Fridae

Tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to develop this book and exhibition?

I always find the voices of older gay men have been absent from local discourses. First, aging studies in Hong Kong have rarely touched upon issues of sexuality, not to mention tongzhi (synonym for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer) identity. Second, studies of Hong Kong identity from the perspective of social history have mainly focused on ‘mainstream’ stories and tended to neglect the identities of women and sexual minorities. Third, tongzhi studies in Hong Kong have mainly focused on the post-war generations. They are the missing piece to the puzzle of local tongzhi history and also the “minority of the minority” in tongzhi social services and aging services at present.

Since 2009, I have been conducting an oral history of gay men aged 60 or above in Hong Kong and have had regular private yam cha (drinking tea) with them roughly every month since 2012. Using the method of oral history, this book "Oral History of Older Gay Men in Hong Kong" documents twelve life stories of 60+ gay men who lives in Hong Kong. It captures how the complexity of their lives is interwoven with Hong Kong history as well as the difficulties and hardships they have encountered, especially due to their sexual orientation, through colonial to contemporary times.

Born from an academic study, this project has gradually transformed into a mutual support community network for older gay men in Hong Kong. This is the most rewarding part of the project. The monthly gathering also inspired me to invite four artists, Chan Ka-kei, Gyorgy Ali Palos, Bobby KH Sham and Wong Kan-tai, to capture their current lives through photography.

What was the most interesting thing you discovered whilst completing the project?

A lot to tell: 

Each person’s biography was inspiring. I was fascinated by their dramatic stories and touched by their honesty; I was saddened by their misfortunes and frustrated by their grievances. These are stories of flesh and blood, with laughter and tears.

When they were young, most of them lived in a quasi-kin communal familial setting. Family, a supposedly private space, turned out to be a communal space. They were then forced to go outside and public space (e.g., public toilet) became the major site for finding sex, love, and friendship, which in turn became a site for private intimacy. When they become older, this kind of communal living has gone and they have to live on their own or with their immediate family members (e.g., wives, kids). The family becomes a site of intense surveillance for those who are married. With the emergence of gay infrastructure in Hong Kong since the 1990s, gay men have more space to find love, sex and relationship. However, these newly emerged spaces are not easy for these older gay men to live with. For example, most gay saunas privilege muscular athletic and/or youthful bodies; very few welcome the elderly. Very few queer NGOs have put older gay men on their service agendas. ‘Fishing’ is regarded as cheap, irresponsible, unrespectable, and undesirable, and older gay men are alleged to be self-loathing, closeted, and sad creatures who only ‘fish’ in a seedy underworld.

They have also developed some interesting argots. Mahjong is a very common Chinese game, but ‘playing mahjong’ came to mean ‘having sex’, and ‘mahjong tile’ referred to the male organ. Public toilets were called ‘gardens’ (later, ‘fish ponds’). ‘Wandering around the garden’ or ‘fishing’ meant ‘cruising’ (US) or ‘cottaging’ (UK).

Some of the respondents repressed their desires, got married, and ‘became’ gay when they turned 50 or 60. A Canadian sociologist Janet Salaff has aptly described the dutiful ‘working daughter’ of the 1970s,who sacrificed her own self-development, gave up secondary education, and worked in a factory to contribute to the family economy. Likewise, these married gay men sacrificed their own self-development by suppressing their same-sex desires, marrying in order to contribute to the heterosexual family economy. Like the working daughters, they did not really regret their decisions, beginning to explore the gay world later in life.

What do you hope to achieve through this project?

Through the oral history of Hong Kong older gay men, this project aims to grasp the complex intersections of individual biography, interpersonal processes and socio-historical transformations of Hong Kong history with two purposes: 

(a) to unfold how these individuals lived as a gay person in a heterosexist and homophobic environment in the eras between the 1920s and the 1980s when they may have encountered extreme prejudice, personal boycott, family disapproval, and social discrimination; and 

(b) to show how they live as an old and gay person (the 1990s-) in both the straight and gay worlds where heterosexism, homophobia, and ageism are apparently evident.

This book fills an unspoken gap in tongzhi history in Hong Kong. Using the book and the exhibition as tools, I aim to raise awareness of the unspoken needs and problems these men are facing to the general public and service providers.

What are the most obvious differences between the stories you uncovered and todays gay community in Hong Kong?

Ways of connecting: In the past, there was no gay-exclusive space and they found other men mainly through writing to pen pals, reading newspapers (usually negative reports about homosexuality), and through going to public spaces (e.g., public toilet) to find other gay men. Nowadays, gay men can find men in many different ways (e.g., gay bars, clubs, saunas) as well as internet (e.g., Fridae) and cruising smartphone apps (e.g., Grindr, Jack'd) 

Gay Identity: In the past, they did not have a very clear gay identity and there seemed to be more rooms for sexual experimentation. Nowadays, gay identity is so distinctive and closely relates to capitalism and pink economy. Sometimes it is not easy to conform to such a gay identity that has strong undertone of cosmopolitanism and middle-class sensibility. A lot of gay men have been discriminated along the lines of age, class, race and ethnicity, etc. Older gay men, for example, have been invisible in the gay scene. 

Upcoming events

Exhibition at HKU

Dates: 2014 Jun 30 - Jul 11 

Venue: MC3@702, The Jockey Club Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU, Pokfulam

Opening Hours: 2:00pm - 7:00 pm (except Saturdays, Sundays and Public Holidays)

Exhibition at Aco

Dates: 2014 Jul 12 - Aug 10

Venue: Aco Books, 14/F, Foo Tak Building, 365-367 Hennessy Rd, Wan Chai

Opening Hours: 1:00 pm-8:00pm (Every Tuesday to Sunday)

Book Talk at Kubrick

Date: 2014 Jul 12 (Saturday)