HK 2010 - The Circle

I don't know if I'm overly sensitive or what, but during this trip to HK, I had quite a few encounters with gay/les people. Perhaps because of all the things in my own life, I notice these things a lot. Or maybe the culture in HK is just different.

On one of the flights to HK, I noticed that the man on the speaker sounded rather feminine. Not too long after that, I saw one of the male flight attendants walk by with a rainbow coloured bracelet around his wrist. Putting that together, it's obvious.

While at CityPlaza one day waiting for someone, I saw two guys walking together, holding hands. It's really common to see two girls holding hands in public. But two guys is rather rare. The two went into an electronics store and looked at...sewing machines. Funny, but cute.

During a family outing, a whole bunch of us went to one of the further places in the New Territories. At one of our stops, there were lots of people flying kites. All the kites were extremely high up in the sky, except for one. The two people with that kite simply could not even get it up into the air. Seeing this, my dad, uncle and cousin all went tried to help, while my grandmother, mom and aunt looked on, laughing at their failure. I watched this all happen and was quite amused, because the two girls that owned the kite were obviously a couple. I wonder if the rest of my family members actually realized that the TB was a girl.

On the flight back here, there were some loud HK teenagers sitting in front of us. The one sitting right in front of my mom was a TB. I wonder what my mom thought.

The culture in HK always amazes me. People say HK is conservative and western countries are more open. But I don't necessarily agree with that. On any given day in HK, you will see quite a few TBs and many same-sex couples. But here in TO, that doesn't happen. Unless you're in certain parts of the city, you really rarely randomly run into any. So putting aside the marriage rights, who's more open?

I guess part of the problem is that we are Chinese in a non-Chinese city. In th end, the Chinese community is not that big and everybody knows everybody. There are a lot more issues and dangers involved in being open about things like this. People who want to be open are less open, and people who are conservative are even more conservative.

*sigh*

Sometimes it's hard to believe that I live in TO, where same-sex marriage is legal, and the biggest problem I have in my life arises from the fact that I love(d) a girl.

The irony...

(Sorry for another stupid post. But yes, I'm bitter.)