Angelwings: Contemporary Queer Fiction from Taiwan

PLATONIC HAIR

PLATONIC HAIR 8 qiu miaojin 51 This is the first overtly lesbian-themed story by Qiu Miaojin (1969–1995), a writer who, apart from the accolades she won from Taiwan’s literary establishment , is also celebrated in local lesbian subcultures as the island’s bestknown lesbian author. Qiu’s most influential works are her novels, The Crocodile ’s Journal (1994) and the semiautobiographical Montmartre Testament (published posthumously in 1996), both now lesbian classics. The Crocodile’s Journal won the China Times Honorary Novel Prize for Qiu posthumously, following her suicide in Paris at just twenty-six. In an interesting development since the mid-1990s, La-zi, the name of the lesbian protagonist of The Crocodile’s Journal, has become a ubiquitous code word for lesbian identity in Taiwan’s nütongzhi Internet cultures. Qiu’s thematic exploration of “T-po” lesbian relations (comparable to, but not identical with “butch-femme” relations) has occasioned some debate among Taiwan’s feminist and lesbian cultural critics. Liou Liang-ya writes, “[Qiu’s] fiction reflects the loneliness and desolation of [one who had] not yet been baptized in feminism and the tongzhi movement,” yet in the same article she also argues that “The Crocodile’s Journal and . . . ‘Platonic Hair’ highlight the fact that T-po are what Judith Butler calls performative, rather than being expressive of an essence.”1 Thus, for Liou, Qiu’s representations of T-po relationships at once draw upon entrenched, conservative ideologies of masculinity and femininity and destabilize those ideologies. This story originally appeared in the Independence Evening Post (1990) and was then collected in Qiu’s first book of short stories, The Revelry of Ghosts, published in 1991. Playing with the reader’s interpretation of the narrator’s gender, this story once again explores the lesbian gender categories of “T” and po. Although this story was published early compared to other examples of writing from this generation (for example Chen, Chi, and Hong, this volume ), its style makes clear Qiu’s status as one of the “new-generation” authors born in the late 1960s and early 1970s: The setting is a kind of generic contemporary city, and most of the action takes place in locales inhabited by the young urban middle class, such as cafés, bars, and rented apartments distant from family connections. This story is marked by the emotional intensity and suggestions of the surreal and nightmarish that are characteristic of Qiu’s writing. 6 “Your hair’s so long!” Han parted my hair from my forehead and let it drop onto the pillow on either side of my head. Both our pillow covers were plain purple, and facing each other in the corners of these matching squares of purple were two black, embroidered birds, hers in the upper right hand corner, mine in the upper left. The two black birds gazed fixedly at each other. She loved purple; I loved black. I often said that sleeping here every night I felt I’d be drowned by her purple , to which she’d reply that it was my black that unreasonably confined her gaze. Even the rug on the floor that we used as a bed was purple. The only black thing was the door, forcibly painted by me. “Your hair’s much longer than mine is!” I absently stroked her fringe with my left hand, as my right, cradling her head, moved back and forth amid the softness of her long tresses. qiu miaojin 52 “But you’re a man!” She blinked at me, assuming an expression of protest. “Can’t men have long hair?” I protested back at her. “No. Men aren’t allowed to.” “But long hair is so beautiful, don’t you love your own hair?” “If you had long hair, too, you’d stop loving mine. And what’s more, before long someone else who loves long hair would fall in love with you. I might as well just cut my hair off right now and become the person who falls in love with your long hair. How about that?” Her eyes stared resolutely at me and her voice trembled slightly, so weak it almost betrayed the hoarse breaking of tears. At times like this she would affect a clumsy, bullying tone, as though to make up for her all too obvious weakness. “Don’t, you mustn’t cut your hair, you’re a woman! I’ve grown used to...