In the movie The Wedding Banquet, Wei is a gay who has a successful career, live happily with his boyfriend Simon in the United States, trouble comes from his parents and he needs to use a variety of tactics to deal with the parents who force him to get married over and over again . Wei was forced to be a good son in his parents’ eyes and wrote a letter claiming to get married in the United States, however he did not expect that his parents want to stay and witness him to get married. In this case, he faked his marriage with a artist from Shanghai who calls Wei Wei.
His parents were quite satisfied with wei wei, but they were dissatisfied with wei tong’s hasty attitude. In order to make his parents to stop worrying about him and return to Taipei as soon as possible, wei tong did everything he could. But the ceaseless twists and turns make the return date of parents postponed again and again, make the relationship of he and Simon on the edge of falling apart, and wei wei was pregnant with his child. It seems that wei can only choose to be a “outwardly normal” man in front of his powerful parents (tradition).
It seems to be a set of simple, direct and irreconcilable contradictions: the son is white collar, parents are traditional old people; The son is gay and the parents are looking forward to grandchildren. Homosexuality, whether in the sense of procreation or in the emotional mode itself, cannot be seen in traditional Chinese culture. However, China’s powerful family ethics, deep unconscious culture-psychological factors, as well as the deep affection for parents, have become the fettor of the son, he can not get rid of the responsibility, not to cut off the family. According to the foreign way of dealing with it, this may be regarded as a Hegelian tragedy — the conflict between personal freedom and family responsibility, which finally sacrifices at least one party, the conflict is reconciled, the unity of opposites. And in the end of the film everyone steps back and goes far: parents tolerate their son’s sexual orientation, sons divorce their wives but keep their children as a continuity of a clan.
In 2016, Sun Wenlin had taken the civil affairs beareau to court, since he wasn’t allow to legally get married with his boyfriend. This is also the first case of gay marriage equality in China, and it actually happened in my hometown Changsha. However, they lost the lawsuit. It is suggested that 2% to 5% of the population LGBT, China has a population of 1.4 billion, then there might be 28million to 70million of LGBT. And the homosexuality in China was documented since ancient time. I do hope one day that they could achieve equality in same sex marrriage and marry to whoever they want.
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