The Westernized Daughter

Essay

After the release of Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), the Chinese Communist Youth League posted an article which described the protagonist’s daughter, who has a same-sex lover, as “a daughter with a westernized life”.

We couldn’t watch the film legally anyway. Using my own laptop, I found a website with the film, and then realized that it wasn’t the full version. The “westernized” part was cut. Then I thought I probably shouldn’t try to watch a film illegally. I was, indeed, a League member. In middle school my teacher chose me because I had good grades. Indeed, I shall be proud of this identity, though I didn’t even know if it could count as an identity. We apply for being League members because it will make it easier for us to become party members; we become party members to get better jobs. Nothing to do with politics. In fact, I would rather call “the westernized daughter” an identity.

In Yingyi Ma’s book, a girl was amazed by the life in U.S depicted in TV shows and then decided to study abroad. “Wow, how good life is, modern and high-class,” she said. I found it quite resonant, but our focused points were different. Fourteen-year-old me watched countless literary and artistic films, and they were all from the Western world. Carol, Brokeback Mountain,Ammonite, the Portrait of a Lady on Fire…well, there was one exception, The Handmaiden from Korea. All of these films have a common feature: diverse sexualities are presented.

That’s the life I want, I thought. From middle school I realized that my nature was incompatible with “normality”. I could follow the rule of keeping my distance from the other sex, but I couldn't understand it. My classmates rumored about me and my close friend. People told me as a girl I couldn't do this or that. I ran around the track and raced boys until the effects of puberty became apparent.

I’m the westernized daughter.

In June of this year, I had my feet on the ground of the western world. I went to the pride month celebration event held by Museum of Modern Art in New York City. At there I met a Mexican. “I saw you earlier in this afternoon and then I was certain that you are queer,” they told me. That day I wore all black, and the top was a traditional Chinese costume: the Zhongshan suit. My hair is black as obsidian and straight as brush; I was as Chinese as anyone could think of. A Chinese in a pride month event. A Chinese trying to piece together Chinese-style outfits in an American LGBTQ+ inclusive thrifting shop.

“The north America is a queer haven,” the teaching assistant from one of my courses in Yale Summer Session told me. They are from Israel and have just earned a Ph.D. degree in Yale. One day after class they told me to stay. Of course I was a bit nervous, and then they said: “I found that a lot of misgendering was happening in this class. Do you want me to correct them?” Those who misgendered me were mostly Chinese. I understand them. I understand them as a Chinese Communist Youth League member.

I do read a lot of Marx. Neo-Marxism. Marxist feminism. In English. I also write a lot, in Chinese. Queer fictions, essays, thoughts. Readers praised on me, but I failed all the creative writing assignments at school: all my sensitivity to language is lost when I do not write in Chinese.

My soul is deeply rooted in Chinese soil, but the western world has made my body breathe.

I don’t want to be the westernized daughter.