Author: Yining Pan
Lights off. Projector on. Flowers of blue and purple cast onto their figures, swirling on their hugging bodies. The shutter pressed, the image forever savored - two Chinese men held in each other’s gentle embrace and loving gaze.
This photograph, taken by a German photographer and featuring Shao Kang and his ex-boyfriend, has graced the furthest corners of the world as part of a collection of Chinese LGBTQ+ lovers, from galleries in small European towns to exhibits under the Golden Gate Bridge. But Shao Kang isn’t a huge fan. “His collections are very heavy on dark tones, which sends the message that sexual minorities in China can only live in the dark like stowaways,” he said, “I suppose he might be catering to the western stereotype of Asia.” To topple those exact stereotypes and to weave a more accurate but little seen tapestry of the LGBTQ+ community, Shao Kang founded the Better Together program.
He has come to understand that, as a photographer, and a freelance one nonetheless, he has more power than he thought, and his camera has more value than he ever imagined. Over the years, he has captured the daring lifestyle of 95 individuals, lovers, and families living in the margins, each captioned with an introduction that the subjects wrote themselves. While the photographs reveal their lifestyle artistically, the words, with barely any editing by the photographer, put their true selves on full display. Shao Kang believes that the two mediums of self-expression complement each other and are of equal importance authentic and holistic representation. Out of the 95 pieces he has shot, three in particular linger in his mind.
The first set features younger Chinese generations traveling through a forest. The forest, of course, is much more than a sylvan landscape: it is a maze where vision is fogged by the looming haze of patriarchy, where we are lost in between fast-changing pathways and trapdoors in disguise; it is a forever billowing multitude of tensions in the inner self as one explores their identity; the journey takes grit and courage, but on the other end of the forest is daylight, freedom, and hope. Regardless of how women and sexual minorities in China compare to those in other countries and cultures, Shao Kang realizes that in this day and age, whatever problems each of us is faced with, whether it be casual workplace harassment, constant family pressures on women, or an offhand misogynistic remark over coffee, every single person has to cross that inevitable forest, often blindfolded, to find their true self, to live their best life, and to foster real change.
The second set features Shan Ge, a sixty-year-old gay man who has remained unmarried his whole life, but his path to self-awakening was in no way smooth. Before reaching thirty-five, he dated women, and it wasn’t until he stumbled upon the gay scene that he began to explore and come to realize who he is. Working for social initiatives, Shan Ge is now documenting the oral history of elderly gay people, who are almost invisible to the public eye in Chinese society due to the manifold stigmatization of old age of queerness in a conservative culture. More than ten have elaborated on how they first fell in love with people of the same gender, with the courage to challenge traditions and speak up for themselves. Furthermore, discreet rendezvous for elderly gay men in China could act as a crucial part in researching how lives were for minority groups back in the 20th century - the generation that founded the new China. After the year of 1998, though being identified as LGBTQ was finally decriminalized in China, “abnormal sexuality” was still an illness that could be cured in several modern hospitals. Self-acceptance was not socially promoted at the time; while society didn’t offer any opportunities other than to “live a mainstream life” in the past, most aged homosexual men, including ShanGe, are still marginalized by the modern era today. Shao Kang has always devoted himself to photoing the real-life conditions of every individual, but he made a mistake when featuring Shan Ge. After publishing the pictures, he’s soon questioned by a friend whether he really believed that Shan was as lonely as he was being presented as in the photograph. “I realized I wasn’t exempt from deep seated stereotypes of elderly gay men,” confessed Shao Kang, “after that, I have made it my mission to portray minorities as a person, rather than a representative of an identity or an embodiment of a concept.” The fallacy of the German photographer does vex him, but it also reminds him to truly respect and listen to every participant in the future.
The third person that profoundly influenced Shao Kang is Xiaomi, Chao, a queer that has a full beard but long hair, and wears high heels and dresses with comfort. “I feel light-hearted for finding myself a special gender identity,” wrote Xiaomi, “only when I am neither male nor female could I really feel comfortable and fall in love with this distinctive self.”
Photographing these brave men reminds Shao Kang of his own childhood - people called him a sissy throughout primary and middle school because he spoke slowly and played with the girls. Though he was never physically bullied, never has he ever been truly free from the shackling expectations from the patriarchy to be “manly”. After successfully reckoning with his own identity, however, he still feels the sense of ostracization - a hierarchy exists in the gay community, with “sissies” at the bottom. It puzzles him deeply, but it also compelled him to try wearing a dress just as Xiaomi did. Every single passerby stared, some out of but mere curiosity and surprise. It seems that society has become more inclusive and the culture has become more diversified - even a gay wearing strange clothes could be accepted.
Or, does it?
When a middle-aged passerby said to Shao Kang that his dress was “really beautiful”, Shao Kang acknowledged that he didn’t have the courage to respond or even look the man in the eyes. But why? Why should he feel sorry simply because he didn’t wear what society expects? Why couldn’t he fully appreciate his appearance even after being courageous enough to dress up so? Those question marks fell on him like mountains - the cost of being oneself. On the other hand, though Xiaomi has already entered their forties, they is still being themselves despite sneers and verbal abuses. For him, “Q” doesn’t stand for “queer” but for “question”. “Go exploring, become whom you accept yourself is, and no one could help you answer this question,“ concluded Shao Kang.
For the photographer, everyone shares the same humanity preceding sex and gender. Being treated equally - the right to live happily with each other on the same planet - is what he, and his group pursue. As a lighthouse in his cause, he now receives messages for help from four to five people every week and is continuing on featuring more individuals authentically. This is what he seeks to achieve: share the real-life situations of minority groups in China and ignite more street lamps to radiate warmth in this society. We are better together.