China daddy gay
Chinarrative
Hello. This edition features a short excerpt from a story by Chinese news writer Zeyi Yang. It tells how two gay men from China traveled to the United States in search of a surrogate mother to start their own family. The couple — Qiguang Li and Wei Xu — now have a son.
This piece was originally published by our friends at New York-based Narratively. It has much to say about changing family standards in Chinese culture and specifically about same-sex parenthood. To read it in its entirety please scroll to the end of this newsletter for a link.
The coronavirus is still at the forefront of our minds and we’re planning to revisit the topic in a forthcoming issue. In the meantime, this tale of determination and hope seems appropriate to launch us in to spring.
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Past issues are archived here. Check out our website. Thoughts, story ideas? We can be reached at editors@chinarrative.com.
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Photo: Gráinne Quinlan
By Zeyi Yang
Before Qiguang Li could pass through customs and step onto U.S. soil for the first second, he faced a three-hour detention where he learned that he needed to be more candid about his
Jiancheng is the father of a 23-year-old transgender man. He’s also gay himself — a evidence to which his wife is glumly resigned. Since 2013, Jiancheng has volunteered with PFLAG China to help parents accept their LGBT children.
PFLAG China was established in 2008, inspired by other PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) groups worldwide. The network has since grown in size and geographic spread to more than 1,200 volunteers nationwide, with regular meetings in around 50 cities, including Jiancheng’s hometown in northern China’s Hebei province.
In May, a collective of PFLAG mothers were forced out of People’s Park in Shanghai when they tried to participate in the city’s longstanding matchmaking market to amplify the visibility of LGBT people.
Jiancheng’s possess sexual orientation has given him firsthand experience of the silence, hurt, and judgement that LGBT individuals face. But he, too, struggled to support his son, who was raised as a girl.
“I worried my child might be a lesbian, and I really didn’t want to spot her following in my footsteps,” Jiancheng says. But over moment, Jiancheng and his infant, Qing, found they could draw on each other for strength
Daddy Squared Around The Society SEASON FINALE: Russia, China, Iran
Throughout the season we've interviewed gay men from countries around the nature, but all of these countries could easily be argued incredibly supportive of the LGBT community and of LGBT parenting. Not so much the three countries that we are focusing on in this episode
The Not-Such-Great-Places-to-be-a-Gay-Dad Episode
This season, Daddy Squared has (virtually) flown from country-to-country around the world talking to gay dads and experts about what it’s enjoy to be gay and become a gay dad in places like Ireland, South Africa, Argentina, etc., etc. The countries we’ve covered have had all kinds of important variations in LGBTQ rights, parental rights, laws regarding Surrogacy and IVF, etc., etc. But one thing they all had in familiar was a basic doctrine in the right of a gay man to live openly – and have a family.
For our season finale, we decided it was time to deal with the unwind of the world: the many, many countries where not only is organism a gay dad unfeasible, but homosexuality itself is forbidden or persecuted. For obvious reasons, our guests on this episode could not come to us live from the countries of the
Before Qiguang Li could pass through customs and step onto U.S. soil for the first day, he faced a three-hour detention where he learned that he needed to be more candid about his identity. It was September 2015, after a drawn-out flight from Shanghai to Los Angeles. Li came with another man, Wei Xu, who asked a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer whether the two of them could depart through the border screening together. “What’s your relationship?” asked the officer. They said they were friends. “Then you can’t.”
So, Xu went first and passed the screening. He forgot one crucial thing though: Li’s travel documents were in Xu’s bag. Li, 37 at the time, spoke poorer English and couldn’t properly explain to the officer what had happened. After a while of anxious waiting, Xu returned to the checkpoint to gaze for Li, still unaware of his mistake, and they were both sent to a room for additional screening.
In the secondary scr…