Madam Secretary Takes The Floor

It's two thirty (thirty eight to be exact) and I should be asleep. We need to wake up at six tomorrow. But the glass of Burgundy is too irresistible. Ordered one but the waiter gave me the bottle with enough for three glasses.

Yang has been asking me throughout this holiday if I have been enjoying myself. I suppose the afternoon at Bookworm poring over books on Darwin and then at 798 today enchanted by a guy playing some kind of triangular bone flute and sipping coffee at a roadside cafe were fun. And of course the lunch today when we shared an exquisite roast duck and a bean curd soup with saffron while he ordered me an asparagus soup with sea urchin and then the dinner last night when I decided to do the soft shell turtle and the pork kidneys which is the one meat that always gives me that ratatouille moment.

But I don't think anything beats waking up in the morning lingering in bed as I wait for Yang to stir and then holding him as my fingers caress his smooth skin and see him smile back at me.

Ok ok enough now...

How does one measure how much one cares for another?

Met up with K his wife P and son M for dinner on our first day here. I really wanted to have something Chinese but they were craving for Western food in their seventh year here. I have known K since he was a student in poly. He was a bit of an arrogant prick then but I suppose all of us who were in Choices had our own defense mechanisms to shield our fragile selves from the perceived onslaughts of an unfriendly world.

After our initial meeting he disappeared only to re-appear in Choices five years later a humbled young man - he had graduated and had found working life harder than he had realized and then there was the curse of his sexual orientation which he had still failed to overcome despite the years of praying and struggling. This time we became friends.

In the years that followed we met often and were close - I dare say I was even infatuated with him. I still remember when he would go out to pick out men in the public toilets or swimming pools, he always told me he never kisses because to kiss was a sign that there was more than sex to that momentary encounter.

He introduced me to N a Mexican missionary who fell in love with me eventhough knowing I was gay and I talked him into pursuing a degree in HR which eventually led him to Beijing with P and was with him when his father who had emotionally abused him passed on even as his discovered his dad's diary in which the man wrote of his fondness for his son which he never expressed while alive - that diary brought K a measure of closure. K was disappointed when I did not attend his wedding to P. I am not sure why I didn't - there was just too much ambivalence in me then. Nowadays my policy is to never attend a wedding if I don't think the couple would ever accept my relationship with Yang. But then I was just ambivalent.

After the dinner on the way back Yang asked me if I was ok. I asked why. He said I was extremely quiet during the dinner. The question reminded me that on a recent trip K had decided against contacting me. His reason: I seem distant whenever we met recently. I apologised to K in an email and he replied that he had long come to accept that I had at some stage in time decided to stop having conversations with him.

It is strange. It struck me that this is a silence I often have in the presence of my mum, my brother and a dear friend who visits me often. I wondered if L knew how happy I was to go hunting for the sauces he had asked me to buy from Singapore or when I bought that lego truck for M and then even more to realize that M actually loves trucks - a fact I never knew - or that I had planned to be in Beijing a day earlier than Yang specifically to spend more time with K.

And even as I write this the words of a friend who visits me often whispers almost despairingly in the background: You hardly even speak to me though I am here so often...

Spent the afternoon with Yang wandering around 798 a concentrated art space/village.

Bumped into two English kids who must have been no older than 10 fooling around in Queen's English with a Caucasian man - probably an Aussie from the sound of his accent - as their mother stood chatting with the artist who last showed his photgraphs in Beijing in 1986. One of the kids - the older one with curly shoulder length brown blonde hair and blue eyes was showing the Aussie how far back he could bend his index finger.

It all looked very fascinating even if I was fearing that the fellow's finger was about to snap when I was suddenly startled to hear him jabber away in what seemed to be perfect Mandarin to his brother. It was then that I realized that he had single eyelids.

I kept bumping into the two boys who seemed to roam freely around the arts village throughout the afternoon. It was alternatingly disconcerting and fascinating to keep hearing them always converse with each other only in Mandarin and then flipping into English with their very English mother.

It brought back memories of mum and dad. Have always wondered why I was never formally given a Chinese name though I carry a truly proper sounding Ceylonese one but then on the other hand dad never wanted me to learn Ceylonese Tamil but always encouraged me to speak Cantonese. Who knows?

I bought three bricks - each weighing about 7kgs - which Yang kindly lugged around for me the rest of the day.

The second day in Beijing was somewhat surreal - we spent the day at the Spanish Instituto Cervantes (pronounced ther-ban-tes I am told) for an exhibition of drawings from fairy tales, followed by a nice lazy afternoon at the delightful English book cafe called the Bookworm - found a beautiful small hardcover copy of the adventures of Hanuman which unfortunately was not for sale. The bookshop was having a Darwin festival with exhibits of dinosaur skeletons and the requisite scattering of hip young people with their imacs. We ended the night watching an Afghan movie.

D brought us to the Lan Club. After a couple of days of oily dumplings we decided to get a bit pampered. Also it would be nice to buy D a good dinner - we have known him for close to ten years now and he has become a dear fried.





As you can imagine, the place was designed by Philip Starck. The crocodile meat was beautiful - never at the chewy layer above the white meat before. And so were the wild mushrooms with scallops.

There is a complete lock down around the area of our hotel which is adjacent to Tianamen Square. Our friend D had to drop us off before the city centre - cars were not allowed in and he was somewhat edgy because he did not actually have a driver's licence. We had to walk through the avenues which were eeriely quiet.

The area was surrounded by soldiers and we were stopped at least four times. The first three times we just had to flash our hotel room's card key but the last time we were stopped the soldier wanted identification. He was a little thrown off by the differing colors of Yang's and my Singapore identity cards but he let us through in the end. We had to walk a longer way to the back of the hotel.

The hotel entrance was locked - we shook at the door before a security guard came to open the door for us. Earlier in the day we had received a notice that hotel guests were encouraged to return to the hotel by 5pm. It was now 11pm.

As we entered the room, booming sounds started to shake the floors a little. I had heard these sounds in the movies before. I said, that they must be the jets. Yang said no, they were the sound of tanks. Then we realized it was the sound of heavy artillery. The intermittent booming went on for over half an hour each time shaking the ground a little.

The curtains were drawn. The notice that came earlier to all hotel rooms had told us to ensure the curtains were not open. But I could not resist as the booming sound continued and tried to peer through the windows but I could not see anything. Then another boom. And now though the booming has stopped in the background there are sounds like the bursting of a thousand distant fire crackers. At first I was not sure if it was the airconditioning going awry and then decided it was my imagination but the sounds persist and I realize it is the sound of continuous gun fire.

We were told this morning that there would be rehearsals for the equivalent of the national day but I can only think of the movie Valkyrie. In a moment like this how does one actually know?

A memorial service will be held this Friday, Jul 24, to celebrate the life of Anthony Yeo, and to honour his contributions and support of the GLBTQ community. C. S. Zhou of the Free Community Church recalls his first meeting with the counsellor at a symposium to address homosexuality and the church a decade ago.

Widely regarded as Singapore's "Father of Counselling", Anthony Yeo, 60, passed away on Jun 20 from complications as a result of his leukaemia, leaving behind his brother, wife and two children. He was the founder and clinical director of Counselling and Care Centre. He had numerous letters published in the press on social issues including calling for more understanding and acceptance of lesbians and gays in society. The following tribute is contributed by C. S. Zhou of the Free Community Church.

In Memoriam: Anthony Yeo (1949 - 2009)
by CS Zhou

It was a humid afternoon that Oct 17 when I stepped into the large Methodist church. There seemed to be many middle aged to older people present, all looking very heterosexually married in contrast to the younger ones many of whom looked obviously gay to me – I am not sure if it was my nascent gaydar or a mark of my desperate longing to connect with other gay people that impacted my perceptions of the crowd that afternoon.

I had got wind that a symposium titled Homosexuality and the Church was being organised by Trinity Theological College. The date was five days after Matthew Shepard, a young gay man died. Shepard had been offered a ride by two strangers who lured him by masquerading as gay men on the night of Oct 7, 1998. They then robbed, pistol whipped and tortured him before stringing him up on a fence in a remote area. He was discovered eighteen hours later and died soon after.

The tragic events of Shepard’s death occupied my mind as the panelist – almost all Chinese and all heterosexual males – came up to the stage. One after another they shared their perspectives. All the speakers spoke of gay women and men as sinners or subjects in short, we were all just objects to each one of them, except for one speaker – Anthony Yeo. ( Read more... )

Was about to go to bed last night. Thought I'd take a look at the photo of Yang and myself taken at a friend's birthday. I love to see him smile. Slept peacefully.