Beijing Comrades Quotes

“Lan Yu stood up from the couch and looked down at me coldly. “You’re very considerate when dumping your lovers,” he said bitterly. “Any other instructions?” Without waiting for me to reply, he turned around and went upstairs. “I’m taking a shower and going to bed,” he said, then disappeared at the top of the staircase. That night Lan Yu and I had sex as always, but he was distant, mechanical. When I looked into his face I saw nothing. His eyes were empty. It was as if he had seen me so many times that he was numb to what he was looking at.”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“Lan Yu’s inexperience thus makes him a role model of non-identity, whereas Handong stands as an example of a failed gay identity. Beijing Comrades is therefore a significantly different kind of identity narrative. The resistance to identity politics is perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this text and sets it apart from other examples of late-1990s queer sinophone literature. In Beijing Comrades, we encounter an intriguing moment in the history of modern Chinese gay writing that disrupts a unilinear movement toward identity politics.”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“Whereas Handong has given the matter some thought, Lan Yu’s positive responses to Handong’s sexual advances seem to be more of a natural reaction than the expression of a carefully chosen identity.”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“In this sense, Lan Yu is a modern version of Du Shiniang, the well-known prostitute figure in classical Chinese literature who turns out to be not only a pure-hearted person but also an unexpected reservoir of rainy-day funds.”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“Handong concludes that “happiness” alone cannot sustain a viable relationship, which is unable to escape factors such as the “bond of marriage” and the “consideration of property, profits, children, or social opinion” (338). For Handong, therefore, a relationship is always also an economic arrangement. Handong leaves Lan Yu again and again for different reasons: his intimacy issues after he and Lan Yu get too close, boredom with a monogamous relationship, social and family pressures to get married, the intervention of medical experts, a plot hatched by Handong’s wife and mother to ruin Lan Yu’s reputation, and Handong’s bouts of internalized homophobia.”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“This text follows the emotional roller-coaster ride of the on-off relationship between Handong, an arrogant, wealthy businessman born to high-ranking communist cadres, and Lan Yu, an innocent and hardworking sixteen-year-old student who falls for Handong, not because of, but in spite of the latter’s money.”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“Although the author’s effort to officially publish the text in book form in mainland China has not been successful, the circulation of the cyber novel preserves the author’s daring style. Scott E. Myers’s marvelous translation captures the richness and intensity of Beijing Comrades’s sexual vocabulary, putting to rest, once and for all, the myth that gay sex remains an unspeakable topic in the PRC’s “traditional” culture.”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“What Zhou Wen had said was right: the point of two people being together is to find happiness. But Lan Yu and I had nothing. No bond of marriage, no consideration of property, profits, children, or social opinion. It’s one thing to have nothing in the world but the happiness you feel. But when you have nothing and you’re not happy to begin with, then what’s the point?”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“Well, let me tell you something,” he continued. “It’s not worth it, okay? A man only gets so many chances in this lifetime to get serious in a relationship. And when he does, he damn well better be sure there’s a future in it. It has to lead to some bigger picture. Family. Kids.” He lit a cigarette. “But you know what? With this kind of thing, there is no bigger picture. This is it! You can’t even tell people about it without ruining yourself.”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“It had been six months since my release from jail. Half a year since the day I vowed to myself that unless Lan Yu left me, I was going to stay with him forever. Half a year. It felt like half a century. After lunch with Lin Ping, I walked back to my car in the crisp, almost spring air, my mind whirling with contradictory thoughts and emotions. Does the vow still mean anything to me? Again and again I rolled the question over in my mind.”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“It was getting harder and harder for me to know what was going on inside Lan Yu’s head. Each time our relationship entered a new crisis, he would turn around and surprise me with another expression of intimacy.”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“The New Year was right around the corner, and even if I’d wanted to weasel out of it, there was nothing I could do. The last night of the year would have to be spent at my mother’s house. Back when Lan Yu and I were still together—really together—I had always spent New Year’s Eve at my mother’s house until the clock struck midnight. Then I would rush back to Tivoli to be with him. So when the last day of the lunar calendar came I figured I would do the same. But when I spoke with Lan Yu about it, I found out that he had other plans.”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“I knew he wouldn’t say he loved me if it wasn’t true. But it is true, I told myself again and again. So why did I have to force it out of him?”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“With Lan Yu’s cock still in my mouth, I looked up at him, consumed by the desire to make him mine. I reached up and gripped his chin. “Do you love me?” I asked, as his swollen dick slipped out from between my lips. He said nothing in reply, so I tightened my grasp. Frowning and twisting his head from side to side, he pried the offending fingers away. He knew I was waiting for an answer, he knew the words I wanted to hear. I knew something too—that he wasn’t going to say it. My eyes filled with tears. I moved up higher until we were face-to-face and drilled my eyes into his. My stare excited him, yet he remained quiet.”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“Frantically, we rolled on the bed—so frantically that we nearly fell to the floor. That gave me an idea. Taking Lan Yu by the hand, I got off the bed and pulled him with me. We were standing face-to-face now. I kissed him, then used my hand to push his head downward. He lowered himself to his knees and blew me for a few minutes. Then, joining him on the floor, I pushed his face up against the side of the mattress. In all our time together we had never had sex this way. I lifted my cock to enter him. Lan Yu looked back at me mournfully and motioned toward the bed as if trying to tell me he wanted to get back on it. But I held him in place. “Don’t move,” I said. That’s how I wanted to come. And I’d make Lan Yu come that way, too. I wanted Lan Yu to know the nostalgia I felt. Nostalgia for the way things used to be, the way he used to be. Before everything changed, he was attentive, deferential: I always looked good in his eyes. As we made love that evening, I imagined that the man I was kissing, touching, holding, making love to, was the Lan Yu I had loved in the past, the Lan Yu I would never let go of again. I wanted him to know these things. But the words wouldn’t come out.”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“In the early years of our relationship, the sparks between Lan Yu and me when we saw each other after one of my business trips were like those of a newlywed couple on their honeymoon. That’s”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“Ah-ha!” I said, pouncing on top of him. “You see how lucky you are?” We rolled around in each other’s arms, kissing and chatting vivaciously about everything that had transpired in the previous week.”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“It often occurs to me today that we could have been much happier if our relationship had not been so intimately tied up from the start with that peculiar thing called money.”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“Well, I’m not,” he said, throwing his bag into the back seat. “And I’m not getting married, either. Don’t you get it, Handong?” He turned to me austerely. “I just don’t understand why so many people like us get married. It doesn’t make sense. And it’s wrong.”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“I closed my eyes. How could I put my feelings for Lan Yu into words? He still distrusted me because of what I had done in the past, and yet there he was, forgetting the past so he could be with me. I opened my eyes again.”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“I looked at him closely. Why didn’t he tell me he loved me? I had nothing to go on but intuition. I knew he loved me, and I had once thought that knowing it without having heard him say it was more romantic and exciting than a million sweet words. But knowing it was no longer enough. I wanted to hear it.”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“as much. I knew he’d be fine. With him it was just a feeling of sadness and regret. He was the one true love I had had in this lifetime, yet he never fully understood it. Nor had he ever said, not even once, that he loved me, too.”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“large like fat, blood-filled ticks. Most days I tried not to think much about them, filling my mind only with the two people in my life who mattered most: my mother and Lan Yu.”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“Unlike the first time we had broken up, for some reason this time wasn’t especially hard for me. By that point, my heart had been broken so many times there was nothing left for me to feel.”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“One night later that month, Lan Yu and I were in bed enjoying the kind of quiet conversation that lovers all around the world have while lying in each other’s arms after sex. At first we talked about nothing in particular, but soon the conversation shifted to heavier terrain. We began speaking of the journey of the human soul.”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“Forty-five minutes later, Lan Yu and I stepped out the front door of his apartment building and into the street, looking like nothing more than two ordinary friends. Even less than friends, I thought bitterly. Everything that had just transpired in his bedroom—none of it mattered now. We had nothing. No recognition from the outside world. None of the pressures keeping couples together, but all the ones keeping them apart. Walking down the street together, it was as if nothing had happened.”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“When Lan Yu and I kissed, nothing else mattered. The world disappeared and there was nothing but the mingling of our bodies. Right and wrong, truth and falsehood, the present moment and time without end—all these categories became meaningless. I needed him, needed his beautiful body. I could sculpt him like clay. I could bite him, even violate him. There was only us. He was mine.”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“It was a chilly late-October night and Lan Yu had waited outside for me for over three hours. What did it mean? I was completely thrown off guard by the idea that he cared for me that much. First he rejects me, now he’s here. What kind of game was he playing?”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“discreet afternoon playmates” I had read about in the personal ads of American newspapers.”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel

“effect was jarring. He picked up his jacket and stormed out of the office. I sat back down, utterly shell-shocked that someone I’d known for decades would turn against me in this way. Whatever else had been said, we both knew the real issue was Lan Yu. There was nothing I’d been unwilling to sacrifice for him. I’d worried my mother to death. I’d sat idly by while my friends and associates gossiped about me. I’d insulted my closest friend and lost my wife. And yet, for all that, I was still alone, unable to hold on to the one person for whom it had all been done.”
― Beijing Tongzhi, Beijing Comrades: A Novel