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Contemporary Queer Chinese Art 1st Edition Hongwei
Bao Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Hongwei Bao, Diyi Mergenthaler, Jamie J. Zhao
ISBN(s): 9781350333529, 1350333522
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 4.46 MB
Year: 2023
Language: english
All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law.
Copyright 2023. Bloomsbury Academic.

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 CONTEMPORARY QUEER CHINESE ART

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 QUEERING CHINA
Series Editors: Hongwei Bao (University of Nottingham, UK)
and Jamie J. Zhao (University of Hong Kong, HKSAR)

Queering China: Transnational Genders and Sexualities is the first academic book
series to explore the queer nature and contours of China through a transnational
and transcultural framework. It explores queerness and Chineseness through an
intersectional approach that is attuned to the encounters, syntheses, and
dissonances of local, transnational and global queer and feminist studies,
knowledge and movements.

The series offers a critical, intellectual space for pioneering, creative scholarship
focusing on contemporary gendered and sexual cultures, desires, identities
and subjectivities in the Sinosphere and a transculturally interconnected
world. We welcome cutting-edge, groundbreaking, multidisciplinary research
on contemporary Chinese media, arts, communities and movements concerning
gender and sexuality, especially their marginalized embodiments and
manifestations, that have been shaped by global flows of information and capital,
cross-border migration and activism, translingual communication and digital
technologies.

ii

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 CONTEMPORARY QUEER CHINESE ART

Edited by Hongwei Bao, Diyi Mergenthaler and Jamie J. Zhao

iii

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 BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK
1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA
29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland

BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in Great Britain 2023

Copyright © Hongwei Bao, Diyi Mergenthaler and Jamie J. Zhao, 2023

Hongwei Bao, Diyi Mergenthaler and Jamie J. Zhao have asserted their right under the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work.

For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xii constitute an extension of this

copyright page.

Series design by Louise Dugdale

Cover image @ Shi Tou

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission
in writing from the publishers.

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any
third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given
in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher
regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have
ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: HB: 978-1-3503-3351-2

ePDF: 978-1-3503-3353-6
eBook: 978-1-3503-3352-9

Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com
and sign up for our newsletters.

iv

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 CONTENTS
Illustrations vii
Acknowledgements xii
Notes on Spelling, Transliteration and Names xiii

Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS QUEER ABOUT QUEER CHINESE ART? 1
Hongwei Bao, Diyi Mergenthaler and Jamie J. Zhao

Part I
QUEERING FORMS, MATERIALS AND TRADITIONS

Chapter 2
SAMESEX LOVE: A ‘FROG IN THE WELL’ LOOKING FOR A WIDER SKY 21
Xiyadie

Chapter 3
THE ART OF VULNERABILITY: VULNERABILITY AS A COMMUNICATION
DEVICE IN KINBAKU 33
Bohan Gandalf Li

Chapter 4
A CHILD TAUGHT ME HOW TO PAINT DINGDING 43
Wei Yimu

Part II
FEMINIST INTERVENTIONS

Chapter 5
BODY PORTRAITS 61
Ma Yanhong

Chapter 6
MY WORDS TO THE WORLD: THREE ARTWORK SERIES 69
Shi Tou

Chapter 7
FROM FEMINIST ARTMAKING TO QUEER IMAGE WRITING 83
Li Xinmo

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 vi Contents

Chapter 8
RADICAL ART OR RADICAL ACTIVISM?: MY QUEER AND FEMINIST
CAMPAIGNS 95
Wei Tingting

Part III
FEMINIST, QUEER AND TRANS CURATION

Chapter 9
WOMEN’S ARTS FESTIVAL: FEMINIST CURATING IN
CONTEMPORARY CHINA 111
Jiete Li and Claire Ruo Fan Ping

Chapter 10
SECRET LOVE: VISUALIZING IDENTITY, SEXUALITY AND NORMS IN
CHINESE ART 129
Si Han

Chapter 11
AFTER SPECTROSYNTHESIS: ASIAN LGBTQ ISSUES AND ART NOW? 151
Brian Curtin

Chapter 12
BETWEEN FRINGE AND CANON: THE TRANS MOTIFS OF
FENMA LIUMING 163
Diyi Mergenthaler

Part IV
TRANSNATIONAL AND DIASPORA QUEER ART

Chapter 13
TOO MUCH AND NOT YET ENOUGH: BURONG ZENG’S
THEATRE AND LIVE ART WORKS 183
Burong Zeng

Chapter 14
THE MOUTH WIDE OPENS AND SHUTS: QUEER FOODISM AND IDENTITY 195
Popo Fan

Chapter 15
IMAGINING QUEER BANDUNG: CREATING A TRANSNATIONAL
AND DECOLONIAL QUEER SPACE 201
Hongwei Bao

About the contributors 213

Index 217

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 ILLUSTRATIONS
2.1 Xiyadie, Boiling, water-based dye and Chinese pigments on
Xuan paper, 26 x 26 cm, c. 1989. Courtesy of Xiyadie. 22
2.2 Xiyadie, Pleasure, water-based dye and Chinese pigments
on Xuan paper, 26 x 26 cm, c. 2016. Courtesy of Xiyadie. 23
2.3 Xiyadie, Happines, water-based dye and Chinese pigments on
Xuan paper, 130 x 130 cm, c. 1990. Courtesy of Xiyadie. 24
2.4 Xiyadie, A Fish on the Chopping Board, water-based dye and
Chinese pigments on Xuan paper, 130 x 130 cm, c. 2016.
Courtesy of Xiyadie. 26
2.5 Xiyadie, Pleasure, water-based dye and Chinese pigments
on Xuan paper, 30 x 30 cm, c. 1990. Courtesy of Xiyadie. 27
2.6 Xiyadie, Imprisonment, water-based dye and Chinese pigments
on Xuan paper, 30 x 30 cm, c. 1996. Courtesy of Xiyadie. 28
2.7 Xiyadie, Pot, water-based dye and Chinese pigments on
Xuan paper, 130 x 130 cm, c. 2016. Courtesy of Xiyadie. 29
2.8 Xiyadie, Wall, water-based dye and Chinese pigments on Xuan
paper, 130 x 130 cm, c. 1990. Courtesy of Xiyadie. 30
3.1 A still of contact improvization at the Kinbaku workshop ‘Embrace’.
Participants dance with each other, while using one finger
as ‘a point of contact’ throughout the process. 2022. Empty
Space, Shanghai. Courtesy of Bohan Gandalf Li. 37
3.2 A Still of ‘Embrace’ exercise at the Kinbaku workshop
‘Embrace’. 2022. Empty Space, Shanghai. Courtesy of
Bohan Gandalf Li. 38
3.3 A Still of Kinbaku scene from a Kinbaku lesson. 2021.
Empty Space, Shanghai. Courtesy of Bohan Gandalf Li. 39
4.1 Wei Yimu, Rainbow Adventure, acrylic paint, water-colour
pigments and colour pencils on paper, 40 x 52 cm, c. 2018.
Courtesy of Wei Yimu. 45
4.2 Wei Yimu, Rainbow Flowers, acrylic paint, water-colour
pigments and colour pencils on paper, 29 x 40.3 cm. c.2019.
Courtesy of Wei Yimu. 45
4.3 Wei Yimu, Rainbow Prison, acrylic paint, water-colour
pigments and colour pencils on paper, 34.9 x 40.1 cm.
c.2018. Courtesy of Wei Yimu. 46
4.4 Wei Yimu, Coat Hanger, water-colour pigments on
paper, 38 x 28.5 cm. c.2021. Courtesy of Wei Yimu. 49

vii

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 ILLUSTRATIONS
2.1 Xiyadie, Boiling, water-based dye and Chinese pigments on
Xuan paper, 26 x 26 cm, c. 1989. Courtesy of Xiyadie. 22
2.2 Xiyadie, Pleasure, water-based dye and Chinese pigments
on Xuan paper, 26 x 26 cm, c. 2016. Courtesy of Xiyadie. 23
2.3 Xiyadie, Happines, water-based dye and Chinese pigments on
Xuan paper, 130 x 130 cm, c. 1990. Courtesy of Xiyadie. 24
2.4 Xiyadie, A Fish on the Chopping Board, water-based dye and
Chinese pigments on Xuan paper, 130 x 130 cm, c. 2016.
Courtesy of Xiyadie. 26
2.5 Xiyadie, Pleasure, water-based dye and Chinese pigments
on Xuan paper, 30 x 30 cm, c. 1990. Courtesy of Xiyadie. 27
2.6 Xiyadie, Imprisonment, water-based dye and Chinese pigments
on Xuan paper, 30 x 30 cm, c. 1996. Courtesy of Xiyadie. 28
2.7 Xiyadie, Pot, water-based dye and Chinese pigments on
Xuan paper, 130 x 130 cm, c. 2016. Courtesy of Xiyadie. 29
2.8 Xiyadie, Wall, water-based dye and Chinese pigments on Xuan
paper, 130 x 130 cm, c. 1990. Courtesy of Xiyadie. 30
3.1 A still of contact improvization at the Kinbaku workshop ‘Embrace’.
Participants dance with each other, while using one finger
as ‘a point of contact’ throughout the process. 2022. Empty
Space, Shanghai. Courtesy of Bohan Gandalf Li. 37
3.2 A Still of ‘Embrace’ exercise at the Kinbaku workshop
‘Embrace’. 2022. Empty Space, Shanghai. Courtesy of
Bohan Gandalf Li. 38
3.3 A Still of Kinbaku scene from a Kinbaku lesson. 2021.
Empty Space, Shanghai. Courtesy of Bohan Gandalf Li. 39
4.1 Wei Yimu, Rainbow Adventure, acrylic paint, water-colour
pigments and colour pencils on paper, 40 x 52 cm, c. 2018.
Courtesy of Wei Yimu. 45
4.2 Wei Yimu, Rainbow Flowers, acrylic paint, water-colour
pigments and colour pencils on paper, 29 x 40.3 cm. c.2019.
Courtesy of Wei Yimu. 45
4.3 Wei Yimu, Rainbow Prison, acrylic paint, water-colour
pigments and colour pencils on paper, 34.9 x 40.1 cm.
c.2018. Courtesy of Wei Yimu. 46
4.4 Wei Yimu, Coat Hanger, water-colour pigments on
paper, 38 x 28.5 cm. c.2021. Courtesy of Wei Yimu. 49

vii
viii Illustrations

4.5 Wei Yimu, Hamburger, water-colour pigments on

paper, 38 x 28.5 cm. c.2021. Courtesy of Wei Yimu. 50
4.6 Wei Yimu, Flower, water-colour pigments on paper,
38 x 28.5 cm. c.2021. Courtesy of Wei Yimu. 51
4.7 Wei Yimu, I Hate Christmas, water-colour pigments on
paper, 38 x 28.5 cm. c.2021. Courtesy of Wei Yimu. 52
4.8 Wei Yimu, Winner, water-colour pigments on paper,
38 x 28.5 cm. c.2021. Courtesy of Wei Yimu. 53
4.9 Wei Yimu, Awesome Pink Cow, water-colour pigments on
paper, 38 x 28.5 cm. c.2021. Courtesy of Wei Yimu. 54
4.10 Wei Yimu, Dingding Portrait I, water-colour pigments on
paper, 38 x 28.5 cm. c.2021. Courtesy of Wei Yimu. 55
4.11 Wei Yimu, Dingding Portrait II, water-colour pigments
on paper, 38 x 28.5 cm. c.2021. Courtesy of Wei Yimu. 56
5.1 Ma Yanhong, Adulthood, oil on canvas, 190 x130 cm,
c. 2006. Courtesy of Ma Yanhong. 61
5.2 Ma Yanhong, A Certain Smile, oil on canvas, 261 x180 cm,
c. 2008. Courtesy of Ma Yanhong. 62
5.3 Ma Yanhong, Two Danes, oil on canvas, 165 x 140 cm,
c. 2009. Courtesy of Ma Yanhong. 64
5.4 Ma Yanhong, Venice Hostel, oil on canvas, 142 x 107 cm,
c. 2012. Courtesy of Ma Yanhong. 65
5.5 Ma Yanhong, White Balloon, oil on canvas, 180 x 60 cm,
c.2009. Courtesy of Ma Yanhong. 65
6.1 Cover of Modern Civilization Pictorial, published by the
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, 2002. Courtesy of Shi Tou. 71
6.2 Commemorate, C-print, Made in Beijing, 2006. Courtesy
of Shi Tou. 73
6.3 Witch’s Work, C-print, Made in Beijing, 2006. Courtesy
of Shi Tou. 74
6.4 Karaoke, C-print, Made in Beijing, 2006. Courtesy of Shi Tou. 75
6.5 Three photographs from top to bottom are titled
I Want to Go Back to My Hometown, Two Ming Ming
and Breathing. Made in Guizhou and Beijing, 2007.
Courtesy of Shi Tou. 76
6.6 The installation view of the Underwater series at the
venue for performance art at the Oslo World International
Music Festival. This space is usually a café in ordinary days.
Oslo, 2019. Courtesy of Shi Tou. 77
6.7 Concave–Convex No.2, acrylic on wallpaper. Beijing,
2004, Courtesy of Shi Tou. 78
6.8 Concave–Convex No.1, acrylic on wallpaper. Beijing,
2004, Courtesy of Shi Tou. 79
6.9 Concave–Convex Series was at the First Chinese Art Exhibition
Gender Diversity in Beijing in 2009. Courtesy of Shi Tou. 80
 Illustrations ix

7.1 Li Xinmo, Female Model’s Head, 30x20x20cm, c. 2012. Beijing.

Courtesy of Li Xinmo. 85
7.2 Li Xinmo, The Opening of the ‘Bald Girls’ Exhibition, c. 2012.
Beijing. Courtesy of Li Xinmo. 86
7.3 Li Xinmo, Drifting (Still of A Café), 66 x 100 cm c. 2016,
Germany. Courtesy of Li Xinmo. 87
7.4 Li Xinmo, Drifting, 27 x 19 cm, c. 2016, Germany. Courtesy
of Li Xinmo. 88
7.5 Li Xinmo, Drifting, 60 x 40 cm, c. 2016, Beijing. Courtesy
of Li Xinmo. 89
7.6 Li Xinmo, Drifting, 200 x 300 cm, c. 2019, Beijing Dongyue
Art Gallery. Courtesy of Li Xinmo. 90
7.7 Li Xinmo, A Still from Images series. 60 x 100cm, c. 2013,
Beijing. Courtesy of Li Xinmo. 92
7.8 Li Xinmo, A Still from Images series. 60 x 100cm, c. 2013,
Beijing. Courtesy of Li Xinmo. 93
7.9 Li Xinmo, A Still from Images series. 60 x 100cm, c. 2013, Beijing.
Courtesy of Li Xinmo. 93
8.1 The ‘Bloody Brides’ performance art, 2012, Beijing. Courtesy
of Wei Tingting. 99
8.2 The ‘Bald Sisters’ performance art, 2012, Beijing. Courtesy
of Wei Tingting and Feminist Voices. 101
8.3 The Anti-CCTV Action, 2014, Beijing. Courtesy of Wei Tingting. 102
8.4 Bi China film poster. Courtesy of Wei Tingting. 105
9.1 Women Arts Festival 2021, Beijing Edition full programme.
Designed by Ivy Yixue Li. 2021. Copyright to In Light of
Shadows (Banying). 118
9.2 Me and Twenty-Two Hers: last scene of the performance.
Photographed by Shan Xiaolei. 2021. Copyright to In Light
of Shadows (Banying). 123
9.3 Me and Twenty-Two Hers: post-performance group photo of
the production team and audience. Photographed by Shan
Xiaolei. 2021. Copyright to In Light of Shadows (Banying). 124
10.1 Cheng Juanzi and Song Jianing. Me and I. 7 min. Video. 2008.
Courtesy of Cheng & Song. 130
10.2 Chi Peng, I Fuck Me: Office. 120x155cm. Photo Print. 2005.
Courtesy of Chi Peng. 131
10.3 Wang Zi, Hello Comrades 2. 110x240cm. Photo Print. 2010.
Courtesy of Wang Zi. 132
10.4 Lin Jinfu’s oil paintings on display at MFEA 2012. Courtesy of
Karl Zetterström/MFEA. 133
10.5 Yang Guowei, Post-80s series–Little Devil. Photo Print. 2006.
Courtesy of MFEA. 134
10.6 Li Guangxin’s photo work Noise Prohibited on display at
MFEA 2012. Courtesy of MFEA. 135
x Illustrations

10.7 Yang Guowei, The Park. 100x148cm. Photo Print. 2011.

Courtesy of MFEA. 136
10.8 Zhang Yuan’s film on display at MFEA 2012. Courtesy of
Karl Zetterström/MFEA. 137
10.9 Gao Yuan, Don’t Be Hurt and Sad, I’ll Take You with Me.
57x100cm. Acrylic on canvas. 2011. Courtesy of Gao Yuan. 138
10.10 Ma Liuming’s works on display at MFEA 2012. Courtesy of
Karl Zetterström/MFEA. 140
10.11 Gao Brothers’ works on display at Tropenmuseum in
Amsterdam 2015. Courtesy of Si Han 141
10.12 Qiu Jiongjiong’s documentary and in Xie Qi’s oil paintings
on display at MFEA 2012. Courtesy of Karl Zetterström/MFEA. 142
10.13 Jiang Qigu, Apart 2. 145x100cm. Ink on paper. 2000. Courtesy
of MFEA. 143
10.14 Li Xiaofeng, Flower Boys 4. Ink on paper. 2009. Courtesy of MFEA. 144
10.15 Li Yongfei, Forest in the mountain. 70x68cm. Ink on paper.
2009. Courtesy of MFEA. 145
10.16 Li Xinmo, Memory. Performance Photo. 2011. Courtesy of
Li Xinmo. 147
10.17 Tropenmuseum 2015. Courtesy of Si Han. 148
10.18 Outdoor exhibition at Gustav Adolfs Torg in Stockholm in
2021. Courtesy of Si Han. 149
11.1 Tao Hui, Talk About Body. 2013, 3' 45", single-channel colour
HD video with sound. Image courtesy of the artist and Sunpride
Foundation. 157
11.2 A Brief History of Me, Hotam #1. artist book cover, 2014.
Courtesy of the artist. 158
11.3 Jun-Jieh Wang, Passion. 2017, 11'40", 3-channel colour
HD video installation with sound. Image courtesy of the
artist and Sunpride Foundation. 159
11.4 Su Hui-Yu, Nue Quan. 2015, 8' 40", double-channel colour
HD video installation with sound. Image courtesy of the artist
and Sunpride Foundation. 160
12.1 Fen-Ma Liuiming I. Beijing. c. 1993. Photographed by Xu Zhiwei,
Courtesy of Ma Liuming. 166
12.2 Fen-Ma Liuming II. c. 1994. Photographed by Xing Danwen.
Courtesy of Ma Liuming. 168
12.3 Fen-Ma Liuming’s Lunch I. c. 1994. Beijing. Photographed
by Xing Danwen. Courtesy of Ma Liuming. 171
12.4 Fen-Ma Liuming in Dusseldorf. Germany. c.2000. Courtesy
of Ma Liuming. 173
13.1 Step 3 of Happening at the Very Moment at KCAA Gallery,
Beijing. Courtesy of Burong Zeng. 187
13.2 Rehearsal of Living Out of a Suitcase at Attenborough Centre
for the Creative Arts, Brighton. Courtesy of Burong Zeng. 189
 Illustrations xi

13.3 Sit, Wait, and be Sweet. Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club,
London. Photo credit: Orlando Myxx. Courtesy of Arts
Feminism Queer. 191
13.4 One backdrop of the seven-day live streaming Non-Taster
(in black and white). Courtesy of Burong Zeng. 192
14.1 Mama Rainbow film still. Courtesy of Popo Fan. 196
14.2 Beer! Beer! Film still. Courtesy of Popo Fan. 197
14.3 Lerne Deutsch in meiner Küche film still. Courtesy of Popo Fan. 198
15.1 Open-air film screening at Bi’bak. Courtesy of Marvin Girbig. 202
15.2 Organizers (left to right: Popo Fan, Sarnt Utamachote and
Ragil Huda) at the film festival opening event. Courtesy
of Marvin Girbig. 202
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In the most distressing time of the COVID-19 epidemic and amid frequent
government crackdowns on queer culture and activism in China, we initiated this
project to document some of the most exciting developments in the field of
contemporary queer Chinese art. Doing such an ambitious, field-defining project
during the most chaotic time in modern human history, we, together with all the
contributors’ unfaltering trust and determination, finished this project by
conquering countless challenges – more than we could have ever anticipated. We
sincerely thank all the artists, curators, activists and scholars who have participated
in this project and who have shared their wonderful works and valuable insights
on contemporary queer Chinese art. We would also like to thank Bloomsbury
editors and the anonymous peer reviewers for their belief in this book project and
for making this book a reality. Our thanks also go to Phil Cowley and Gareth Shaw
for preparing image files and proofreading book chapters.
Most chapters presented in this book were first presented and discussed at the
‘Queering the Boundaries of the Arts in the Sinosphere’ research workshop co-
organized by Diyi Mergenthaler, Justyna Jaguscik, Mehmet Berkay Sülek, Helen Hess
and Sujie Jin in May 2021. We thank the University of Zurich’s Graduate Campus and
Graduate School for funding and promoting the workshop.We also thank interpreters
Feifei Zhang, Kexin Wei and Michelle Deeter for translating and proofreading the
workshop materials, which laid a solid foundation for this book project.
Hongwei Bao is grateful to many queer artists, filmmakers and activists who
have supported this project and his decade-long research on queer Chinese culture.
He would also like to thank the University of Nottingham for supporting this book
project.
Diyi Mergenthaler would like to express deep gratitude to her mother Bai Fan,
who, in the last month of her life, continued supporting Mergenthaler to pursue an
academic career in queer and feminist art studies. Fan’s exceptional optimism,
courage and tolerance in her fight against critical illness have given Mergenthaler
the strength to quickly swallow up the news of her death and lead the workshop as
planned. Diyi Mergenthaler also thanks her partner Lukas Mergenthaler and other
family members, friends and workshop participants from the bottom of her heart
for standing by her and cheering her up in her darkest moments.
Jamie J. Zhao would like to thank the diverse research and funding opportunities,
as well as the generous start-up grant, from the School of Creative Media at City
University of Hong Kong for supporting her academic and publishing activities
and making the global promotion of this book project and Bloomsbury’s new
book series ‘Queering China: Transnational Genders and Sexualities’ possible. She
also expresses her gratitude to many colleagues and friends who offered their
emotional, intellectual and moral support at low points of her life.

xii
 NOTES ON SPELLING, TRANSLITERATION AND NAMES
This book uses simplified Chinese and the hanyu pinyin ≹䈝᤬丣 system of
transliteration for Chinese words, names and places, except in cases where a
different convention or preferred writing, spelling or pronunciation exists.
The ordering of Chinese-language names usually follows their conventional
forms; that is, family names first, followed by given names. But we have also
followed artists’ and authors’ personal preferences in presenting their names. All
the author’s surnames are written in capital letters in the ‘about the contributors’
section at the end of this book.

xiii
xiv
 Chapter 1

I N T R O D U C T IO N : W HAT I S QU E E R A B OU T QU E E R
C H I N E SE A RT ?
Hongwei Bao, Diyi Mergenthaler and Jamie J. Zhao

One of the most exciting developments in the Chinese art world in the past few
decades has been the emergence of queer Chinese art; that is, artworks that
celebrate gender and sexual diversities and that are often produced by lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) identified artists. In 2012, the Museum
of Far Eastern Antiquities (Östasiatiska museet) in Stockholm hosted the Secret
Love exhibition, the biggest queer Chinese art exhibition outside Asia to date. The
exhibition brought together 150 works created by twenty-seven renowned queer
Chinese artists such as Chi Peng, Ma Liuming, Ren Hang and Shi Tou (Si 2012, 8).
These bold works feature gender fluidity, sexual diversity and polymorphous
desire. Coming from a country where homosexuality remains largely taboo and is
often censored in official and mainstream media, these artworks took the world by
surprise. Ten years have passed since Secret Love, and such exhibitions remain few
– a notable exception is the Spectrosynthesis: Asian LGBTQ Issues and Art Now
exhibition that took place at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei in 2017.
We still know very little about these artists and their artworks. In academia, there
has been a dearth of scholarship on contemporary queer Chinese art to date, both
in English and Chinese languages. This book fills this gap in knowledge. It brings,
for the first time, some of these artworks and artists to visibility in the Anglophone
world. It presents creative, reflexive and critical essays written by sixteen artists,
curators and art critics. In doing so, the book offers readers a rare glimpse of some
of the recent developments in contemporary queer Chinese art from the People’s
Republic of China (PRC) and its diaspora. It also presents unique perspectives on
the dynamism of Chinese society and contemporary Chinese art in the first two
decades of the twenty-first century.
This introductory chapter serves as both a contextualization of the topic and a
theoretical intervention into the intersecting fields of queer studies, China studies
and art history. In putting the book together, we invited our contributors
to consider the following key questions: what is queer about queer Chinese art?
How has ‘Chineseness’ – understood in contingent, flexible and non-essentialized

1
2 Contemporary Queer Chinese Art

ways – impacted our understandings of queer art? What is art, and furthermore,
what makes records of queer lives and queer activism a work of art? Through
our diverse case studies on the topics of gender, sexuality, identity, transnational
mobility, transcultural curation and art activism, we aim to think critically
and radically about these questions as we cross the disciplinary boundaries
between relevant academic fields such as art history, queer studies and Chinese
studies.
In this introduction, we first explain the keywords crucial to our analysis,
theorization and discussion, including queerness, Chineseness and contemporary
art. We then move on to a brief overview of the key chapters and themes in
the book, which is contextualized in the Chinese avant-garde art movement,
feminist art practices and transnational queer movement, as well as international
exhibition and curating cultures. These material and historical contexts have
played a key role in the emergence and development of contemporary queer
Chinese art in multiple forms, styles and media, and with local, regional and global
ramifications.

De-Westernizing queerness

This book uses the English term ‘queer’ to encompass a wide range of nonnormative
genders and sexualities. The English term ‘queer’ used to carry a derogatory tone
when deployed to refer to LGBTQ people, especially in the Anglophone context,
until queer activists and academics in the US appropriated the term for positive
use in the 1980s and 90s (Brickell and Collard 2019; Jagose 1997; Lord and Meyer
2013). This linguistic and social background of ‘queer’ has often been referenced as
a key point in global queer art history (Li 2014; Lord and Meyer 2013; Tong 2011).
In the Chinese-language sphere, the term was translated as ku’er 䞧‫( ݯ‬a
transliteration of queer) and guaitai ᙚ㛾 (freak) in Taiwan in the 1980s and later
guaiyi lilun in the mainland Chinese context (Lim 2008, 2009; Bao 2021). The
Chinese term 䞧‫ ݯ‬has often been used by urban youth to celebrate individuality,
non-conformity and ‘coolness’. It has also been used by activists, artists, writers and
academics who endorse a non-essentialist and anti-identarian political stance
towards gender, sexuality and subjectivity. It is in this sense that we talk about ku’er
yishu 䞧‫ݯ‬㢪ᵟ (queer art) as a contemporary form of art and culture in China
and globally.
When conceptualizing the project of Contemporary Queer Chinese Art, we
acknowledge these trans-geo-cultural and cross-linguistic flows of queer politics
and knowledge, as well as the term’s Western origin and constantly mutated and
glocalized meanings. Meanwhile, our usage of queer in studying contemporary
Chinese art recognizes the constructive, radical, norm-defying power of queerness
as a critical theoretical-analytical approach in an age of globalization and
digitization that has been fraught with information flows, social-political
contestations and (trans-)cultural encounters, creolization and hybridization. In
particular, we employ queer in this project to contest heteronormativity, patriarchy
 Introduction: What is Queer About Queer Chinese Art? 3

and all kinds of norms and ideals associated with gender, sexuality, nationality,
class and other sociocultural identities in the Chinese-speaking context. By so
doing, we reflect on the queer-centred knowledge production, artwork production,
circulation and interpretation, and subject making and remaking in local,
transnational and global settings that have been shaped by contemporary Chinese
queer and feminist movements, as well as modern and postmodern Chinese art
cultures.
Furthermore, through queer, we highlight and link together the subjectivities of
gender and sexual minorities, artists and Chinese-speaking communities. We do
so by situating their marginalized feelings, lived experiences, memories and
practices in the contexts of global queer histories, politics and art creations. This
practice, rather than simply a linguistic borrowing from Western articulations,
symbolizes the ‘intra-actions’ (Barad 2003, 815) between Chinese and Sinophone
contexts that cultivate different understandings of gender, sexuality, ethnicity and
nationality associated with works of art.
When naming the works discussed in this book as ‘queer’ Chinese artworks, we
are aware that this practice might risk reducing and even excluding the participation
of non-‘queer’ (or at least not self-identified as such) subjects, or those who resist
being represented by queer, in Chinese activist and artistic discourses. The complex
relations between queer art, queer practices, queer meaning, and queer sexuality
and identity raise a series of key questions. For instance, how can ‘queer’ be used to
describe subject positions and art productions that are made possible by self-
identified heterosexual artists or named as heterosexual ones in Chinese art
history? How can one perceive queer Chinese identity and identification in a
work of art or as an aesthetic experience? Inspired by Gayatri Spivak’s (1998)
famous provocation ‘Can the subaltern speak?’, our contributors use their
knowledge and experience to explore whether and how queer Chinese citizens as
socially marginalized subjects can speak and be heard, both in China and
internationally.
In this book, we highlight that the English term ‘queer’ and its associated
Chinese terms such as tongzhi ਼ᘇ (comrade or gay or queer), ku’er and lala
᣹᣹ (lesbian) conceive great potential for gender and sexual minorities to
challenge normativity and hegemony in the transnational Chinese context. On
the one hand, these terms open up new spaces for people to configure self-
affirmative sexual and gender non-conforming identities. On the other hand, they
facilitate a site of belonging with considerable degrees of self-governance. We
especially highlight the importance of affectively collecting and connecting the
fragmented lived experiences, remembrances and stories of gender and sexual
minorities outside a universalized heteronormative history. By contemplating
the affective connections between queer, art and Chinese subjects, we revise the
‘chrononormative’ (Freeman 2010, 3) narratives that are often used to justify the
performance of a repetitive and reproductive lifetime as the only meaningful
bodily experience of time. We interrupt ongoing institutional and intersectional
violence against non-conforming bodies in order to create a sense of discord,
resistance and queerness.
4 Contemporary Queer Chinese Art

Problematizing Chineseness

The articulation of Chineseness is important in art and culture. It can inform

audiences of imagined ethnocultural features, but it can also be problematic if
these features are taken for granted without ‘examin[ing] the function each
configuration serves, the legitimizing discourse behind each mobilization, its
efficacy in unsettling the sign of the national in all its guises, and the agents
empowered and disenfranchised in the process’ (Lim 2006, 6). Sinologist Tu Wei-
ming (1991) traces the development of a Chinese cultural consciousness and its tie
to a cumulative image of China as an uninterrupted civilization until the Western
invasion in the late nineteenth century. This consciousness has been seen as
the cornerstone of Han-centric Chinese nationalism in alignment with the
unquestioned identification with a shared past mapped by particular territorial,
linguistic and ethnic-religious terms, such as the ‘Wei River Valley’ (regarded as the
geographical origin of Chinese civilization) (Shih 2007; Tu 1991, 3). In recent
years, Sinophone studies have called into question the ‘self-evident’ nationalism
and the shared knowledge of a ‘China proper’. It also highlights the transcultural
shaping of the everyday experience and identity formation in Sinitic-language
cultural regions, where Chinese ethnocultural frames have dwindling influences
over accelerated regional disintegrations, ethnolinguistic diversification and
geopolitical conflicts.
The concept of ‘queer Sinophonicity’ (Chiang 2014, 19–21) destabilizes both queer
studies and Sinophone studies by treating each field as a way to shape an alternative
epistemology in the other field. Similarly, Jamie J. Zhao and Hongwei Bao (2022)
advocate using ‘queer/ing China’ as a critical paradigm to challenge the essentialized
notions of Chineseness and queerness, to bring China out of the ghetto of area studies
and to transnationalize and decolonize queer studies. All these scholarly interventions
bespeak the productivity of bringing queerness and Chineseness into critical dialogues
with each other, which is also a key aim of this book.

Queering art

The term ‘art’ is derived from the Latin word ars, meaning skill and craft. In the
twentieth century, the sphere of art has expanded from ‘fine art’ (e.g., paintings,
sculptures and prints) to ‘contemporary art’. Many authors attribute the start of
contemporary art history to 1989, a year marked by significant events in
sociopolitical, economic and cultural fields across the globe, including the
dissolution of the Soviet Union, the end of Apartheid in South Africa and the
culmination of student protests in postsocialist China (Bauman 1998; Danto 1997;
Harvey 1989; Smith 2009, 2010). As a keyword of this book, the term ‘contemporary’
highlights the artists’ agency to appropriate existing cultural forms to engage with
the present time (Danto 1997; Gao 2011; Gladston 2014; Jiang 2021; Smith 2009,
2010). Besides denoting a surge of art materials, techniques and styles, the term
‘contemporary’ indicates a postmodern understanding of cultural practices in the
 Introduction: What is Queer About Queer Chinese Art? 5

Euro-American-centric art world in the post-1989 economic and cultural

globalization. It captures the moment when the Western modernist organization
of knowledge lost its ‘self-evident’ tone, while postcolonial, feminist and queer
epistemologies started to unravel the internalized violence and hierarchy in the
sign of ‘art’. For example, the multi-modernity discourse has marked non-Western
scholars’ efforts to decolonize the Eurocentric art history and to reconfigure the
meanings of art and cultural production by and for people from economic
peripheries (Enwezor 2002; Gao 2005, 2011; Mosquera 2013; Wu 2008). In
particular, Chinese feminist and queer politics have problematized the dominance
of patriarchal, heteronormative representations of the body in Chinese visual
culture (Bao 2020; Si 2012; Tong 2011, 2017).
Against this background, we use ‘queer Chinese’ as an adjective for art. In doing
so, we underline the creative dimensions of premodern, modern and postmodern
cultural practices in Chinese-speaking regions. We pay attention to queer-themed
self-expressions and works created by artists in the Chinese and Sinophone worlds
which have produced meanings of Chinese queerness and queer Chineseness. In this
book, a special focus is given to the lived experiences, stories and memories inscribed
in these contemporary artworks and practices, which reflect the artists’ approaches
to dealing with the conceptual, sensual and affective dimensions of intersected
identities and stereotypes, such as the ones concerning Chineseness, Asianness,
womanhood and queerness. This understanding of ‘queer’ as ‘diverse modalities of
hybridity’ (Shohat 1992, 110) compels us to inspect the complex nature of Chinese
visual arts and cultural production.1 Accordingly, we recognize the crucial role of
these identities and communities in shaping today’s visual culture.
At the same time, we also treat ‘queer’ as a verb to contest the patriarchal
academic discourses in visual culture, the dominance of a Western anthropocentric
organization of artworks by ethnocultural features, the forcible divorce of
queerness from Chinese representations and the separation of queer popular
culture from art. By naming ‘queer Chinese art’ an art category, we ‘relay certain
erotic, moral, and political horizons of the ideal’ (Davis 2010, 34) and, thus, rethink
art history as ‘an edgy discipline capable of veering between hostility and hospitality
to border crossing from adjacent fields such as literature, cinema, and cultural
studies’ (Mitchell 2015, 6).

A brief queer Chinese history

As anthropologist Lisa Rofel (2007) points out, neoliberalism has nurtured desiring
subjectivities such as queer identities in the post-Mao era. With the government’s

1. According to Ella Shohat (1992, 110), as a descriptive catch-all term, hybridity ‘fails
to make distinctions between diverse modalities of hybridity, for example, forced
assimilation, internalized self-rejection, political co-optation, social conformism, cultural
mimicry, and creative transcendence’.
6 Contemporary Queer Chinese Art

official decriminalization of homosexuality in 1997 and depathologization of

homosexuality in 2001, there has been a proliferation of queer culture in post-
2000 China. In retrospect, curatorship and art criticisms were not yet
institutionalized in the 1990s. Queer artistic freedom owed much to the relatively
relaxed postsocialist cultural policy in the 2000s. Grassroots feminist and queer
movements gained momentum in postsocialist China after the United Nations
World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995. In contrast to the
underground art scene in the 1990s, artists could undertake an individual, digitized
and semi-public mode of art production in the 2000s (Gao 2005, 2011; Li 1993; Wu
2008). Early queer Chinese arts and activists, including Ma Liuming and Shi Tou,
emerged at this historical juncture.
Between 2000 and 2015, the Chinese authorities softened control over gender-
and sexuality-related arts and culture. The relatively liberal cultural policies and
globalized art networks created opportunities for queer Chinese artists to
communicate with the international art world and transnational queer movements.
Most of the artists covered in this book created their works and made their names
during this period.
Transnational feminist and queer movements inspired many queer Chinese art
practices in the second half of the 2000s. Particularly after the 2008 Beijing
Olympic Games, many grassroots queer art, activist and cultural events took place
in semi-public or public spaces. Examples include the Shanghai Pride, the first
queer art exhibition ‘Difference-Gender’ held in Songzhuang – a place north of
Tongzhou District on the outskirts of Beijing, the gay and lesbian wedding
performance on Qianmen Street in Beijing in 2008 and the annual Queer
University filmmaking workshops. In the early 2010s, the proliferation of social
media (e.g., Weibo and WeChat), art market websites and online art magazines
contributed to the democratization of the contemporary Chinese art environment.
In addition to diversifying the modes of shaping, sharing and archiving
artworks, commercial virtual spaces and organizations also introduced a thriving
Chinese queer activist and cultural scene to the international art world, and vice
versa.
Since the mid-2010s, the Chinese government has tightened control over queer
culture and shut down queer and feminist activism, public events and social media
accounts (Bao 2018, 2020; Deklerck and Wei 2015; Tan 2016; Zhao 2020, 2022).
The Beijing Queer Film Festival ेӜ䞧‫ݯ‬ᖡኅ, which started in 2001, was forced
into a guerrilla mode of curation, holding irregular screening events in queer-
friendly cafés, bars, foreign embassies and even on a moving bus. In 2020, Shanghai
Pride, the biggest queer public event in mainland China, was shut down despite the
relaxation of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown measures at the time. Queer
Chinese culture and activism are faced with serious challenges in the middle of a
global pandemic and under constant government crackdowns on civil society. It is
in this historical context that this book was put together as an effort to document
fast disappearing and resurging queer history and culture, reflect upon what has
happened and what has been achieved in the past decades and consider what we
can learn from this important history.
 Introduction: What is Queer About Queer Chinese Art? 7

Throughout the book, we explore ‘queer Chinese art’ with various academic,
artistic or personal lenses, through interdisciplinary approaches and via
multidimensional affective histories. Contributors to this book come from various
academic and art fields and different parts of the world. Most have actively engaged
with queer Chinese cultural productions, circulations and interpretations on local,
transcultural and global scales. The book’s geographical contexts span Asia, Europe
and North America; its cultural forms encompass art, performance, media and
activism. This book is thematically divided into the following four parts, which
also represent four key themes of the book.

Queering forms, materials and traditions

As Jean Molino (1992, 11) notes, ‘life and metamorphosis do not merely have a
historical dimension; they characterize forms in all circumstances, and the
immediately perceived form takes on movement, is already movement.’ In this
sense, a form is more than a trace of human activity situated in a historical time
and a geographical space. More importantly, as a medium, a form mediates between
its creator’s and spectators’ subjectivities and lived experiences. The practices
of storytelling and comprehending human lives contain a certain degree of
ambiguity, because these narrative forms are often institutionalized, ritualized and
contextualized in different historical periods and geographical locations. Moreover,
a variety of forms only become available to the eyes in transcultural encounters. By
comparing forms, one learns to imagine the relationship between self and others.
When configuring forms to create an aesthetic experience, an artist fuses personal
experiences with particular social histories inscribed on these mediums.
The emergence of queer Chinese art (਼ᘇ㢪ᵟ tongzhi yishu and 䞧‫ݯ‬㢪ᵟ
ku’er yishu) can be traced back to the late-1970s, following our usage of ‘queer’ as
an affirmative expression by and for people with sexual and gender non-
conforming identities. When speaking of ‘queerness’ as a form of Chinese culture,
we recognize the dual narratives enclosed in this form, including an artist’s
self-expression and the allegory of premodern, modern and contemporary
Chinese subjects. For example, as demonstrated in Chapter 2 of this volume,
Xiyadie uses a traditional Chinese women’s craft, papercutting, to express
homoerotic fantasies and lived experiences. The form of papercutting creates an
analogy between the inferior status of gay men in a heteronormative society and
that of village girls under patriarchy, who, like their mothers and other illiterate
female relatives, have to rely on papercutting skills to document personal stories
and engage in village affairs, such as praying to deities and commemorating the
dead. In his diaristic-style papercuttings, Xiyadie recounts the experiences shared
by many Chinese gay men of his age, who have hidden their sexualities from the
public and struggled for social acceptance in small Chinese towns and villages.
Like many other queer people, Xiyadie could not imagine himself coming out as a
gay man, because coming out risked being charged with liumangzui ⍱≃㖚 (the
crime of hooliganism) before 1997 and being treated with conversion therapy
8 Contemporary Queer Chinese Art

before 2001. Xiyadie’s papercuttings, therefore, challenge the taken-for-granted

equation between queer and a Westernized, urbanized contemporaneity. In his
works, queer can be articulated as folk, rural and traditional. Furthermore, the
papercuttings provide an excellent example to democratize contemporary art
forms and Chinese aesthetics. They illustrate that papercutting can also be a
contemporary artmaking technique.
In Chapter 3, kink practitioner and queer activist Gandalf Bohan Li explores
human subjectivity and intimacy through rope bondage. Rope bondage can be
traced back to the methods of tying up captives and also erotic performances in
Japanese history. Through tying practices, Li encourages participants to perceive
the rope as a means to undo binary-gendered bodies. In what he calls ‘the art of
vulnerability’, Li uses rope and tying skills to open up discussions on intersubjectivity,
intimacy and human connectedness.
Wei Yimu, in Chapter 4, reflects on his role as an artist and a teacher in children’s
art education. He recounts how he creates gender-fluid dingding бб (willy in
English) representations for his own pleasure and, at the same time, shows his
commitment to engaging the audience with queer topics through children-friendly
art practices. Wei recounts that his Rainbow Base series was influenced by American
TV shows and comics such as Superjail and The Avengers. The dingding series was
inspired by his nine-year-old pupil’s drawing. Instead of representing a gender-
binarist, hetero-sexualized maturity, Wei fuses dingding with objects that seemingly
lack masculine characteristics, such as clothes hangers, polished nails and toys. In
so doing, Wei’s dingding paintings reveal the porous boundaries between childhood
and adulthood in a playful manner.

Feminist interventions

In this section, we query how factors such as artists’ sensibility, consumer culture
and queer theory combine to create queer feminist art. We ask: how are queer
women represented in contemporary Chinese art? How do queerness and
feminism intersect in these artworks? What roles does art play in feminist and
queer activisms in transnational Chinese contexts?
In her study of Chinese feminist art, Tong (2011, 2017) distinguishes three
political spheres, including gender politics, identity politics and queer politics. In
the sphere of gender politics, female same-sex erotica, BDSM-themed art and
transgender performance constitute some of the confrontational feminist
vocabulary that disputes the ideal womanhood constructed through the male gaze
and by patriarchal institutions. At the same time, these forms emphasize women’s
autonomy in determining their own gender role, sexual orientation and objects/
subjects of desire. In the sphere of identity politics, female same-sex erotica
produces the political articulation of tongzhi yishu ਼ᘇ㢪ᵟ (works of art based
on same-sex identifications) and an appeal for the recognition of same-sex
subjectivities and rights. In the sphere of queer politics, queer Chinese art
expressions question gender binary, homonormativity and heteronormativity.
 Introduction: What is Queer About Queer Chinese Art? 9

They also transcend the boundaries between the corporal and the conceptual
through embodied performances (Tong 2017). Tong’s schematic mapping offers us
a critical lens to examine the complexities of gender and sexuality in contemporary
Chinese art.
The nuances of artists’ lived experiences and political standpoints have created
various modalities of queer and feminist art practices. The boundaries between
feminist, avant-garde and queer are not always clear. In a strictly censored political
and cultural environment, avant-garde and feminist aesthetics can become a useful
channel to expose oppressed gendered bodies, articulate queer voices and unmask
the hidden queer Chinese subject, which has yet to gain recognition in
contemporary Chinese society.
Studies show that China’s official media has deployed a new set of rhetorical
devices to transform class struggles into the pursuit of individual economic success
since the early 1980s (Bao 2020; Dai 2007; Tong 2011). In this process, masculinized
socialist women subjectivities (e.g., ‘iron girls’ 䫱ခ၈ and the ‘barefoot doctor’ 䎔
㝊५⭏) were devalued in 1980s popular culture in China. At the same time,
postsocialist official discourses embraced an objectified and sexualized image of
women in consumer culture and revived the idea of traditional Chinese
womanhood that revolves around (neo-)Confucian, patriarchal family values (Dai
2007, 36–37; Zhu and Xiao 2021). In the field of art, the first women’s art exhibition
in post-Mao China, The Female Artists’ World ྣ⭫ᇦⲴц⭼, took place at the
Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing between 20 and 30 May 1990. The
exhibition manifested the resurgence of a binary gender discourse.
The United Nations World Conference on Women (UNWCW hereafter) took
place in Beijing in 1995. This historical juncture witnessed the resurfacing of
feminist critiques in art magazines and journals in post-Mao China. Many Western
feminist scholarly works were translated and published in China around the same
period. These works were met with enthusiasm in an urban reading community.2
Before the UNWCW, local authorities shut down two artist communities in
Beijing: Dongcun ьᶁ (the ‘East Village’ of Beijing; see, Rong 2019; Wu 2008, 38)
and the Yuanmingyuan Artist Village ശ᰾ഝ⭫ᇦᶁ.
Queer feminist artist Shi Tou used to live and work in the Yuanmingyuan Artist
Village. As Shi recalls, she had to move into her friend’s place in downtown Beijing
after the forced closure of the village (Huang 2018). Nevertheless, this experience

2. Published in Jiangsu Pictorial, the woman art historian Xu Hong’s essay ‘Walk Out of
the Abyss: My Feminist Critiques’ (1994) is widely seen as the first feminist manifesto in the
Chinese art world. Chinese translated academic publications such as Linda Nochlin’s
Women, Art, and Power: And Other Essays (1995), Griselda Pollock’s Vision and Difference
(2000), and Jo Anna Issak’s Feminism and Contemporary Art: The Revolutionary Power of
Women’s Laughter (2000) reached the Chinese artists, art critics and scholars in the 1990s.
These books were published by Yuan-Liu Publishing Company in Taiwan. For details, see Li
(2012).
10 Contemporary Queer Chinese Art

also brought Shi closer to the urban feminist and queer reading communities in
Beijing. In 1998, Shi and her friends organized the first Chinese Lesbian Conference,
founded the first lesbian group, ‘Beijing Sister’, ran the first lesbian hotline and
published the first lesbian magazine titled Sky ཙオ in mainland China. Her oil
painting Female Friends (c. 1997) documents not only the feelings of feminist
sisterhood, but also the existence of female same-sex intimacy in the 1990s. In
Chapter 7, Shi introduces three series of her works, i.e., the Calendar series, the
Butterfly series and the Underwater series, which were all created during her
participation in the transnational feminist and queer movements.
Queerness has been used to articulate a radical feminist politics in Chinese
visual arts since the late 1990s. On 3 March 1998, artists Cui Xiuwen, Yuan Yaomin,
Li Hong and Feng Jiali cofounded the feminist art collective ‘Sirens Art Studio’ at
the opening of Century Women, a remarkable group exhibition in China’s feminist
art history. In paintings by Cui, Li and Yuan, in particular, queerness is used as a
means to expose, parody and subvert the patriarchal stereotypes of Chinese
women as heteronormative, passive subjects. For example, Li’s paintings (e.g.,
Existence ᆈ൘ [c. 1995], Water Lilies ࠪ≤㣉㫹 [c.1995] and The World ц⭼
[c.1996]) present a tired-and-sad-looking lesbian couple in a poorly furnished
toilet. Feminist art critic Tong Yujie (2011, 161) notes that these paintings drew
inspiration from Li’s observation of Chinese lesbian farm workers located at the
margins of a heteronormative urban culture and at the bottom of the neoliberal
capitalist system.
The UNWCW contributed significantly to the building of a sustainable network
between Chinese feminists, lesbians and their international counterparts. At the
conference, lesbian rights were officially put on the feminist agenda.3 Feminism
and queer political agenda converged at a major international conference. Around
this period, there was a surge of women’s NGOs, which arguably functioned as ‘a
symbol of the emerging “civil society” and hence a promising sign of democratic
development in China’ (Brook and Frolic 1997; Howell 2003; Wang 2018).
Particularly, project-based women’s NGOs gained momentum after the UNWCW
(Wang 2018, 262). Around the same period, self-affirmative queer terms in the
Chinese language, including tongzhi, ku’er, lala and kuaxingbie 䐘ᙗ࡛
(transgender), gained growing popularity in gender and sexual minority
communities. They gradually replaced tongxinglian ਼ᙗᙻ (homosexuality) and
other Chinese expressions, slang and jargon and became prominent signifiers in
campaigns for gender and sexual diversities and equal rights after 2000.
Between 2000 and 2015, relatively loose cultural policies and increasing
international cultural exchanges expanded the scope and the amount of queer
visual cultures produced by self-identified heterosexual artists in mainland China.
Songzhuang ᆻᒴ was the cradle of China’s first queer exhibition Difference-

3. See Palesa Beverly Ditsie’s statement at United Nation Fourth World Conference on
Women in Beijing at www.un.org/esa/gopher-data/conf/fwcw/conf/ngo/13123944.txt.
 Introduction: What is Queer About Queer Chinese Art? 11

Gender ࡛ᙗ (c.2009), which showed queer artworks by both queer-identified

and queer-friendly artists (see Chapter 6 in this volume). The transformation of
Songzhuang into an avant-garde art base can be traced back to the mid-1990s.
Accompanying the compulsory closure of the East Village and the Yuanmingyuan
Artist Village, many migrant artists fluxed into Songzhuang, following prominent
contemporary Chinese artists and critics such as Li Xianting, Fang Lijun, Ai
Weiwei and Yue Minjun (Sina Finance 2005). By 2005, the successful negotiation
between these avant-garde artists and the local government turned Songzhuang
into one of the most popular tourist destinations for contemporary Chinese art.
The commercial success of Songzhuang encouraged many city governments to
support, if not invest in, international art projects such as biennials, triennials and
creative sites (including Beijing’s 798 Art District, Shanghai West Bund, Songzhuang
and Guangzhou Redtory). Artist Ma Yanhong’s representation of two fully naked
white men in her paintings emerged in this context.
In Chapter 6, Ma recounts the process in which she created oil paintings A
Certain Smile and Two Danes. Due to the depictions of two fully naked white men
on canvas, the two paintings often invite queer readings, although they were not
intended to. This story reminds us of the multiplicity and unpredictability of
queerness in art production, circulation and consumption. International art
exchange has inspired queer feminist artist and critic Li Xinmo to develop the
method of ‘image writing’ – a visual form of écriture feminine – which rewrites
heteropatriarchal social scripts and creates queer meanings. In Chapter 7, Li shares
her exploration of feminist art forms during the first Bald Girls exhibition and her
understanding of gender and sexuality after networking with queer Chinese artists
at the Secret Love exhibition.
As scholar Qi Wang (2018) notes, compared to state-initiated waves of
feminism,4 practices led by a younger generation of feminist activists (e.g., the
Feminist Five discussed in Chapter 8) feature an ‘outer system’ and even dissident
political standpoints, ‘philanthropic volunteerism’ and the transformation of
performance art and cyberspace into feminist agency. In our book, the activist art
practised by prominent feminist and queer activists such as Wei Tingting (Chapter

4. Women’s liberation movements have been large-scale state enterprises in much of

modern Chinese history. Before the foundation of the PRC, feminism was seen as part of
the national liberation, which recruited Chinese women to fight against imperialist
expansion and colonial rule. In the 1950s and 1960s, state feminism invigorated China’s
planned economy with the participation of a female labour force. After 2000, the Women’s
Federation uses the rhetorical device ‘leftover women’ ࢙ྣ to push young women to get
married. Besides, lesbian issues have not been part of the state feminist work, as recalled by
the activist Xian (alias), ‘One officer from the Women’s Federation once told me that they
could work on sex worker issues, because that could save Chinese women from suffering.
But for lesbians, women who choose to “corrupt” themselves, they could not do anything’.
See documentary We Are Here (2015) directed by Zhao Jing and Shi Tou.
12 Contemporary Queer Chinese Art

8) and Popo Fan (Chapter 14) exemplifies the conscious transformation of feminist
and queer performances into an activist form that delivers strong social and
political messages. Examples of such queer feminist performances include the
stage enactments of Vagina Monologues (2003–), the anti-domestic violence
campaign (2011) and the ‘Occupy Men’s Toilets’ protest (2012), as discussed in
detail by Wei in Chapter 8.

Feminist, queer and trans curation

In the context of Chinese avant-garde art, non-queer-identified artists have

appropriated queer images in order to contest established Chinese art paradigms
represented by the socialist realism aesthetics. In the early 1990s, the opportunities
to enter public museum exhibitions were only open to artists and artworks that
followed the Party-led socialist academic art tradition (Feng 2007; Gao 2005; Li
1993; Wu 2008). There were very few public spaces for the exhibition of avant-
garde and contemporary art. Meanwhile, many avant-garde artists left their
hometowns for Beijing to seek career opportunities. They crowded into low-cost
suburban areas and founded artists’ communities such as the Yuanmingyuan
Artist Village and the East Village.
The genderfluid persona ‘Fen-Ma Liuming’ was born in the migrant artist Ma
Liuming’s private studio in the East Village in 1993 (Lü 2010; Rong 2019). Its art
life, however, was soon terminated by police in 1994 (see Chapter 8). As a rebellious
and ‘futile behaviour of human being’, ‘Fen-Ma Liuming’ witnessed an illiberal
political and cultural environment in the 1990s (Li 1994; Lü 2010; Ma 1994).
Similarly, the oil paintings of an effeminate Mao (Rouge series, ca.1989–mid-
1990s) by the political pop artist Li Shan, which expressed the artist’s feeling of
uncertainty, could not be exhibited in any art institutions in mainland China
during the 1990s (Russell 2013). Both the ‘Fen-Ma Liuming’ figure and Li’s political
pop works exemplify an exiled queer Chinese body, which was unable to become
an artistic form or a lifestyle in the mainland Chinese society in the 1990s.
As Bao (2020) points out, the intersections between queer and Chinese identities
illuminate the metamorphosis of mainland Chinese society towards its postsocialist
form, i.e., an ongoing experiment of mingling socialist orthodoxy with Confucian
values and neoliberal capitalism. As narrated in the documentary Zhi Tongzhi 䂼਼
ᘇ (Queer China, ‘Comrade’ China) directed by queer activist, scholar and filmmaker
Cui Zi’en, there were a number of interdisciplinary, interregional and transnational
collaborations between people and institutions from mainland China, Hong Kong,
Taiwan and the Chinese diaspora from the 1980s to the 2000s. In particular,
transnational queer academic and activist exchanges in the 1990s nurtured the
emergence of queer identities and communities in China.
Since 2010, queer curatorial practices and art exhibitions have played a pivotal
role in amplifying women, feminist, queer and trans representations in
transnational Chinese societies. Examples include the Spectrosynthesis art
exhibition, the Secret Love art tour and the Women’s Arts Festival. These exhibitions
 Introduction: What is Queer About Queer Chinese Art? 13

raise provocative questions concerning the translatability of Western concepts and

the influence of these concepts on queer and feminist Chinese politics. How can
the Anglophone term ‘queer’ convey the anti-hegemonic demands articulated in
gender and sexual movements in contemporary China? In this section, our
contributors address this from a grassroots perspective with a focus on people’s
lived experiences. We regard cross-cultural translation as a productive, generative
activity carried out by transnational cultural practitioners.
In Chapter 9, Jiete Li and Claire Ping introduce their curation of the Women’s
Arts Festival, a city-wide, one-month-long event organized by Banying (aka In
Light of Shadows) in Beijing in March 2021. Li and Ping discuss feminist politics
and their concept of a ‘fluid museum’ through which visitors can find a diverse
selection of art events in public spaces across the metropolis. Chapter 10 is written
by queer curator Si Han who organized the biggest queer Chinese art exhibition
Secret Love in Europe. Si Han looks back at the development of contemporary
queer Chinese art in the past four decades and offers critical insights on topics and
themes covered in this book. He also identifies dominant themes and emerging
trends that shape the development of contemporary queer Chinese art at present
and in the future. In Chapter 11, curator Brian Curtain offers a critical reading
of the Spectrosynthesis exhibition, noting that ‘the contexts of Asia complicate [. . .]
questions of recognition, rights and assimilation’ and ‘the lack of a progressive
narrative (like Queer British Art) of queer liberation in exhibitions in Asia’. In
Chapter 12, Diyi Mergenthaler explores the trans motifs of ‘Fen-Ma Liuming’ with
a focus on its agency of translating chronobiopolitics between geopolitical borders
and generating possibilities to reimagine a fluid boundary between art and popular
culture. Her study highlights the agency of queer and queer-friendly cultural
actors to reconfigure the aestheticization of ‘Fen-Ma Liuming’ and provides
insights into queer life, self-expression and politics in China.

Transnational and diaspora queer art

According to Arjun Appadurai (1998), the digital mediation of migrants’ stories

has opened up discussions on cultural pluralism, citizenship and blueprints of a
post-national order. The relocation of queer Chinese artists and activists to other
parts of the world has contributed to critical reflections on the queer Chinese
identity. In this section, we examine the dynamics within which queer and Chinese
diasporic positions interact and intersect with each other. In the COVID-19
pandemic, for example, Chinese artists have voiced solidarity with Black and Asian
activists at the frontlines of anti-racist movements such as ‘Black Lives Matter’,
‘BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour)’ and ‘Stop Asian Hate’ around
the world. Several queer and feminist projects by Chinese diasporic artists have
also placed emphasis on the racial and ethnic dimensions of queer bodies in
Western societies (Bao 2022).
Queer writer and performance artist Burong Zeng moved to the UK in 2016.
Zeng created her livestreaming performance Non-Taster about food, sense of taste
14 Contemporary Queer Chinese Art

and identity in the spring of 2020 and in the middle of a pandemic lockdown. As
elaborated in Chapter 13, in this performance, Zeng adopted a participatory
approach to explore the act of swallowing food and its metaphor for the
circumstance in which a person must wrap one’s head around ‘thoughts, feelings
and emotions when there is no better option’. Zeng’s works point to issues of home,
belonging, diaspora identity and human connectivity to engage with contemporary
pandemic politics marked by rising individualism, nationalism and xenophobia.
Queer filmmaker Popo Fan has lived in Berlin since 2017. According to Fan’s
observation in Chapter 14, the mainstream queer identity in Berlin is already
‘normalized, commercialized and gentrified’, but ‘people cannot comfortably
connect Asianness and queerness with each other’. Fan discusses two short films
Beer! Beer! and Lerne Deutsch in meiner Küche (Learn German in My Kitchen) that
he created in Berlin. In these short films, he uses the affective linkages between him
and Asian food to reflect on his queer Asian diaspora identity living in a European
capital. More importantly, he uses food and culinary practices to subvert racialized
and stereotypical representations of ‘Chineseness’ and to parody xenophobia in
Europe. In doing so, he underscores the intersectionality between queerness and
Asianness in the Chinese diasporic body, which embodies the agency to question
territorialized social and cultural norms.
In the final chapter of this volume, Bao introduces the Imagining Queer Bandung
project, a series of film festivals and filmmaking workshops that took place in
Berlin in 2021 and in which queer Chinese filmmakers Fan Popo and Kit Hung
participated. As Bao eloquently concludes, through connecting with artists,
filmmakers and activists from other parts of the world, queer Chinese artists enact
‘minor’ forms of queer transnationalism and articulate a decolonial queer politics
based on the political idea of the ‘queer Bandung’.

Coda

Through fifteen chapters, this book showcases the heterogeneity of queer lives,
cultures and experiences in the transnational Chinese context. It foregrounds
continuing efforts made by queer Chinese artists, activists, curators, critics and
scholars to celebrate queer love, history and performances in contemporary China
and cross-geoculturally. By tracing how queer and queer-friendly artists express
themselves as individuals and collectives in artist and activist forms, we hope that
these critical voices, artistic practices, personal stories, scholarly explorations and
reflexive approaches can inspire readers to probe further into issues of identity,
aesthetics and cultural politics.

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18
 Part I

Q UEERING FORMS, MATERIALS AND TRADITIONS

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 Chapter 2

S A M E  SE X L OV E : A ‘ F R O G I N T H E W E L L’
L O O K I N G F O R A W I D E R SK Y

Xiyadie

The title of this chapter demonstrates my desire to live a free life. It expresses our
experiences as tongzhi ਼ᘇ (gay or queer) in China. We are still living in a largely
traditional sociocultural environment and are surrounded by people who advocate
traditional values. This is very depressing, and it hurts. In this chapter, I share my
experience of becoming an artist. I have selected eight papercuttings to tease out the
complexity of my pleasure and agony during my journey of trying to make sense of
my own tongzhi identity. My storytelling begins with the work titled Boiling ⋨ (see
Figure 2.1). It captures the moment of explosion when a person is situated in a
traditional society and has suppressed their sexual desires due to social pressure
and traditional values for quite a long time. Sexuality plays a crucial role in seeking
pleasure through one’s own body. In Boiling, I depict the dilemma that I sexually
desire men yet have to suppress and hide my desire from others. The man imagined
in this work is sexually aroused, but at the same time, he wants – in a self-conflicting
way – to cool himself down. His sexual urge also manifests in his facial expression
– his mouth is open wide, and his tongue is licking a light bulb. Some sour grapes
above the light bulb symbolize sperm. Together, these motifs convey his thirst for
sex and his desire for men. However, the man cannot express his homoerotic desire,
as this is forbidden in Chinese tradition. Accordingly, such a desire is highly
stigmatized and pathologized in mainstream Chinese society. Thus, the man is
taking a cold shower. He lets the icy water fall onto his erect penis to cool down his
desire. Although the papercutting highlights feelings of ‘unbearableness’ and shame
(both of which are closely associated with culturally stigmatized – and too-often
forbidden – same-sex sexual desire), it also contains the symbol of harmony; an
auspicious bird sits above the man’s thigh and looks back at him.
I learned papercutting skills from my mother. When my parents were still
alive, neither of them knew that I was ‘this kind of person’ (䘉⿽Ӫ).1 Nor did they

1. Since the early 2000s, Xiyadie has joined the tongzhi community in Beijing and
identified himself as part of the LGBTQ community. He also refers to gay people with the
coded language ‘this kind of person’.

21
22 Contemporary Queer Chinese Art

Figure 2.1 Xiyadie, Boiling, water-based dye and Chinese pigments on Xuan paper, 26 x
26 cm, c. 1989. Courtesy of Xiyadie.

discover the sort of papercuttings I had made. I suppose my mother would have
had a psychotic breakdown had she known what I had cut. It was such a pity that
they left the world early. No one was aware of my papercuttings because they
were covered by a sheet of faux leather under my bed. However, my teacher, who
worked in the local administration of cultural affairs, did know about them. He
has been supportive of my art creations ever since I showed these works to him
for the first time. When I visited him in his office and talked to him about my
desires and my work, he thanked me for being so open and honest with him.
However, he had to shut the office door to say these words to me. He warned me
that if these papercuttings were exposed to the public, we both would be named
and shamed. He admired my bold artistic expression and understood them as
realistic portrayals of life. He also mentioned that this kind of work did not exist
in China and that I am the first person to have tackled such a theme through the
medium of papercutting. In truth, I created these works because I could not bear
my wife brawling with me at home, so I packed up a number of my works and
left for Beijing. After running away from that oppressive rural environment, I
created a lot more works in similar styles. I met a friend who was like me in Beijing.
I felt that we were struggling, like frogs at the bottom of a deep well who keep
 Same-Sex Love: A ‘Frog in the Well’ Looking for a Wider Sky 23

Figure 2.2 Xiyadie, Joy, water-based dye and Chinese pigments on Xuan paper, 26 x 26
cm, c. 2016. Courtesy of Xiyadie.

staring longingly at the sky above. In reality, the wells in my village are quite
deep; if one were to stand at the bottom of the well, one could only see a small,
bowl-sized sky from down there. Therefore, in Joy Ҁ, I reflect on the Chinese
proverb ‘a frog in a well looks at the sky’ (Ӆѝѻ㴉Ⅲᵋ⻇ཙ), which evokes the
pursuit of one’s dreamed life and desired freedom (see Figure 2.2). The moon
symbolizes the feeling of people missing each other. It is ever-present, which
resembles our relationships and our dreams of a brighter future. The moon is
where we can freely express our same-sex love and desire – but that is such a place
that we can only stare at, and dream about, from the bottom of this traditional,
oppressive society.
In real life, however, pleasure and pain are two sides of the same coin. The
following papercutting work (see Figure 2.3) has two titles. You may call it le Ҁ
(happiness), or qiu ഊ (imprisonment). It illustrates the act of masturbation; an
expression of self-gratification and satisfaction. The anus is centralized in this
work. The man’s buttocks overlap with his face. His anus becomes a juhua 㧺㣡
(literally, ‘chrysanthemum’; in colloquial Chinese language, the name of this flower
also signifies the ‘butthole’). There is an aubergine-shaped plant below the man’s
hips, which culturally signifies vitality and an intense desire for sexual satisfaction.
24 Contemporary Queer Chinese Art

Figure 2.3 Xiyadie, Happiness, water-based dye and Chinese pigments on Xuan paper, 130
x 130 cm, c. 1990. Courtesy of Xiyadie.

The two birds reference the traditional Chinese Taoist philosophy of yin and yang
(䱤䱣).2 To put it simply, yinyang huahe sheng wanwu, wanwu shengsheng buxi (䱤
䱣ॆਸ⭏з⢙ˈз⢙⭏⭏н᚟), the transformative integration of yin and yang
brings about myriad beings. This transformative growth never ends). In this work,
the vulva derives from the man’s toes and represents muti ⇽փ (the maternal

2. By yin and yang, Xiyadie refers to the Taoist philosophy. Tony Fang (2011, 31) notes
that the philosophy of yin/yang embodies ‘a duality (dialectical) thinking’. As Fang
(2011, 31) interprets, yin (‘the “female” energy, such as the moon, night, weakness, darkness,
softness and femininity’) and yang (the ‘ “male” energy, such as the sun, day, strength,
brightness, hardness and masculinity’) symbolize two opposite cosmic energies, which can
be found in all universal phenomena. The transformative integration between yin and yang,
as Zhou Dunyi notes, ‘engenders and transforms the myriad things [. . .] [which] produce
and reproduce, resulting in an unending transformation’ (paraphrased in Tu 1989, 75). It
manifests the Chinese cosmological thinking, which features an ‘all-inclusive’ scope, ‘non-
discriminatory and non-judgmental position’ and one continuously transformative body
that involves ‘all modalities of being’ (Tu 1989, 68–78).
 Same-Sex Love: A ‘Frog in the Well’ Looking for a Wider Sky 25

body). It generates flowers and fire, which signify fertility and continuous
reproduction. Flowers refer to beautiful things and the desire for a happy life, while
fire symbolizes the transformative and reproductive energies of life. The wings
indicate the act of flying towards freedom. The clouds express auspiciousness and,
accordingly, my longing for a happy life.
After my arrival in Beijing, I met a film director, Sha Qing, who liked my artwork
very much and encouraged me to enlarge the size of the reproductive organs in my
papercuttings. Sha suggested that I should feel free to decide on the subject matter
and how to cut the paper. Then he provided me with a free place – a courtyard
at the foot of a mountain on the outskirts of Beijing – to stay for a year. This
meant a great deal to me because I could not afford to rent an apartment in Beijing,
but I needed a place to stay with my boyfriend. At that time, my boyfriend also
did not have any savings to rent a place. I produced a lot of papercuttings during
this period.
My participation in the first queer art exhibition, ‘Difference-Gender’ (࡛ᙗ),
was facilitated by my boyfriend, who convinced me to join him and take free HIV
tests together in a hospital in town. I always knew that we had not been exposed to
HIV, but we both did the tests in order to earn a reward of fifty yuan per person. At
the hospital, I met a gay doctor who informed me of the open call for works of art
by the Beijing LGBT Centre. As soon as the doctor saw my papercuttings, he
recommended that I contact the organizer Zhao Ke. Soon after, I gathered together
a dozen of my papercuttings and showed them to the organizer. Zhao then liaised
with the curator Yang Ziguang, who looked at my works and spread the news to
three other friends. In that moment, Yang could not hide his enthusiasm: ‘Oh my
God’, Yang exclaimed, ‘there is finally a living tongxinlian ਼ᙗᙻ (homosexual)
artist in China! You are so brave!’
As it was too late to catch a bus back to my place on the outskirts of Beijing that
evening, I planned to get some sleep at the train station. Luckily, Yang offered me a
quilt and a sofa to stay overnight at the Beijing LGBT centre. The next day, he asked
for my permission to post my papercuttings online. At first, I was hesitant to say
yes, because papercutting is a means of catharsis for me. However, Yang convinced
me to showcase my works in cyberspace under my alias xiyadie 㾯ӊ㶦 (Siberian
Butterfly). I did not have a computer, nor did I know how to use one. However, just
one day after Yang published some images of my papercuttings on Aibai.net (a
Chinese gay website), I was told that my works had received over 10,000 hits
overnight. Soon after, Yang launched my first solo exhibition entitled ‘The Beauty
of the Bottom: Xiyadie’s Solo Art Exhibition’ (㾯ӊ㶦㢪ᵟ֌૱њኅüü亪ਇⲴ
㔍㖾; c.2010) at the Beijing LGBT centre.
I remember that many visitors came to this exhibition. There was a Chinese
lesbian who wanted to purchase a papercutting.At that time, the smaller papercuttings
were selling for over 700 yuan. Once she completed the payment, she took a
photograph with me and the papercutting, but then she burst into tears. She explained
that she felt touched by my works, because they resonate with her own experience.
She then told me about her story of ‘coming out’ unsuccessfully to her parents. Her
father had collapsed on the floor right after he learned about her sexual identity. The
26 Contemporary Queer Chinese Art

woman said that she could feel both the pleasure and the suffering of lesbians in my
papercuttings. Though what she perceived differed from what I had intended to
show, we were both affectively connected to the artwork.
Another work shown at the exhibition, entitled A Fish on the Chopping Board
(ṸᶯкⲴ劬), explores queer people’s self-identification and its entanglement
with same-sex pleasure and social hostility (see Figure 2.4). The picture emphasizes
the meaning of living in the moment, while acknowledging the fact that we live
under overwhelming sociocultural pressures. Yu (劬) refers to fish that swim in
water that keeps them alive. When two fish are placed on a chopping board, what
awaits them is to be knifed to death and cooked in a pot. As the work (Figure 2.4)
shows, the water in the pot is already boiling. At the top of the fish’s head stands a
cleaver. It seems that the fish are to be killed in the next second. There are two cats
at the top of this papercutting. Like tigers, they stare at the two fish, eager to take
their share. Both humans and animals want to eat the fish. In this sense, the fish can
become a meal for anyone at any time. Before their death, however, the fish are still
able to enjoy much happiness and have a wonderful time. In a similar way, although
we suffer and struggle a lot, we still take the chance to enjoy ourselves in the
present. This is the very essence of life.

Figure 2.4 Xiyadie, A Fish on the Chopping Board, water-based dye and Chinese pigments
on Xuan paper, 130 x 130 cm, c. 2016. Courtesy of Xiyadie.
 Same-Sex Love: A ‘Frog in the Well’ Looking for a Wider Sky 27

Figure 2.5 Xiyadie, Pleasure, water-based dye and Chinese pigments on Xuan paper, 30 x
30 cm, c. 1990. Courtesy of Xiyadie.

There is a piece in the exhibition called Pleasure (Figure 2.5), which depicts two
people living happily together. Sex is part of their daily life. I place their naked
bodies amid flowers, because flowers carry the meaning of ziran 㠚❦ (nature/
natural).3 Love is a human instinct and is ziran. My artworks portray love and put
it in the context of ziran and hexie ઼䉀 (harmony). Love should not be stigmatized.
To love is always better than to hate one another.
My first solo exhibition enabled me to connect with many people, including
American curator Ján Montoya. Jan saw my exhibition at the Beijing LGBT Centre
and was determined to curate a solo exhibition for me in the US. At first, I did not
pay much attention to his proposal. Half a year later, I received his invitation to an
exhibition of my work entitled ‘The Metamorphosis of a Butterfly: A Kaleidoscope
Vision of Life by a Gay Chinese Artist’ (2012) in Long Beach, California, where I

3. Xiyadie’s worldview is deeply influenced by indigenous Chinese philosophy. By ‘ziran’,

Xiyadie refers to nature, which, in modern Western philosophy, is often seen as the opposite
of ‘culture’. Moreover, he also uses this concept to allude to the Taoist vision of nature as ‘all-
inclusive, the spontaneously self-generating life process which excludes nothing’, as Tu (1989,
71) explains. Tu (1989) also coined the term ‘self-so’ to translate this Chinese term.
28 Contemporary Queer Chinese Art

Figure 2.6 Xiyadie, Imprisonment, water-based dye and Chinese pigments on Xuan paper,
30 x 30 cm, c. 1996. Courtesy of Xiyadie.

stayed for 47 days. At the exhibition, I sold some papercuttings, one of which was
a work entitled Fight ᢃᷦ. This papercutting depicts the domestic conflicts in my
family; my wife points a finger at me and hits me, while at the same time, my son
kicks my back and my daughter pulls my leg. The whole family turns against me
– my children are protecting their mother – except for my dog, which is barking at
my wife. If we compare my domestic life to a kaleidoscope, the living conditions of
my son would be a piece of coloured glass that brings about a variety of pictures.
My son was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. He could not move around by himself
and was wheelchair-bound his entire life. He desired freedom, even though there
was only a slim hope. As shown in the papercutting Imprisonment ഊ (Figure 2.6),
I imagine that he is trapped in a crack between rocks and is struggling to survive;
I imagine that he is staring at the moon in the water. In my eyes, his persistent
longing for freedom is beautiful. However, the moon in the water is not real; his
wish will never come true. This is similar to an image of a cake painted on a wall
– it is visible, but it cannot be obtained. Such a life is cruel to my child.
Over the years, we have continued to live in a repressive regime. Our daily lives
are suffocated by regulations, rules and traditions. Being gay is shameful for
common people. This has inspired my artwork Pot ⳶ (see Figure 2.7). The ‘pot’
 Same-Sex Love: A ‘Frog in the Well’ Looking for a Wider Sky 29

Figure 2.7 Xiyadie, Pot, water-based dye and Chinese pigments on Xuan paper, 130 x 130
cm, c. 2016. Courtesy of Xiyadie.

refers to a flowerpot. Gay people desire love, care and blessing from the public, but
we are not afforded them. We also have a desire for freedom and same-sex romantic
love. We want to live a happy life, but it is unattainable. We should be treated the
same way as other people, but we have been discriminated against within society.
The word ‘but’ always reappears in our lives. Therefore, I turn a portrayal of our
joyful lives into the motif of a flowerpot. I imagine that society takes good care of
us, waters and nourishes us, just as it would treat a flower. At the same time, I also
want to smash this flowerpot and throw away the shackles of a ‘normal life’. Like
tree roots, my feet and arms extend vigorously downwards into the fertile soil,
inside the yellow earth. I wish we could all be kissed by the yellow earth and live a
free life in the wild. This is a truly harmonious life.
My artwork entitled Wall (້; Figure 2.8) offers a glimpse of the harmonious
nature of life. In ancient times, people lived together in harmony and freedom.
They could freely choose whom to love. Love between two men is beautiful, but
human society has built a wall to separate them. However, this wall cannot stop
them from connecting with one another. The spirit of ziran cannot be suppressed.
As spring comes, flowers bloom. The lovers, like the beautiful flowers, have
Other documents randomly have
different content
 — Kiitoksia paljon vaivasta. Saatte mennä nyt, kyllä minä hoidan
nämä onnettomat pojat.

Miehet menivät jättäen pojat johtajan eteen seisomaan.

— Kumpi teistä on Paavo ja kumpi Matti? kysyi johtaja.

— Ei kumpikaan, mutta mieluummin minä olisin Paavo kuin Matti,

sanoi
Sarri.

— Älä viisastele, vaan vastaa suoraan kysymyksiini, Paavo, ja sinä

Matti katso tänne koko ajan. Tunnustakaa nyt pahat tekonne, älkää
kieltäkö mitään. Ensiksikin kysyn teiltä onko teillä omaatuntoa?

— Jeh, sanoi Seppo.

— Vastaa kohteliaasti, Matti. Ettekö ole kiitollisia siitä, että kunta

on antanut teille kodin, vaatteet ja ruoan?

— Miksei, jos se vaan antaa, vastasi Sarri.

— Eikö teillä ole ollut tarpeeksi ruokaa, oletteko olleet nälkäisiä?

— Liiaksikin meihin mätetään ruokaa.

— Miksi te, onnettomat lapsiraukat, sitten menitte luvatta

ruokakonttoriin ja otitte voita ja sokeria?

— Sitäkö me ollaan tehty? kysyi Sarri.

— Itse te sen parhaiten tiedätte. Oletteko unohtanut

seitsemännen käskyn?
 — "Älä tapa", — sanoi Sarri mutta lisäsi kiireesti nähdessään
johtajan silmäkulmain rypistyvän: "pyhitä lepo — —" ei, ei, minä
tarkoitin: "älä himoitse, älä suinkaan himoitse juhtaa" — — —
sekaantui Sarri.

— Älä varasta, auttoi Seppo asiallisesti.

— Ei ole ihme, että Paavo rikkoo käskyt, kun hän ei edes osaa
niitä. Mutta miks'et sinä, Matti, opeta hänelle, että on synti ja häpeä
varastaa?

— Sen hän tietää opettamattakin, eikä kumpainenkaan meistä ole

koskaan ottanut toisen ihmisen omaa, sanoi Seppo harmissaan.

— Mikä on kunnan omaa, sitä teidän tulee kunnioittaa vielä

enemmän.
Eikö teitä ole kohdeltu täällä rakkaudella?

— Minusta se on pöhnää rakkautta, sanoi Sarri.

— Se äskeinen mieskin rakasti minua niin, että käsivarressa taitaa

olla mustelma, lisäsi Seppo.

— Nyt on kärsivällisyyteni lopussa. Olen puhunut teidän

omilletunnoillenne, mutta sydämenne ovat kivikovat. Saatte kärsiä
rangaistuksen, jonka oma työnjohtajanne määrää teille. Eikö teitä
hävetä katsoa häntä silmiin?

— Onko hän niin kamalan näköinen? kysyi Sarri, mutta vaikeni

äkkiä saatuaan murhaavan katseen johtajalta, joka soitti kelloa.

— Pyytäkää poikaosaston työnjohtajaa tänne, sanoi hän sisään

tulevalle palvelijalle.
 Huoneessa vallitsi täydellinen hiljaisuus, kunnes ovi aukeni ja
musta mies astui sisään.

— Tässä ovat nyt karkulaiset. Ottakaa heidät haltuunne ja

rangaiskaa poikaparkoja, jotka ovat eksyneet oikealta tieltä, sanoi
johtaja.

Mutta musta mies tuijotti vain poikiin, jotka kumarsivat

kohteliaasti.

— Minä olen Sakari Uski ja tuo on kaksoisveljeni Seppo. Me

olemme
kotoisin Varpuniemeltä Karjalohjalta. Isä on eläinlääkäri ja äiti on
Jääskestä. Sitten meillä on sisar Saima, joka on kihloissa, selitti
Sarri juurta jaksain, kun tauko alkoi tuntua kiusalliselta.

— Eivätkö nämä olekaan Paavo ja Matti? kysyi johtaja.

— Eihän noilla ole vaivaishuoneen pukujakaan, sai pitkä mies

vihdoin sanotuksi.

— Tosiaankin, sanoi johtaja, — harmaat hiihtopuvut eivät

suurestikaan eroa meidän puvuistamme. Mutta mitenkä te olette
joutuneet tänne ja miksette heti selittäneet ketä olette?

Sarri alkoi selittää asiaa, mutta samassa kuului melua ulkoa ja ovi
nykäistiin auki.

Janne ja Risto ryntäsivät sisään koko poikajoukon seuraamina.

— Prätskis, huusi Risto. — Me tullaan pelastamaan teitä.

— Joko teitä on kidutettu? kysyi Janne.

 — Mikä rosvojoukko tämä on, joka tunkeutuu kunnalliskotiin? kysyi
johtaja vihaisena.

— Tämä on Helsingin Normaalilyseon paras klassillinen luokka.

— Mitenkä te löysitte meidät? kysyi Sarri.

— Kun me huomattiin, että te olitte hävinneet, niin me hiihdettiin

niin vikkelään kuin Risto vain jaksoi, ja sitten me nähtiin kaksi
poikaa, jotka ryömivät lumesta kiven luona, kertoi Janne.

— Niiltä me kuultiin, että teidät oli vangittu ja viety tänne ja sitten

me tultiin teitä pelastamaan, jatkoi Risto.

— Mihin ne kaksi poikaa joutuivat, jotka ryömivät lumesta? kysyi

johtaja.

— He juoksivat Helsinkiin päin.

— Lähettäkää heti miehet hevosella kaupunkiin vievää tietä pitkin

ottamaan kiinni heitä, sanoi johtaja mustalle miehelle, joka poistui
nopeasti. — Ja te nulikat, lähtekää pian täältä.

— Uskin poikien pitäisi saada vahingonkorvausta, sanoi Janne.

— Vai vahingonkorvausta! Auttavat karkulaiset pakoon ja tuottavat

sekasortoa kunnan laitoksessa. Sellaisilleko vahingonkorvausta!
Menkää nyt, niin kauan kuin pääsette ehjin nahoin.

— Mutta sukset? kysyi Seppo.

— Ne ovat tuolla kartanolla, sanoi Risto.

— Me otettiin ne pojilta, jotka tahtoivat lähteä niillä hiihtämään.

 — Mutta silloin Matti ja Paavo ovat hukassa, sanoi Sarri.

— Ei heille muuta pahaa tapahdu kuin, että saavat selkäsaunan, ja

sen he ovat hyvin ansainneet.

— Vai niin, sanoi Sarri rauhoittuneena. — Hyvästi sitten.

— Hyvästi, hyvästi, huusi koko luokka, joka piti tapausta hauskana

seikkailuna.

— Hyvästi, sanoi johtaja, — ja lukekaa käskyt kunnollisesti.

Niilo Kallilla ja hänen äitinsä olivat jo kauan odottaneet poikia, kun

he vihdoinkin tulivat. Jokainen tahtoi kertoa, jonka vuoksi aluksi
syntyi hälinä kuin mehiläispesässä.

Seikkailusta virkistyneenä istui nälkäinen poikalauma

aamiaispöydässä.

— Tulee kamalan nälkä, kun pelastaa toverin hengenvaarasta,

sanoi
Janne.

— Ei me oltu hengenvaarassa ja sitäpaitsi me oltiin juuri

selviytymässä, kun te tulitte, sanoi Seppo.

— Olisitpa nähnyt, miten naiseksi puettu mies hehkutti rautaa

tulessa siinä huoneessa, jonka läpi me kuljettiin, niin olisit
kiitollisempi rohkeille pelastajillesi, sanoi Risto.

— En minä nähnyt siellä muuta kuin isonlaisen neidin, joka kähersi

hiuksiaan, sanoi Sarri. — Etkö huomannut, Seppo, miten hän pisti
sormen suuhunsa ja sitsautti käherryssaksia, ihan samoin kuin
Saimuski tekee?

— Minä luulen, että te olitte lähempänä kidutuskuulustelua kuin

uskotte. Sillä naisella oli tekotukka ja parranalku, intti Risto
itsepäisesti.

Nyt alkoi vilkas keskustelu ympäri pöydän. Jokainen tiesi jotain

kidutuksista, vangitsemisista, ihmeellisestä pelastumisesta ja
poltinraudoista.

— Ehkä he olisivat polttaneet ranskanliljan käsivarteenne, niinkuin

Myladylle tehtiin Muskettisotureissa? Teitähän syytettiin varkaudesta,
otaksui Ville.

— Matti ja Paavo ovat nyt heidän kynsissään, virkkoi Seppo. —

Häntä puistatti.

— Selkäänhän he vain saavat, sehän on jokapäiväistä leipää

pojille, sanoi Olavi.

— Sellaisellako leivällä sinua on syötetty? Eipä ihme, että nyt syöt

minun voileipäni, kun kerran saat toista lajia, nauroi Arvi, jonka
juustovoileipää Olavi juuri pisti suuhunsa.

Aamiaisen jälkeen pojat leikkivät, kävivät katsomassa kanoja,

hevosta ja kaniineja. Oltiin lumisotasilla, juotiin kahvit, tarkastettiin
Niilon postimerkit ja muut nähtävyydet.

Sitten kiitettiin Niilon vanhempia ja lähdettiin kotimatkalle.

Kun oli vähän matkaa hiihdetty, nähtiin vastaantuleva hevonen.

Reessä istui pari miestä ja yhtä monta poikaa.
 — Paavo ja Matti pyövelin käsissä! huusi Sarri. — Pysäyttäkää
hevonen.

Pojat asettuivat tielle ja alkoivat huitoa käsillään ja

suksisauvoillaan, niin että miesten oli pakko pysähtyä.

— Mistä te saitte ne kiinni? kysyi Janne.

— Mitä se teitä liikuttaa, pois tieltä, huusi toinen miehistä.

— Älkää lyökö heitä liiaksi, he eivät koskaan enää karkaa, pyysi

Risto.

— Ette saa polttaa ranskan liljaa käsivarteen, sanoi Ville rohkeasti.

— Tässä on teille hengenpelastus-eliksiiriä; juokaa sitä ennen ja

jälkeen selkäsaunan, virkkoi Janne pistäen pienen pullon toisen
pojan käteen.

— Ja tässä on teille pieni kompassi, se on kiva kapine, sanoi Risto

antaen käärön toiselle pojalle.

Muutkin pojat antoivat lohdutuskapineita, joku antoi lantin, toinen

kynän, Olavi koulussa kielletyn "stritsan", Ville karamellejä, Esko
kumiletkun ja Antti purukumia.

— Pois edestä taikka ajan päällenne, huusi mies, joka oli

ohjaksissa. Pojat hajaantuivat ja hevonen alkoi juosta. Matti ja Paavo
olivat olleet niin noloja, etteivät olleet saaneet sanaa suustaan. Nyt
vasta he tointuivat ja huusivat:

— Kiitoksia paljon, kiitoksia!

 Seppo ja Sarri olivat pysytelleet toisten takana. He muistivat
miesten kovakouraiset otteet, eivätkä tahtoneet antautua liian
suureen vaaraan.

Kotimatka sujui pojilta hauskasti. Puheltiin seikkailusta, jota neljä

heistä käsitteli kerran ainekirjoitustunnilla koulussa.

Väsyneinä Seppo ja Sarri saapuivat kotiin, jossa loput päivästä

levättiin ja luettiin läksyjä. Illalla Sarri kirjoitti isälle kirjeen.

Lupapäivänä Ratakadulla.

Rakas isä.

Viime torstaina minä näin potkurin, jossa oli moottori, joka

kulki kauheaa vauhtia. Isän pitäisi tulla sitä katsomaan, se
sopisi juuri eläinlääkärille, kun Jere ei huoli lähteä ajamaan
läävän tarkastusmatkalle. Onko Kirjo poikinut ja tuliko siitä
vasikka vai sonni? Me oltiin huisin kivalla hiihtoretkellä, mutta
ei Lauri ja Eino, jotka olivat hammaslääkärissä ja leffassa,
vaikka joka paikkaus maksaa 100 markkaa, Sepolla on kaksi
reikää hampaissa. Oulunkylään asti. Tiellä me pelastettiin
kaksi vaivaistalon poikaa, jotka kuitenkin saivat selkäsaunan.
Ne luulivat meitä niiksi ja syyttivät meitä voista ja sokerista,
kun ne olivat ottaneet, eikä ne saaneet niitä kiinni, kun me
autettiin ne niiden käsistä, vaikka ne lopulta lupasivat
selkäsaunan niille. Mutta me ei nähty. Janne ja Risto
pelastivat sukset niiltä ja meidät niiltä. Minun talvitakista on
kaksi nappia poissa, mutta Risto opetti hyvän konstin
rautalangalla ja kahdella kynänpätkällä, miten vaatteet
pysyvät kiinni ilman nappia, kun Naimi-tätiä on mälvää aina
pyytää. Meillä ei ole ikävä kotiin paitsi melkein aina.
Ystävyydellä Sarri Uski.

J.K. Lähetä hammaslääkettä, kun Seppeli on niin

harmillinen öillä. Minä koetin vivuta saksilla hampaan irti,
mutta Seppeli suuttui. On kenkkua, kun ei tiedä, mitä aina
keksisi.
VIII.

PULASSA.

Ossin huone oli poikien mielestä erinomaisen mielenkiintoinen. Se

oli hyvin kalustettu, aina siisti ja kodikas. Ossilla oli kauneusaistia ja
varoja, joten hän voi ostaa itselleen kaikenlaista mitä mieli teki,
kuten tauluja, kirjoja, valokuvauskoneen, pyssyn, polkupyörän ja
runsaasti hedelmiä ja muita makeisia.

Nyt hän oli pyytänyt pojat luokseen mämmiä syömään.

— Imelistä saadaan mämmiä.

— Tytöistä tulee ämmiä, sanoi Seppo.

— Varmaan Jeren viisautta, nauroi Ossi.

— Niin, se on pannut meihin enemmän sananlaskuja kuin

Lehtonen kielioppia.

— Täällä on aina jännää — sinä olet onnenpoika! Onko sinulla

koskaan huolia? kysyi Sarri.
 — On niitä enemmän kuin tällainen hemmoteltu olento oikein
jaksaa kantaa.

— Ylioppilaskirjoituksia kai sinun ei tarvitse pelätä? Naimi-täti

sanoo, että sinä olet äärettömän lahjakas ja ahkera poika, virkkoi
Seppo.

— Koko pääsiäisloman, jonka me vietimme Varpuniemessä, sinä

olit täällä ja pänttäsit saksaa. Naimi-täti sanoo, että niin kauniiksi
pojaksi sinä olet tavattoman kunnollinen. Hänestä vain rumat ihmiset
ovat säädyllisiä, sanoi Sarri.

— Itsestään paha pappi saarnaa, hymyili Ossi.

— Mitä?

— Tarkoitan vain, että Naimi-täti on hyvin säädyllinen. Mutta kyllä

minun ahkeruuteni on ollut sopusoinnussa ulkomuotoni kanssa, sillä
laiska minä olen ollut aina. Ellei minulla olisi taipumusta
matematiikkaan, en olisi päässyt näinkään pitkälle. Mutta saksa!
Onpa ihme, jos suoriudun saksasta kunnialla.

— Niin, saksassa ei auta lahjakkuus, huokasi Sarri.

— Minun täytyy tulla ylioppilaaksi tänä keväänä. Olen jo vanha, ja

isä on luvannut, että pääsen ensi vuonna ulkomaille ja sitten saan
itsenäisen paikan isän tehtaassa. Se on toista kuin tämä ihmisarvoa
alentava kouluorjuus.

— Mutta sinähän olet aina iloinen.

— Niin on härkäkin, niin kauan kuin veistä hiotaan.

 — Mitä sinä teet, jos saat reput?

— Te olette liian nuoria kuulemaan sitä, sanoi Ossi synkän

näköisenä.

Pojat istuivat vaiti, kaamean tunnelman vallassa. Sarri ajatteli, että

veri hyytyy ruumiissa. Sitten Seppo kysyi:

— Etkö voisi lukea nyt kamalasti?

— Lukeminen ei sovi sieluntilaani. Penkinpainajaisten jälkeen en

ole voinut lukea ollenkaan. Jos luen niin kaikki menee sekaisin.
Päässä pyörii Kustaa Aadolf, nahkiaisen ruoansulatus, katkaistun
kartion turha kaava, kirjallisuuden merkkiteosten nimet ja an, auf,
hinter, in, neben, über — — —

Pojat nauroivat niin, että mämmi meni väärään kurkkuun. Sarri

kysyi:

— Mitä kaikkea sinun onkaan muistettava yhdellä kertaa?

— Meiltä vaaditaan, että meidän henkemme vaeltaa muutamassa

viikossa läpi koko koulun. Meidän tulee olla filosofeja,
matemaatikkoja, historian tuntijoita, teologeja ja itsenäisiä
ajattelijoita ja kirjailijoita. Meidän täytyy arvostella suurmiehiä ja
uskonnollisia liikkeitä, kirjoittaa Snellmannista ja Homeroksesta ja
olla satavuotiaita sieluiltamme, lateli Ossi.

— Mutta sinä olet hurjan viisas mies, paitsi tyttöasioissa, sanoi

Seppo.

— Mitä sinä vihjailet?

 — Kun sinä vängällä haluat pelleillä heidän kanssaan. Se Vernakin
———

— Älä sekaannu miesten asioihin. Nainen kuuluu elämän

järjestelyyn, niinkuin suola ja ruusut. Toista on tämä tietopeli
ylioppilaslakista. Tekisi mieli luovuttaa hyvällä koko ottelu.

— Kittiä minä koko lakista, jos täytyy vaivata päätään noin

luonnottomasti, sanoi Seppo.

— Mennään nukkumaan, siihen on kolme syytä, sanoi Sarri.

— Että mämmi on loppunut? arveli Ossi.

— Ja meitä nukuttaa, sanoi Seppo.

— Ja Ossi on kruinallisella tuulella, lopetti Sarri lähtien huoneesta

Sepon seuraamana.

— Kumma, kun Ossi ei maksa velkaansa, sanoi Sarri niin

varomattomasti, että Ossi kuuli sen huoneeseensa.

— Mitä velkoja minulla on? huusi hän tullen ovelle.

— Etkö muista, että me annettiin sataneljäkymmentä markkaa,

kun menit tanssiin Verna Airon kanssa?

— Miksette ole muistuttaneet siitä? En minä koskaan velkojani

muista — luotan siihen, että lainaajat perivät ja muistuttavat. Tässä
saatte rahanne ja kiitoksia niistä. Olisitte nähneet kuinka iloinen
Verna oli, kun hain hänet autolla.

— Voiko olla ihmisiä, jotka unohtavat sataneljäkymmentä

markkaa? ihmetteli Seppo poistuessaan.
 *****

Ylioppilaskirjoituksia edeltävä aika oli levoton jokaiselle. Ossi

pysytteli paljon huoneessaan, jonne toverit tulivat neuvottelemaan.
Ovi oli usein lukossa tuntikausia. Naimi-täti oli hermostuttavan
osaaottava antaen neuvoja pitkin päivää. Syötiin entistä parempaa
ruokaa, sillä Naimi-täti piti syömistä parannuskeinona joka asiaan.

Kun ensimmäinen kirjoitus alkoi, oli koko talo jalkeilla ennen

seitsemää aamulla. Ossille oli varattu hyvät eväät ja Naimi-täti
puuhaili ja puhui.

— Tahdotkos vähän valeriaanaa? kysyi hän.

— Tai Jannen hengenpelastuseliksiiriä? sanoi Seppo.

— Ei mitään, torjui Ossi, — älkää himmentäkö minun aivojani,

joissa muutenkin vallitsee hämäryys.

— Ota sokeripaloja mukaan. Konsentroitu sokeriliuos antaa

tilapäistä vauhtia kaikelle kehitykselle, neuvoi Seppo.

— Tulenko saattamaan sinua kouluun, niin voin lohduttaa ja tukea

sinua matkalla? kysyi Naimi-täti.

— Varjelkoon! Enhän minä astu mestauslavalle sentään.

Lempikin tuli mukaan sanomaan:

— Tässä on neliapilas ja mustan pässin sarvi ja hevosenkenkä.

Ossi pisti neliapilaan taskuun antaen muut aarteet takaisin.

 — Nyt lähden, kun vielä on vähänkin järkeä jäljellä, — kiitoksia
vain huolenpidostanne, sanoi hän.

Kirjoitukset onnistuivat hyvin. Ossi sai matematiikassa ja

ainekirjoituksessa hyvät arvosanat, muissa aineissa huonommat,
mutta kuitenkin hyväksyttävät numerot.

Nyt hän oli aina kotona, luki ahkerasti ja pysytteli huoneessaan.

Pojat ihmettelivät, ettei hän ollut iloisempi, vaan kovasti allapäin.

Sitten tuli päivä, joka toi paljon levottomuutta pieneen kotiin.

Ossi oli mennyt kouluun tenttimään historiaa. Pojat lukivat

läksyjään huoneessaan, kun Seppoa pyydettiin puhelimeen.

— Tämä on Hannes Pälsi. Ossi ei voi tulla itse puhumaan, mutta

hän pyytää sinua ottamaan hänen huoneestaan ruskean kaapin
alalaatikosta pohjapaperin alta ison ruskean kirjekuoren. Laatikon
avain on samassa kotelossa kuin Ossin kiikarikin.

— Kyllä minä ne löydän, sanoi Seppo.

— Ota kirjekuori sisältöineen ja piilota se varmasti. Vie

mieluummin pois koko talosta, jatkoi Hannes.

— Miksi Ossi ei tee sitä, kun hän tulee kotiin? kysyi Seppo.

— Minulla on tulinen kiire, älä kysy mitään. Näytä, että olet mies
ja toimitat asian kunnollisesti. Älä suinkaan kerro kenellekään mitään
tästä.

— En minä voi pitää mitään Sarrilta salassa.

— Nyt täytyy. Ossi on muuten hukassa.

 — Silloin en voi tehdä mitään. Mutta kyllä me Sarrin kanssa
pidetään asia salassa.

— No, sano sitten Sarrille, mutta varokaakin, ettei se tule ilmi.

— Ei me kerrota. Onko se valtionkavalluspapereja tai jokin

testamentti? kysyi Seppo.

— Ei, ei. Siinä on kirjeitä. Katsos, Ossi ei tahdo, että Verna Airolle
tulee ikävyyksiä.

— Jeh, ymmärrän.

— Toimita siis asia ja heti paikalla. Voiko teihin luottaa?

— Eikö Ossi luota?

— Luottaa, luottaa. Hyvästi nyt vain.

Seppo juoksi Sarrin luo ja selitti asian. Sitten he kiiruhtivat Ossin

huoneeseen ja löysivätkin kirjekuoren. Samassa kuului askeleita.
Seppo pisti kirjeen latinan sanakirjan sisään pannen kirjan
kainaloonsa.

— Mitä te teette Ossin huoneessa? kysyi Naimi-täti sisään

tullessaan.

— Me lainaamme vain tämän kirjan, sanoi Seppo peloissaan.

— Näytä tänne. Latinan sanakirja! Mitä te sillä teette? Lukemiseen

ette ainakaan sitä käytä.

— Se on niin raskas, sitä voi käyttää vaikka painona paperien

päällä, jotka lentävät tuulessa, sanoi Sarri.
 — Tai kantena vesikannun päällä, ettei vesi tule tomuiseksi, auttoi
Seppo.

— Nyt puhutte turhia. Antakaa Ossin kirjojen olla rauhassa ja

menkää lukemaan läksyjänne. Naimi-täti otti kirjan pannen sen
pöydälle.

Poikien täytyi poistua huoneesta. He odottivat kauan aikaa,

kunnes tie taas oli selvä Ossin huoneeseen, jolloin Seppo riisui
saappaansa ja hiipi varovasti takaisin. Hän sai kirjekuoren käsiinsä
puolipimeässä huoneessa, mutta hänen täytyi äkkiä ryömiä sängyn
alle, Lempi kun tuli sisään tuomaan pesuvettä ja laittamaan Ossin
vuodetta.

Sarri, joka odotti huoneessaan, käsitti Sepon joutuneen vaaraan.

Hän juoksi ulos keittiön kautta ja soitti eteisen kelloa, jolloin Lempi
meni avaamaan.

— Kuinka sinä pakkasessa juokset tuolla tavalla ulkona, torui

Lempi.
Missä oma avaimesi on?

— Se on Sepolla, meillähän on vain yhteinen avain. Tässä saat

kauniin kortin, siinä on Nikolainkirkko, sanoi Sarri pidättääkseen
Lempiä eteisessä.

— Kiitoksia vain, Sarrilla on hyvät puolensa, kehui Lempi.

Sarri meni nyt huoneeseensa, jonne Seppokin oli jo pelastautunut.

— Katsos Vernaa, kun kirjoittaa saksaksi, sanoi Seppo vetäen

paperin ruskeasta kuoresta.
 — Anna tänne, pyysi Sarri, — katsotaan vain mitä alla seisoo.
Muitten kirjeitä ei saa lukea, sanoo isä.

— Ei mitään allekirjoitusta. Kylläpä ovat varovaisia. — Sarri heitti

paperin muitten joukkoon pöydälle.

— Mitä me nyt tehdään? Tämä on piilotettava hyvin ja vietävä pois

koko talosta, sanoi Seppo.

— Poltetaan se.

— Sitä ei uskalla tehdä. Ossi voi suuttua.

— No viedään Vernalle. Hän asuu tuolla Robertinkadulla, kyllä

minä löydän sinne.

— Jeh, se on parasta, sanoi Seppo ottaen paperin pöydältä ja

pistäen sen ruskeaan kuoreen. — Mene sinä yksin, se on parempi.

Sarri juoksi ulos, tärkeä kirje kädessään. Hän oli tuskin sulkenut
keittiön oven, kun eteisen kello soi ja Lempi meni avaamaan ovea.

Seppo kokosi ajelehtivia papereita pöydältä ja heitti ne tuleen, sillä

Naimi-täti kasvatti poikia järjestystä harrastaviksi.

Sitten hän juoksi Ossin huoneeseen, sieltä kun kuului kiivasta

puhetta. Sinne tultuaan hän pysähtyi ällistyneenä ovelle, ja hänen
silmänsä juuttuivat kahteen herraan, jotka puhuivat Naimi-tädin
kanssa.

— Mutta sanokaa toki, mistä Ossia syytetään, pyysi Naimi-täti.

— On käynyt ilmi, että ylioppilaskokelaat ovat saaneet käsiinsä

matematiikan ja saksan kirjoitukset, ja me kuulumme
tarkastuskomiteaan, joka tutkii asiaa, sanoi pitempi herroista. Seppo
hätkähti, kun kuuli saksankirjoitusta mainittavan.

— Kuinka voitte epäillä Ossia! Hän on hienoin, kohteliain ja paras

nuorukainen koko Helsingissä! huudahti Naimi-täti loukkaantuneena.

— Koko luokkaa epäillään. Eräs on jo tunnustanutkin ja hän on

usein ollut täällä. Me vaadimme nyt, että saamme tutkia Ossi
Hägerin huoneen, sanoi toinen herroista.

— Olkaa hyvä, tarkastakaa koko talo, meillä ei ole mitään

salattavaa, sanoi Naimi-täti.

Herrat tekivät tarkkaa työtä. Joka nurkka ja laatikko haettiin,

sängyn sisästä, sohvan raoista, kirjahyllyn joka sopesta vedettiin
pieninkin roska esiin. Sitten tarkastettiin poikien huone ja samoin
ruokahuone. Työ oli turhaa.

— Olisikohan hän saanut tiedon tänne jollain tavalla? Et kai sinä

ole piilottanut Hägerin pyynnöstä mitään papereita? kysyi pitkä herra
Sepolta.

— En ole tavannut tänään Ossia, vastasi Seppo.

— Onko joku soittanut tänne? kysyi mies Lempiltä, joka peloissaan

seisoi vieressä.

— Pojat olivat delevoonissa, vastasi Lempi.

— Kutka pojat?

— Tämä juuri tai Sarri.

— Olitko puhelimessa? kysyi mies Sepolta.

 — Olin.

— Saitko sanan Hägeriltä?

— Se koski toista asiaa.

— Mitä varten tämä alimmainen paperi laatikosta on vedetty näin

syrjään? Siellä on varmaan ollut jotain pohjalla, puuttui toinen herra
puheeseen.

Herrat alkoivat nyt tutkia laatikkoa, ja Seppo, joka kuuli Sarrin

palaavan, meni eteiseen.

— Nyt on Ossi vaarassa, tuolla on miehiä hakemassa sitä

saksanpaperia.
Mene sinä vastaamaan, ei minusta ole sellaiseen, sanoi Seppo hiljaa.

— Kyllä minä suoriudun, sanoi Sarri mennen sisään.

— No mitä sinulle sanottiin silloin puhelimessa? kysyi pitkä mies

Sarrilta, jota hän luuli Sepoksi.

— En minä ole ollut tänä päivänä puhelimessa.

— Kuinka uskallat puhua noin? Äsken tunnustit jo puhuneesi,

sanoi mies vihaisena.

— Sitä en ole tehnyt.

— Jos et puhu totta, niin vien sinut rehtorisi luo.

— Minä puhun aina totta.

— Oliko tämä poika puhelimessa vai eikö? kysyi herra Lempiltä.

 — Oli jos ei se ollut toinen, sanoi Lempi vakuuttavasti.

— Kuka toinen? Oletteko kaikki järjiltänne?

— Kun se ei ole yksi.

— Kuka, tuo poikako?

— Lempi tarkoittaa, että minä olen kaksi poikaa. Hänen

kannaltaan voi ollakin niin, mutta minun kannaltani…, niin, minä olen
yksi kokonainen, en murtoluku enkä kaksi.

— Varo itseäsi, Sarri! Älä härnää ketään, nyt on vaarallinen hetki,

sanoi Naimi-täti, joka oli kierrellyt käsiään sohvan nurkassa.

— Vastaa kiertelemättä, olitko puhelimessa vai etkö? kysyi herra

Sarrilta.

— Olin, vastasi Seppo ovelta.

Herra kääntyi äkkiä.

— Ahaa, sinä olet siis kuitenkin kaksi, sanoi hän. — Oletko ollut
Hägerin huoneessa puhelinkeskustelun jälkeen?

— Sitä en voi sanoa.

— Molemmat pojat olivat siellä, sanoi Naimi-täti.

— Otitteko sieltä jotain?

— Latinankieliopin he aikoivat ottaa, mutta minä estin, sanoi taas

Naimi-täti.
 — Tämähän on sekavaa. Missä toinen poika oli silloin, kun toinen
oli yksin täällä?

— Kävin erään tuttavan luona, sanoi Sarri. — Se oli vain yksityinen

asia.

— Vai yksityinen asia? Kylläpä osaat! Oliko sinulla jotain käsissä.

— Oli kirje, minä näin, sanoi Lempi.

— Kantelupukki, sanoi Seppo hiljaa Lempille.

— Minne veit sen sinisen kirjeen? kysyi mies viekkaasti Sarrilta.

— Ruskean — — —, aloitti Sarri, mutta vaikeni saadessaan Sepolta

salaisen potkun.

— Nyt siis tiedetään, että olet vienyt ruskean kirjekuoren jonnekin.

Luultavasti Hannes Pälsin kotiin, otaksui pitkä herra. — Kävitkö
Lönnrotinkadulla?

— En kun Robertinkadulla vain.

— Kenen luona?

— En voi sanoa.

— Häger on siis kieltänyt. Kuka Hägerin tuttavista asuu

Robertinkadulla?

— Janne ja Risto asuvat siellä, sanoi Seppo johdattaakseen

tutkimukset harhaan.

— Ossi-herran heila asuu siellä, sanoi Lempi.

 — Lempille täytyy kostaa, kuiskasi Seppo Sarrille.

— Kuka on Ossi-herran heila? kysyi pitkä herra.

— No se Verna-neiti, sen tuomari Airon neiti, ne asuvat siinä

neljässä.

— Kuule Virtanen, sanoi pitkä mies apulaiselleen, — menepäs

Pikku-Robertinkatu neljään ja vaadi Verna neidiltä se kirje, jonka
tämä poika toi hänelle.

Virtanen lähti, ja huoneessa vallitsi kiusallinen odotus. Naimi-täti

puhui ylistyspuheita Ossista, mutta pitkä herra näytti olevan
jokseenkin tunteeton.

Vihdoin saapui Virtanen.

— Tässä on kirje. Neiti antoi sen mielellään. Hän sanoi, että Ossi
Häger on tullut hulluksi, kun lähettää hänelle tuollaista roskaa.

— Minä sanoin hänelle, että Ossin kunnia ja luultavasti henkikin

riippui siitä, että paperi tuli pois meiltä. Ja nyt Verna petti hänet
katalasti. Hyi, minkälainen tyttö! sanoi Sarri halveksien.

— Jere se tuntee naiset. Hän sanoo, että he ovat kettua

kavalampia ja sisiliskoa liukkaampia, sanoi Seppo.

Pitkä mies oli sillävälin vetänyt paperin kuoresta ja lukenut sitä.

Paperiin oli pojan käsialalla kirjoitettu:

Se joka käyttää tätä tietoa ilman lupaa, se syö ruohoa

vanhana ja sen hiukset tulevat punaisiksi kahdessa päivässä.
Ja se tieto on tämä:
 5 grammaa magnesiumsulfaattia ja salisyylihappoa
kaadetaan koeputkeen jossa on sahramia ja eetteriä. Sitten
lisätään pippuria ja etikkaa ja puistetaan viisi minuuttia.
Tyhjään pulloon pannaan lusikallinen kollodiumia niin että
seiniin tulee ohut kalvo. Edelliset ja vähän
ammoniumsulfaattia lisätään. Siinä viimeisessä on typpeä,
joka on hyvä lannoitusaine. Ihmisen elimiä täytyy väliin
lannoittaa. Hiivaa on myöskin aina pantava voimalääkkeisiin.
Koko lääkkeen kaava on MgNH4SO4 + C4H10O + 4H2O.

Sitä on otettava ruokalusikallinen kovassa taudissa ja hädässä.

Keksijä.

Muistakaa punaiset hiukset.

— Mitä hullutusta tämä on? Ei tämä ole ylioppilaskirjoitus eikä

mikään, sanoi mies antaen paperin Sarrille.

— Jannen hengenpelastuseliksiiri! huudahti tämä.

— Hän on antanut sen Ossille, sanoi Seppo, mutta vaikeni

samassa. Hän muisti nyt, että paperi oli ollut pöydällä, kun hän
Sarrin kanssa katsoi saksalaista kirjoitusta, jonka he olivat ottaneet
kirjekuoresta. Seppo katsoi Sarria, joka nyökäytti päätään merkiksi,
että hänkin käsitti kirjoitusten vahingossa vaihtuneen.

— Hyvä, että poltin muut paperit, silloin se onneton

saksankirjoituskin meni menojaan, ajatteli Seppo.

— Selittäkää nyt mitä tämä on, sanoi mies ankarasti.

 — Meillä on toveri, joka on suuri kemisti, ja hän tekaisee lääkkeitä
ja tämä on hänen paras keksintönsä. Seppokin parani sillä kerran,
selitti Sarri.

— Lähdetään pois, Virtanen, sanoi pitkä herra. — Olemme

kuluttaneet paljon aikaa turhaan. Näyttää siltä kuin Häger olisi
syytön. Hyvästi vain ja anteeksi, että olemme vaivanneet teitä, mutta
se oli velvollisuutemme.

— Hyvästi! Olen iloinen, että Ossin maine on puhdistettu. Minua ei

mikään saa uskomaan, että niin kunnollinen poika pettäisi, sanoi
Naimi-täti.

— Mutta miksi tuo poika kuljetti sitä paperia sille neidille? kysyi
Virtanen.

— Tehdäkseni Ossille palveluksen, sanoi Sarri.

— Neidin päätä varmaan särki ja te tahdoitte parantaa hänet,

otaksui pitkä mies.

— Sairaana on pöhnää olla, sanoi Seppo.

— Älkää antako tuon kaksinkertaisen pojan myrkyttää itseänne,

hyvä rouva, sanoi pitkä herra ja poistui kumartaen. Virtanen seurasi
häntä.

— Nyt minä olen niin väsynyt, että menen nukkumaan. Hyvää

yötä, pojat! sanoi Naimi-täti mennen huoneeseensa.

Pojat puhelivat vielä vuoteissaan.

— On kauhean kruinaa, jos Ossi on petkuttanut, sanoi Seppo.

 — Minä uskon, enkä usko. Miksi meidänkin piti joutua siihen!
Mutta minä en narrannut.

— Harmillista, ettei voinut selittää asiaa tarkalleen. Eihän voi

pettää luottamusta.

Samassa tuli Ossi hiljaa huoneeseen.

— Kertokaa nyt tarkkaan mitä täällä on tapahtunut, pyysi hän.

Pojat kertoivat vuoroin ja Ossi rupesi nauramaan, kun sai kuulla

Jannen lääkereseptistä.

— Naurattaako sinua, Sarri? Minua ei naurata yhtään, sanoi

Seppo.

— Kiitos, pojat. Te olette tehneet minulle ja neljälle toverilleni

suuren palveluksen. Huomenna vien teidät teatteriin katsomaan
"Tukkijokea".

— Ei meille sovi, sanoi Sarri lyhyesti.

— No, mitä nyt? Ostanko teille jännän dekkarin?

— Ei kiitos, ne maistuisivat saksalle, ja siitä me ei välitetä nyt,

sanoi Seppo.

— Vai niin, pojat. Näen, että epäilette minua; täytyy siis selittää
asia. On todellakin niin surkeasti, että moni ylioppilaskokelas ei ole
voinut vastustaa, kun kiusaus on ollut suuri. Vääryyttä on tehty sekä
matematiikan- että saksankirjoituksissa, ja meitä on koko päivä
kuulusteltu ja tiukattu. Mitä minuun tulee, voin vakuuttaa
kunniasanallani, ettei minulla ollut aavistustakaan matematiikan
kokeista.

— Entäs saksa? kysyivät molemmat pojat samalla kertaa.

— Kerran, kun Hannes Pälsi oli täällä, tuli eräs herra — en voi
sanoa hänen nimeään — tänne ja tarjosi meille saksankirjoituksen
ostettavaksi. Voitte uskoa että viettelys oli suuri, kun minä pelkäsin
juuri saksaa. Me katsoimme toisiamme silmiin, Hannes ja minä.
Olimme olleet ystäviä pikkukoulusta asti ja jakaneet hyvät ja huonot
ajat. Monta kepposta ja tyhmyyttä olemme tehneet, mutta tällaisia
rumia ja halpamaisia tekoja emme koskaan. Hannes ojensi kätensä
minulle ja sanoi herralle: "Menkää heti tiehenne, me emme tahdo
enää olla hetkeäkään seurassanne." Ja minä aukaisin oven.

— Te olette kamalan — — —, aloitti Seppo ihastuneena.

— Kamalan suuria sankareita, lopetti Sarri, joka tuskin löysi kylliksi

suuria sanoja tunteilleen.

— Entäs se kirje? Miksi se oli niin vaarallinen? kysyi Seppo.

— Hannes, joka puhuu saksaa, kirjoitti minulle kerran sillä kielellä

ja kertoi ketä poikia hän epäili. Minä piilotin kirjeen ja unohdin sen,
mutta nyt kun meitä tutkittiin, muistin sen ja pyysin Hannesta
soittamaan teille. Hannes pääsi kuulustelusta ennen minua.

— Mutta mitenkä ne niin sinua epäilivät?

— Siksi että minun saksankokeeni onnistui paremmin kuin

odotettiin. Mutta minä selviydynkin usein hyvin, kun oikein kovalle
ottaa. Hyvää yötä nyt. Tuletteko "Tukkijoelle"?
— Tietysti, se on jerin kivaa, sanoi Sarri.

— Kiitos, Ossi. Sinä olet, sinä olet — — mies, lisäsi Seppo.

— Hyvää yötä! Onko kaikki selvää?

— Välit ovat selvät, sanoivat pojat.

IX.

JEREN KAUPUNGINMATKA.

— Minkähän tähden poikaihmisen on niin hankalaa istua paikallaan

ja tarkata mitä muut tekevät. Paitsi teatterissa tai leffassa, ajatteli
Sarri itsekseen.

Pojat istuivat paikoillaan luokkahuoneessa. Tunti ei ottanut

loppuakseen, ja esillä oleva aihe oli tavattoman vähän
mielenkiintoinen.

Kunpa vaan tapahtuisi jotain muuta, kuin tavallisia

luokkatapahtumia, toivoi Seppokin.

Pojat eivät aavistaneet, että portaissa lähestyi yllätys, josta he

eivät juuri olisi välittäneet.

Ovi avautui ja sisään tuli vanhanpuoleinen maalaisukko karvalakki

kourassa.

— Mahtaaks tää olla norssikoulu? kysyi hän kumartaen.

— Tämä on Normaalilyseo, vastasi opettaja.

 — Neet meirän kaksoset sanoi sitä norssiks. Mahtaaks neet oli
tääl?

— Nyt on lukutunti eikä luokkaa saa häiritä. Onko teillä tärkeää

asiaa ja ketä haette?

— Mää lährin hakeen niit tohtorin kaksosii, ihmiset viisai tän vaan,
kun mää kysyin.

Seppo ja Sarri olivat kauhukseen tunteneet Jeren. Muissa

olosuhteissa he olisivat tulleet hyvinkin iloisiksi tavatessaan
ystävänsä, mutta nyt ei heillä ollut halua tunnustaa koko tuttavuutta.

— On täällä yhdet kaksoset. Uskin pojat, tunnetteko tämän

miehen? kysyi opettaja.

— Kyllä me maalla tunnettiin hänet, sanoi Sarri.

— Hän on meidän tallimiehemme, en minä ymmärrä, mitä hän

täällä koulussa tekee? sanoi Seppo.

— Kun en mää muistan teirän kortteerii, niin mää lährin tän

kattoon.

— Poikien täytyy olla täällä vielä kaksikymmentä minuuttia,

ennenkuin pääsevät kotiin, sanoi opettaja.

— Sit mää orotan toi trampil. Mää lähren kun mää näjein et hee
on hyväs hoiros. — Jere meni ulos pannen lakin päähänsä.

Sarri ja Seppo istuivat punaisina paikoillaan uskaltamatta katsoa

tovereitaan, joitten teki mieli nauraa.

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