February 2002

Strip if you're conservative

    

  

 
Sometimes we hear people say -- not least, the Singapore government -- that "The Chinese are conservative." By this, they mean that the Chinese are unaccepting of homosexuality, that it will be difficult to come out to one's family, that a society in which the Chinese predominate will not be able to tolerate a visible gay minority in its midst.

I've always found this kind of shorthand to be questionable. The problem is in the word "conservative". It means a bias towards keeping existing habits and ways of thinking, over change. The two questions raised are: (1) is there such a bias? (2) are the existing ways as unaccepting as suggested?

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Take the first question: Does Chinese society and culture contain a systemic bias towards keeping the old and looking askance at the new? This is very doubtful.

'Chinese' in Yawning Bread, unless otherwise stated, always refers to the society and culture that is China. Likewise, implied in a statement such as "The Chinese are conservative" is a reference to the entire breadth of the Chinese world.

Yet, there is a tendency in English-language writing to use the Chinese diaspora, e.g. Chinese Americans or Chinese Singaporeans, to represent what Chineseness is, and to superimpose what we see in diaspora communities back onto China. I would be careful about that. I believe there is a general rule that all emigrant communities, at least the first one or two generations, tend to be more conservative than their homeland society. As a minority in an alien country or region, the fear of losing one's identity is palpable.

But this is not an issue for the Chinese in China, the Japanese in Japan, or the Greeks in Greece. That is to say, if indeed we see conservatism in the diaspora, it doesn't mean that in China, they are similarly conservative.

Anyone who has travelled to China and seen the way the folks there embrace new technology and modern lifestyles, will be impressed by the pace of change, not by the timelessness of tradition. The people there don't have to worry about retaining their Chineseness in the face of assimilation into other cultures. What works, works. Old or modern. Since they are Chinese, whatever they do is, by definition, the Chinese way. 
 

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The second thing to beware of is the way "conservative" is used to mean non-acceptance of homosexuality. Empirical evidence from Chinese history indicate that this is not really so. Chinese society have always recognised that there was homosexual orientation among its members, and have to varying extent, accommodated it.

 

Where does the idea come from that to be "conservative" meant unaccepting of homosexuality? From Judeo-Christian mores.

Together with Islam, their roots lie in the Middle East. These three religions (who anyway share the same origins) and the cultural patterns they spawned, take a very dim view of sexuality and the human form.

From the very beginning, in the story of The Fall, when Eve and Adam bit into the apple, and thereby yielded to temptation, 

"Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings."

You see in this a cultural pattern that is embarrassed about nudity. Furthermore, this cultural pattern strongly links nudity with sex, and sees sex and lust very negatively too. Lust is defined as one of the major sins. For centuries (even today in Islamic countries), women were required to dress "modestly", with the suggestion that if they didn't, they might provoke men to impure thoughts and evil deeds. Note how sexual interest is painted as impure or evil.

It doesn't take much to see that such a value-system had very local origins, confined to Palestine and the neighbouring deserts. Contemporaneous with them, the Ancient Greeks were quite at ease with nudity (their Olympic athletes often competed in the nude), and throughout Indian history from time immemorial, the more ascetic Sadhus felt that spiritual purity required the jettisoning of all worldly attachments and material possessions, including their clothes. The indigenous cultures of tropical America and Africa, didn't make too big a deal about covering up either.

Alas, the dominant countries in the West today draw their cultural roots from Christianity, and we uncritically assume that these values are universal.

That's why it is important to experience and to relate here, without bias, the two public baths in Shanghai, public baths that are descended from Chinese tradition. See the article Shanghai: two bathhouses. The most striking thing was how completely nonchalant everyone was about nudity, proximity and touch, about getting a sensual rub or a hard-on, about shitting.

It demolishes one part of the whole morality assumed to lie behind the word "conservative". If anything, to be conservative in the indigenous Chinese context must mean being comfortable with nudity, being quite neutral about lust (where lust is seen as just another human feeling, akin to thirst or frustration). On the other hand, to be "modern" might mean adopting the constipated values of the (older-generation) Judeo-Christian West, sexophobic and neurotic about the human body.

Likewise with traditional Japanese public baths, where even naked men and women share the same facilities. 

So strip if you prefer the old ways, cover up if you're "modern".
 

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What does my story about the two bathhouses say regarding homosexuality? Very little. I chose to visit these two because they were said to have a concentration of homosexually-inclined men, and indeed, I could see mutual interest among them. But there was hardly any noticeable activity.

Don't read into this that, Aha!, the Chinese are "conservative", meaning they are ashamed to demonstrate their (homo)sexuality. It is not possible to draw this conclusion. The venues were designed as public baths, not as sex clubs. There was hardly any privacy.

What I understand from speaking with a few friends living in Shanghai is that the usual practice is to make contact at a bar or bathhouse and then move elsewhere. In fact, one friend told me that to his Singaporean's eyes, the Chinese are remarkably direct. They make eye contact for a few minutes, and without exchanging words, establish that there is mutual interest. One sidles up to the other and says, "Do you have a place to go?" No beating around the bush, no small talk, no saving face if rejected.

So if anyone says to you again that the Chinese are conservative, tell him, "You don't know what you're talking about."

© Yawning Bread 

 

"We Chinese don't eat beef!"

There's this someone I knew who stoutly maintained that Chinese do not eat beef. If any one does, it's because he has been too Westernised. This acquaintance of mine came to that conclusion because he himself had been brought up in a family that avoided beef. He extended his own particular habit to the entire Chinese civilisation.

Go to China, and you'll see in every town, in grand restaurants and humble eateries, beef on the menu.

Avoiding beef is a Hindu tradition that came to China hand in hand with Buddhism. Some Chinese do not eat beef, but the great majority do.

This is similar to those who, having absorbed Judeo-Christian values, then assume that their personal values are overall Chinese values.

Those of us in the diaspora should remain acutely aware that we receive a lot of foreign influences, often unconsciously. Yet in our effort to hold on to our identity as Chinese, we go into denial about these foreign influences that have distanced us from our roots. We maintain we're Chinese, and allow no exception, no degree of imperfection. As a consequence, we're blind to what the real Chinese are like, or have become since our forebears left China.

But it's so easy to check. All it takes is a dispassionate look at what the Chinese are really like, in China. And precisely because we are of Chinese descent, it is fascinating to compare where we are now with where they are, for in that distance, that strangeness that we see in each other, is evidence of different cultural journeys from a common historical starting point.

 

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