My Voice, Lost and Found, Here
By: Schwinn Zhang
Tags: Writing, New York, Hangzhou, LGBT

Today is Sunday. I’m not gong to church. Instead, I’m sitting in a crowded Starbucks inside a shopping mall, the size of Penn Station in New York. Don’t be surprised. This is about the average size of malls in the techie city of Hangzhou (pronounced “Hung Joe”, and you are welcome), China. In the recent decade, the city of Hangzhou has transformed into the Silicon Valley of China, as its resident tech giant Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) has taken over every corner of shopping in mainland China. I will write an article later about the dark secrets of Alibaba. Now, let’s focus on voice.

The 20-something lady to my left is making a business plan with an entrepreneur-looking young guy. The couple to my right were playing their phones. The universe must have decided to tilt the gender balance a bit in this Starbucks today, as the female-to-male ratio is about 10:1. The powder faced girl, with deep red lips, sitting 6 feet to my front has a KPOP-celeb-ish guy next to her, with his hands on her thigh. She looks triumphant, in this room, like a reigning Queen. The blonde hair Caucasian guy standing by the bar stool has a sparkle-eyed slender Chinese girl, with sun-kissed skin and delicate makeup, chatting with him. I look at them, as if I was still in San Francisco.

I’m 30 years old. I used to be outgoing and fearless, the non-apologetic speaking-my-mind type. Being able to express oneself freely is a gift. It’s a power. Words matter. Using words freely gives us humans agency in this chaotic universe. I know exactly how I lost the power of free expression. I lost it due to fears.

Fear 1. Potential political repercussion from non-democracy government. Think if you live in Russia or its equivalent.

Fear 2. Social repercussion from the majority in democracy. By majority, I don’t simply mean white people. “Majority” should be determined by shared interest and is highly situational. I spent 4 years in New York City. My first year was fine. I just found the gay guys, white and black and Latino and very often fellow gay Asians, really repulsive in their attitudes towards me. They made me feel invisible and not welcomed in their space. When I started to openly talk about what it was like for me to navigate Gay New York as a Twinkie gay boy from China, the feedbacks from gays often ranged from rejection to rage to violence. Fellow gay Asians rejected/denied my claim that racism caused my discomfort. One Asian American gay friend taught me to, in his words, “put everything else before race.” This did help me but not for long. White gays often instantly put out their defense mode, become aggressive, or just abruptly ended the conversation. There was rarely a conversation in the first place. The black gays usually nodded upon hearing my claim. Then, never talked to me again. My last resort was to visit my college’s psychology service. The professionals were no better than the unprofessional in my opinion, as they pushed back, they attempted to attribute my experience to subjectivity, they misunderstood.

I spent 3 years of isolation in New York City, being rejected, being unwanted, being torn by these denials. In these 3 years, I learned that being a gay Asian twink, complaining about racism is not socially accepted. Only African Americans get to be the victim of racism, in the most accepted form by progressive, liberal whites. I learned that gay men, being sexual minority and the victim of AIDS crisis of the 80s, cannot possibly be bullying and harming other gay men, like a Chinese gay twink, like me.

As I ventured out of the gay dimension of New York, I soon learned that Asian women get to call out “fetish” and at the same time dating and marrying exclusively Caucasian men, rejecting fellow Asian men. I learned that it is not right to incarcerate African American men who happen to sell drugs on the streets, and at the same time it is ok for whites to die from OD. Alas, these multi-layered standards, what New York has taught me. What made me doubt if there was any point in putting out my voice, at the cost of being repressed and further isolated.

I’m in Hangzhou, where I barely feel gay. The dating APPS are full of fake profiles and AI robots. I’m fine. It gives me space and time to think. I still have fears, but now I’m in a process to regain my voice. Whether this essay is good or bad, it is my voice. The more I put my voice out there, the better I could get.