, and how this was a historic moment. I also explained that I am TS.

Well, for about ten minutes, I basically just laid it all out in Chinese. Once or twice, I couldn't think of how to explain something -- she said "You can use English if you want to," but I said that I probably couldn't figure it out even if I did use English. She asked me a lot about myself, and I wanted to keep it more theoretical, but we never had an actual conflict or anything. She was very cool about it, calm, considerate, intrigued. She asked me lots of great questions, and I tried my best to answer them. When it was over, I was amazed -- I had been able to maintain a conversation about TG issues in Chinese! It was especially amazing that I had enough Chinese vocabulary to talk about such issues in Chinese -- I barely have enough in English.

I eventually found the local queer scene in Taipei. There's a little bar/pub in Taipei called Locomotion, which is run by a very spunky lesbian woman, Sharon, who is (among other things) very interested in TG issues. She is also the girlfriend of one of my friends, Antonia, whom I met in the language program I was in over the summer. Well, soon after I met Sharon, we got onto the topic of TG issues, and soon after that, she asked me to give a talk about the issues in her pub as part of an ongoing series of talks.

Well, the day of the talk eventually came. I couldn't let the opportunity pass me by -- I gave it en femme. I had to apologize to the audience for my not being able to modify my voice -- I'm still not very good at that particular skill. I also had to apologize for my Chinese, although it proved to be quite good enough to give the talk. I talked for about an hour about my personal philosophy and system of being transgender, and then the audience asked me questions and we discussed things for another hour or two. It went very well -- there were a lot of people there (about forty or so), and they were all quite interested and considerate. We got into some very interesting topics, and I think I opened a lot of eyes.

After the talk, several people came up to me and asked me further questions. One of them was a reporter with a local weekly magazine. She asked to do an interview with me for an article she was doing about transgender people. My ego is pretty hard to satisfy, and when someone gives me an opportunity like that to talk about myself, I find it hard to turn down, and a week or so later, she interviewed me. After I agreed to do the interview, but before actually doing it, I checked out the magazine. It was, unfortunately, rather icky, with some rather risquÈ stories. I asked her about the nature of her magazine, and she assured me that although she didn't totally agree with the general focus of it, her articles were not in that stream. I have yet to see the magazine -- she'll send me a couple copies once it's out. Wish me luck...

After a while, several of us -- including the reporter, Sharon, Antonia, a couple other people and me -- went out to a local vegetarian restaurant. I have rarely tried to pass in a public, daytime space. That was one of them. It was nerve-wracking, but being with a group made it a lot easier to bear others' double-takes. And after that, after I had returned home (where I was living with Antonia), I took off my makeup and I was laying around, just talking about the day's events. Antonia happened to mention that she thought I was more passable without my makeup than with it, because the makeup drew attention to my features, making it obvious that I was trying to hide something, while going without was more subtle. We decided to test the theory and go get something to eat at a convenience store. We went there, and, from the cashier's reaction, I could tell that I was in fact less passable this way. I am definitely going to wait until after electrolysis to try to pass without makeup any more.

Those two things -- talking on the radio and giving the talk -- were the highlights of my transgender experiences in Taiwan. There was one more pretty cool experience, though.

Showtime in Taipei

It took me a while to get around to it, though. First, I wanted to try to get everyone who came to my talk to go see the show afterwards. But a ticket to get in was NT$1000 -- about US$40. For me, it was worth it -- when I'm in the US, the closest real drag show I could ever realistically see is in Chicago, but to get there, I'd definitely have to spend more than $40. I guess the folks who came to my talk weren't quite interested enough to make it worth their while.

But I did finally go, by myself. And, of course, I went en femme. I called early to reserve a seat; when I got there, I found out the seat was in the front row. The theater was fairly small, and the lights from the stage illuminated me more than I would have liked. I get the feeling I was more of an attraction to some of the patrons than the performers on stage -- their costumes may have been a lot better -- a lot better -- but I was a foreigner, and the audience-members couldn't be sure of my sex, so I was a bit more intriguing. I basically just tried to ignore the side-long stares and concentrate on the stage.

The stage was definitely worthy of my attention. The show was really quite good. It wasn't just a bunch of drag queens parading around and telling bad jokes or anything like that. The entire show was well-choreographed, and there were a variety of musical numbers -- traditional Chinese folk songs, Japanese pop music, a scene or two from "Fairway My Concubine." There were also a couple of parts with amazing costumes. One outfit included a dress with a large bustle-type-thing in the back with a light built in, so the entire rear lit up like a firefly or something. The bustle later opened up into wings. It's kind of hard to describe, but trust me, it was like a gossamer pastel dream. There were a lot of other amazing outfits, too. The last main section of the show was a fashion-show type thing, with a variety of beautiful, glamorous outfits all in black and white. The pictures that accompany this show various aspects of the show.

Another experience I had was nearly finding a boyfriend. Well, that's getting too personal -- suffice it to say that the first man I've ever kissed was Taiwanese.

Other than these few things, I don't really have any specific instances to record, just the generally friendly attitude of the Taiwanese people I met. There were a lot of people who looked at me strangely on the streets when they saw in drabs (long hair, earrings and all), but there were also a lot of very nice people for whom the fact that I'm TG was totally acceptable and respectable.

So I guess the final message is, if youíre thinking of going to Taiwan or China and expressing your TG-ness while youíre there, do it, but do it carefully. You will find that a lot of people are very accepting of you, and if you persevere, you will eventually find a very nice niche for yourself there.