A Brighter Summer Day

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Tang Tang and Ryan met at the KTV for a karaoke with their coworkers but that night Ryan didn't want to go out. He had just lost his mum and was very depressed. His colleagues dragged him there and Tang Tang spent the evening with him as he was crying, trying to make him feel better. They have been together for 4 years now and they recently flew to Las Vegas to get married as it was still illegal in Taiwan. Ryan never took the chance to tell his mum about his sexual orientation, even though she kept asking him, saying it would be ok if he was gay. But after he started dating Tang Tang, he dreamt that his mother came to eat with him and gave him her blessings for their relationship.

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Aiko is a 23 years old trans woman from Nantou, a small town in the center of Taiwan. She now lives in Taipei where she just finished studying fashion design. She chose the name Aiko, because she is greatly influenced by Japanese kawai and manga culture. Aiko's family is accepting of her trans identity, her mum even jokes around with the neighbors in her hometown saying that she had three boys, but that now she has two sons and a daughter. She supports Aiko to be herself. « Being alive is a revenge in itself towards this hateful world. Be smarter, read more books, so you can live a better life. Keep your romantic thoughts ; it will never be enough, especially when you’re getting older. You can think of killing yourself a hundred, even a thousand times, but if you are dead, you then lose the chance to love and to hate. So I would say cheers anyways. » Aiko

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Kuang Ting and Cheng Huei have been together for nine years. Cheng Huei was exhausted on their day off as he works long hours. He is in the army and doesn’t feel safe to come out with his coworkers. Kuang Ting works as a part time English teacher. He said they had to do a couple therapy in order to stay together, because relationships can be challenging. Cheng Huei only came out to his parents officially because he wanted to get married. They got married on the 9th of June, and he literally came out to his family the day before the wedding. But because they already knew that their son was gay, it was not a huge surprise. Cheng Huei didn’t tell them about the wedding : he just said that he got a boyfriend. He will wait for about six months to announce to his family that they registered their marriage. For now he just wants to maintain a good relationship with his parents. After he came out, he got closer to his family. Mentally he prepared this for around four years.

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Chi Chia Wei is the first man in Taiwan who publicly came out as gay in 1986, launching at the same time a campaign to prevent HIV. He’s been since then at the forefront of LGBTQIA+ community, fighting for their rights. "The society in the 80s in Taipei was not worse than other countries, but also not really friendly; it’s basically the same everywhere in the world. However, I was the first person to discuss same sex marriage here, and to bring the issue to the parliament; therefore, Taiwan was the first country discussing same sex marriage in the parliament all over the world. I became an activist in 1986. No matter if you are younger or older, you should face yourself and respect each other. Happiness is based on four principles, to love, to trust, to help and to forgive. If you know how to balance it, you can be like me and my partner; we’ve been together for more than 30 years, even though he doesn’t come out with me, I have all his support. I won’t get married before the same sex marriage right is fully completed. » Chi Chia Wei

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Crowne and Carole both work in theatre, and have been together for four years. They live near the mountains in the north of New Taipei City. "Even my mum told me that it’s not that she doesn’t support me having a family, it’s more that she thinks if we have this whole gay marriage legalization there are going to be more gay people in the society. That’s not true. It’s that now gay people are more visible, now you are hearing from them. Before they were hiding their identity within the society. This is a weird time. I didn’t think I would be able to get married or to have kids here in Taiwan, but now that this little window is open and you see the possibility that this might be able to be changed and have hope and people try to stop it, you get really angry. We had a vote before, and there was 7 million votes against the legalization of same sex marriage, so it doesn’t look good. Older people are being told that if we let homos getting married it’s going to ruin heterosexual’s people rights to get married, and that people are going to marry their dogs and their kids will become gays.» Carole

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Darice is Taiwanese American. They discovered quite recently the term non-binary, and realized how much it fitted them. Growing up they were quite a tomboy, and were thinking that one day they would grow to become a bearded old man, but that never happened. They learned how to perform femininity as a skill, and they trained for beauty pageants in America, where their family moved. They learned how to wear make up, how to walk. I met Darice in Gonguan, a lively neighborhood of Taipei near the university. It was Friday night, and the night market was packed with students. They showed me their favorite spot, a dancing game in an arcade. They often come here to play when they cannot sleep. « I hope that anyone who reads my story or sees this project gets more confidence to be themselves. I’ve just turned thirty and I’m realizing more who I am now, so I hope no matter your age, your gender or your orientation you can find yourself and be comfortable with it. Because even if you don’t know anyone like you right now there is a lot of us out there. » Darice

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Wei Yi and Jay met on grinder, an application for gay men. They’ve been together for 7 months. " Being queer in Taiwan nowadays, we have the freedom to show ourselves in daily life because people won’t say anything, but I think that’s a really dangerous status too because people think that our condition is good enough compared to the past, that we have enough rights. We do need more rights to defend ourselves, but a lot of people think that us already having the freedom to be ourselves is enough. I think that straight people think they are giving us rights to have a place to show ourselves, and the core of this thinking is wrong. We definitely need more education to change people’s perception." Jay "Always trust yourself, and help others. The broken pieces will turn into courage. Be kind." Wëi Yi

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Yellow is 22 years old and studied advertisement and design. She was a talk show actress. She doesn't identify as a lesbian but more as pansexual or fluid. She never came out with her family as they are very conservative and would reject her. Menu is Yellow's first relationship. "I don’t want to define myself as a girl. I’m a person. Everyone is a person. I’m not a lesbian, I’m not bisexual. I just want to like the person that I want to like." Notes to them selves : "Be Brave! Never be scared to love, so that you can be a good person." Yellow "I never use to think that it takes some courage, nor to feel any different. But if someday there’s someone doubting it- Always remember to LOVE. With love, even the strongest wind cannot put you down. Embrace it and the ones you love." Menu

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Chen and Dean met each other on Facebook through friends of friends. They opened a tea shop that they built and run together in Taichung, a big city on the West Coast. They also have a mobile phone shop on the first floor. When they have free time they chill with their two dogs. They got married on the first day after the legalization. « Once my parents asked me why either I seldom came home when I wasn’t on duty, or I only took men home but no girls. After I met Dean, I told them, “This is it, he’s my partner. If you accept it, you will have one more son; if you don’t, you will lose two.” I did not think it really mattered if I said it or not, but it doesn’t mean I didn’t care how they felt. In my opinion, homosexuality is normal, they were probably worried how society thought about us, or that it might affect my career. I told them I was out since junior high school, and I was also out in the military. The officers even asked me to consult other gay people, they thought I knew better than them; they asked me to bridge. » Chen

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Dan Yao lives in Taichung. They make jewelry and are a make up artist in their spare time. « I think I’m meant to break the rules, these gender roles. I hate people saying that boys should do this or women should wear that. Everybody has the right to wear heels or dresses or pants, because they are beautiful things. If it makes you feel good to wear this or to do that you should go for it! These boxes are all made by us, humans, so humans can break these rules too! I still care a bit about what people think, so I don’t want to look cheap. I want to look elegant, to be beautiful. I want people to think he/she/they is beautiful, and I want them to forget if I am a boy or a girl. » Dan Yao

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« I think gender stereotypes are also very strong in the gay community. Taiwanese gay men don’t have their own culture, so they’re appropriating the western gay culture but without the drag aspect. Drag culture just appeared about five years ago, and before that it was just about masculinity. Men feel like they need to be stocky or have bodies like western men to be acceptable. In Taiwan, we only have the history of fighting and resisting but we don’t have the history of defining ourselves, or defining our own culture. Also the government tends to erase gay culture and art. So we don’t have our own gay history, we don’t have a path to follow our culture and identity, so we copy from the western world. And Taiwan has been colonized by many countries, by Japan, China and Spain. So we tend to change ourselves, to adapt very quickly. There’s been many changes in the past years. » Jay

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When I first met them, Li Ting and Jaeden have only been together for a month. Li Ting is originally from Singapore and moved to Taiwan seven months ago. She is a play writer. Jaeden is a non binary and trans person from Taipei, and they work as a translator. « Trans and non binary visibility is so crucial because that’s how I got to be able to be like this with such comfort and love for my trans, queer and Asian body. Even though I want to have top surgery, it doesn’t change the fact that I love my body so much. I love that it goes through all these traumas for me. And without visibility I would be so confused and frustrated. Getting to know other trans and non binary people gave me the ability to know what’s going on and have the capacity to love it. It’s very big for me personally. » Jaeden

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Johnny is a gay man who likes to drag. Costume designer by day, he started dragging at night and performing from his twenties. He wants the drag queen scene to be out there in the world, and dissociated from the world of the night. He's now telling stories to kids while in drag, and sometimes faces aggressive behavior from the parents. When he is in drag, he becomes Monlagine. "Be brave in life to make your own decisions. Fall in love with your courage. Be yourself and don’t regret what you have done. " Monlagine

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« You will meet someone who will change your life when you are 25. Be patient, and take much care of him! Don’t take things the way I did; all the sadness and horrible things you have encountered are to make yourself a better person now. Believe in yourself, be brave, then you will have a fairytale-like happy ending. » Tang Tang

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Menu and Yellow have been together for nearly three years. They went to the same university but never met because of their four years difference. They started to chat on a lesbian app and had a lot in common, especially theatre. It took a while for Menu's mother to accept the fact that her daughter was a lesbian, as Menu's brother is also gay. Her first reaction when Menu came out was to ask why her kids were monsters. Since then she has come a long way, and she really likes Yellow now. That day we hung out all together with the mum, and I took this photo as they were having a nap, after lunch. I didn't meet Menu's dad. She says it's impossible to talk to him about her sexuality. Traditionally, kids in Taiwan will express themselves with their mothers, not their father, who still holds the role of the strict family figure. As a result, a lot of young adults only come out to their mother. A gay friend of Menu comes to the family house often, and her dad, thinking he’s straight, hopes that eventually he will marry his daughter.