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Beijing Story
Ultimo tango a Pechino. Nella Cina ricca e spietata degli anni recenti, un giovane capitano d'industria abituato a comprare tutto - anche l'amore di chi non lo ama -incontra un ragazzo quasi adolescente, che si prostituisce per necessità economica o forse per autopunizione, e con lui brucia per la prima volta nel fuoco di una passione erotica che cambierà la vita di entrambi. Scoppiato su internet, quasi fosse un moderno samizdat, il caso di "Beijing Story" ha conquistato i lettori di tutto il mondo, pur rimanendo in patria un testo rigorosamente clandestino. Non a caso il suo autore è costretto ancora oggi a rimanere anonimo: contro la censura di Stato, la sua figura appare fragile e potente come quella dello studente inerme di fronte ai carri armati sulla piazza Tian'anmen. Dal romanzo, Stanley Kwan ha tratto nel 2001 un film premiatissimo, Lan Yu.
256 pages, Paperback
First published September 22, 1998
112 people are currently reading
4384 people want to read
About the author
Beijing Tongzhi
2 books11 followersBeijing tong zhi (北京同志) is the anonymous author of the work known in English as Beijing Comrades or Beijing Story (北京故事). The novel was adapted into the film 藍宇 [Lan Yu] directed by Stanley Kwan.
The pseudonymous author's real-world identity has been a subject of debate since the story was first published on a gay Chinese website over a decade ago. The author is known variously as Bei Tong, Beijing Comrade, Tongzhi, Beijing tong zhi, Xiao He, and Miss Wang.
The pseudonymous author's real-world identity has been a subject of debate since the story was first published on a gay Chinese website over a decade ago. The author is known variously as Bei Tong, Beijing Comrade, Tongzhi, Beijing tong zhi, Xiao He, and Miss Wang.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 275 reviews
June 3, 2025
I fell to the floor and Lan Yu cascaded with me. We collapsed into each other’s arms and the words came out. Those three nauseating words I had never said before, not even to a girl. “I love you!” [...] I love you, I had said. And it was love. It wasn’t just sex. Whatever other people might have thought, whoever other people thought we were, I knew we were in love. When I think about it today, the bittersweet pain is almost too much to bear.
Ngay từ mở đầu là mình đã biết là mình sẽ thích cuốn sách này, thậm chí sau khi đọc xong những gì nó khắc sâu trong tim mình là quá nhiều! Được sáng tác và đăng tải ẩn danh lên internet vào năm 1998, với tốc độ lan truyền lớn và trở thành chủ đề bàn tán ở Trung Quốc bấy giờ. Beijing Comrades tác phẩm kể về tình yêu giữa hai người đàn ông, họ chia tay rồi lại yêu nhau. Khi đọc qua một chút về cuốn sách mình thấy nội dung có phần na ná những cuốn sách gắn tag "đam mỹ" bây giờ, nhưng tác giả Bei Tong lại viết một tác phẩm sâu sắc thậm chí là chạm đến những yếu tố "nhạy cảm" như Chính trị, đến mức cuốn sách trở thành chủ đề cấm bấy giờ ở Trung Quốc.
Beijing Comrades được đặt bối cảnh cuối những năm 80, tại Bắc Kinh, Trung Quốc. Khi Chen Handong - con trai của một vị quan chức cấp cao, là một vị doanh nhân trẻ thành đạt và giàu có, lúc nào cũng chìm đắm trong những thú vui sắc dục bất kể nam hay nữ, gặp được Lan Yu - cậu sinh viên ngành Kiến trúc 16 tuổi từ vùng quê vừa đặt chân đến Bắc Kinh. Cả hai sau đó bắt đầu một mối quan hệ (mà theo Handong đó như một "trải nghiệm"), nhưng sau đó Handong đã bắt đầu có nhận thức sâu sắc, nghiêm túc hơn về mối quan hệ với Lan Yu.
Ngay từ khi bắt đầu cuốn sách mình đã biết Handong là MỘT THẰNG KHỐN!!! Ngay từ những ham muốn và tính kiểm soát mối quan hệ của gã. Gã vẫn mong muốn tìm kiếm một hạnh phúc ở đâu đó, nhưng bản chất con người gã thật khốn nạn! Nhưng với mình Handong vẫn là một nhân vật phức tạp và đáng thương trong xã hội bấy giờ. Handong là nhân vật LGBT điển hình trong xã hội cũ, là con trai duy nhất nên gã gánh trên vai một trọng trách lớn, mang trong mình một nội tâm hỗn loạn và mâu thuẫn. Chỉ là vì Lan Yu, cậu ngây thơ, thuần khiến, thật thà đến thế, đến mức ban đầu gã khao khát có cậu trong "trò chơi" của gã.
It’s true I was utterly indifferent to Lan Yu when I first saw him walk into the Imperial looking like a child lost at an outdoor market. But all this changed the moment our hands touched and his eyes met mine. It was something about the eyes: uneasy, sorrowful, and deeply suspicious of everything around him. A distant, even haunted expression lingered in his eyes and there was none of the fake, sycophantic smile I was so used to seeing in both my personal and professional life.
Mình thích sự cương quyết, cứng đầu của Lan Yu trong mối quan hệ giữa cậu và Handong, bởi Lan Yu biết một điều: “Money can make people crazy.” Và mình cực kỳ thích những chi tiết khiến Lan Yu trở thành một người phi giới - cậu không để bản thân bị ràng buộc bởi bất cứ điều gì kể cả trong những lần làm tình, chỉ đơn giản là Lan Yu yêu Handong và chiều theo những gì gã muốn. Lan Yu ngây thơ và trong sáng đến thế, vì tính cách đơn giản và thật thà cậu lay động trái tim lạnh lùng của gã, cậu không muốn dựa dẫm quá nhiều hay khiến gã nghĩ mối quan hệ của họ là vì tiền. Mình vừa thấy một chút hạnh phúc, vừa thấy chút buồn, chỉ vì một câu nói sau lần làm tình của Lan Yu: “How can it still be so dark out?” , chỉ khi quen biết Handong cậu mới nhìn thấy sắc trời tối đó.
Xuyên suốt diễn biến truyện là có rất nhiều những phân đoạn ân ái, những khao khát dục vọng giữa hai người đàn ông, và thậm chí là giữa đàn ông và phụ nữ. Những phân đoạn giữa Handong và Lan Yu thực sự quyến rũ, bản thân mình thích cách họ chìm đắm trong những khoái cảm đó, họ hòa quyện trong những khoảnh khắc được xem là yên bình. Chỉ đơn giản là ôm, hôn rồi gọi tên nhau cũng khiến tim mình bấn loạn cả lên!!!
I lifted him back up to the couch, wrapped my arms around him tightly, and began frantically kissing his mouth, his cheeks, his eyelids. Never had a kiss infused me with so much passion. We kissed endlessly, stopping only when we were both exhausted, out of breath even. I felt as though the world around me had gone black; there was nothing else, only us.
Được đặt ở bối cảnh khi cuộc thảm sát Thiên An Môn diễn ra, từ đó tạo nên những bước ngoặt lớn trong mối quan hệ của hai nhân vật, Handong nhận ra tình yêu mà gã dành cho Lan Yu lớn nhường nào, đồng thời nó cũng đầy thử thách.
Cái hay của Beijing Comrades là tác giả xen cài những yếu tố về giai cấp, bản sắc giới và xã hội đầu những năm 90 ở Trung Quốc ảnh hưởng đến mối quan hệ của hai nhân vật. Handong và Lan Yu bất đồng về những quan điểm từ giai cấp và cả quan niệm sống, định kiến về giới tính mà Handong luôn áp đặt lên Lan Yu - một phần gã lo sợ về tình yêu đồng giới chẳng được công nhận, quan niệm cổ hủ và bài xích người đồng tính - coi họ như bị "bệnh tâm thần"; gã đắng đo lựa chọn về gia đình, địa vị. Nhưng vì sao, vì sao gã vẫn muốn chọn ở bên cậu? Người gã muốn vẫn là cậu?
“When you have a pet, you can’t bear to see it get hurt. But when a mother sees her own son looked down on by other people, rejected by the world around him, isn’t that worse than death? Isn’t it, Handong? I’m just so afraid of what’s going to happen . . " She put her head in her hands and cried softly.
Trái tim mình đã tan nát hết lần này đến lần khác, nhất là khi phần đau lòng của cuốn sách này có điểm tương đồng không hề nhẹ với một quyển manga BL mà mình rất thích, nhưng Beijing Comrades phức tạp và đau buồn hơn nhiều. Handong và nhân vật trong quyển manga kia giống nhau, tại sao họ đã có những gì họ muốn nhưng vẫn nhung nhớ khao khát hình bóng của người cũ? Và cả Lan Yu cũng như cậu nhân vật còn lại trong quyển manga đó, dần trưởng thành theo thời gian, luôn giữ lạc quan và thậm chí khiến mình bật cười vì sự châm biếm, ngụ ý bóng gió trong từng câu nói của Lan Yu về sau.
Mình tức giận và thương xót Lan Yu. Sau bao lần bản chất của Handong vẫn thế, gã vẫn giữ một bản sắc của riêng gã, tình yêu chân thành đến mấy vẫn không thể thay đổi hoàn toàn một con người. Bên cạnh đó tác giả Bai Tong viết một câu chuyện ấn tượng về câu hỏi của hạnh phúc, sự hoang vắng trong tâm trí con người trước những hoang mang về cuộc sống quá hay; Handong tránh né và nép bản thân vào góc tối của những thú vui trụy lạc, gã cứ hối tiếc về quá khứ. Và Lan Yu, cậu một lần nữa ở đó, bao dung không oán trách và bỏ qua cho gã hết lần này đến lần khác. Trong những lúc đau khổ và tan nát, trong những khoảnh khắc rơi nước mắt cũng chính Lan Yu là người đầu tiên thay đổi không khí đó thành những cái ôm, cái hôn và tiếng cười, bị nỗi đau bào mòn cậu vẫn luôn lạc quan trong những khoảnh khắc đau đớn nhất. Tình yêu của Lan Yu quá thật thà, quá trong sáng.
“I never told him about you.” That surprised me. It was hard to believe he’d never said a about a relationship that had lasted as long as ours. But there was more.
“I’ve never told anyone about us,” he continued.
“Why not?”
Lan Yu turned to look me in the eye. “It’s ours, Handong."
Mối quan hệ của Handong và lan Yu đến cùng vẫn là một điều gì đó phức tạp trong từng quá trình phát triển, sự đối lập của cả hai vẫn còn đó mà không hề thay đổi, ấy thế họ vẫn bên nhau không nhắc về quá khứ, không nghĩ về tương lai, hiện tại là đủ. Nói thật khi đến cái kết mình không phải quá sốc, bởi mình đã dự đoán được rằng nó sẽ xảy ra ༼;´༎ຶ ༎ຶ`༽ một phần mình thấy nó quá điện ảnh, nhưng thật sự mình vẫn thích cái kết đó. Mình đã nổi da gà khi bí mật của Lan Yu được tiết lộ ở phần cuối, nếu không có cái kết đó có lẽ mình đã không đau nhiều như bây giờ. Sao Lan Yu lại có thể cao thượng đến thế!!?? Khoảnh khắc đó mình buồn và quá đau, tình yêu của Lan Yu luôn âm thầm - đến mức chữ "yêu" cậu cũng chẳng nói ra, vì yêu mà Lan Yu âm thầm làm tất cả những điều đó, cậu DŨNG CẢM hơn gã đến mức Handong vốn là một kẻ từ đầu có mọi thứ cũng không được như cậu, gã lúc nào cũng lo sợ. Chính Lan Yu cho Handong một bài học về tình bạn, thứ tha và hàn gắn lại những mất mát, đổ vỡ. Lan Yu vượt qua mọi ràng buộc của vật chất, xã hội, cậu tự tạo cho mình một bản sắc của riêng cậu, với cậu Bắc Kinh đã là nhà - cũng là gã. Ngay cả trong giấc mơ của gã, cậu vẫn ở đó trong chiếc áo sơ mi trắng mà cậu yêu quý.
Nhìn kỹ nội dung và cách viết của Bai Tong không quá đặc sắc, nhưng nó vân đủ khuấy đảo cảm xúc của mình. Một tác phẩm ấn tượng phản ánh khía cạnh cộng đồng LGBT ở Trung Quốc trong bối cảnh đầy hỗn loạn giữa Chính trị và văn hóa, xã hội. Bản thân mình đọc bản Eng cũng đọc qua bản gốc Trung, thật sự là đôi lúc có những đoạn mình xem qua bản gốc mới hiểu và thậm chí là ngược lại. Bản gốc có vài đoạn không được chi tiết rõ ràng như bản Eng, và mình thật sự đánh giá cao những dịch giả của bản dịch Eng đã mang đến nhiều thứ hay và bay bổng hơn rất nhiều.
He was so good, so decent, so kind to everyone around him. His only crime was that he loved someone he wasn’t supposed to. The world thought his love was ludicrous, sick, degenerate. But I knew it was pure, innocent, eternal..
And me? I won’t make it to heaven. Not because I loved another man, but because of the suffering I caused him.
I love this: https://youtu.be/oMDj9L44LZM
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June 2, 2021
May 25, 2018
If you haven’t read the blurb, please do ;-) It will give you a short overview about the book and its one-of-a-kind history.
Beijing Comrade is a fascinating story because of it’s authentic portrait of Chinese gay culture in the 90th and I am sure that many of its themes still have validity today.
As someone who grew up in a Western culture, lived two years in Macao, and now studies Sinology (China studies), I’m particularly interested in how life is and was for LGBTQIA people in a country with a complete different background than mine and I jumped at the chance to read this book when the first English translation was available in March this year. Beijing Comrades was not only entertaining to read but I took a lot of information and comprehension from it.
I think it’s really interesting how many problems and prejudices gay people (I am consciously not talking about LGBTQIA here, because the protagonist in this book is gay and I am sure that experiences for, i.e., transgender people are different) face that are quite similar to our own Western experience but are on the other hand rooted in a different origin. I grant that probably more or less all over the world people always feared and rejected people who were different and they didn’t understand, but while in Western culture a lot of the problems and rejection root in religion it does not so in China.
China is, to me, a very contradicting country. Apart from Korea, I can’t think of many countries that have changed so much over such a short time period, yet stayed the same in other aspects. Family is China’s cornerstone. It seems there is nothing quite as important. Coming from a Confucian background, it is moreover expected from the children to honour and please their parents. The highest goals are to marry, have children, take care of the parents, and have a good job and reputation.
You probably already see the problem with that. Now bring into account China’s (now abandoned) 1-child policy and you can imagine how much more pressure lies on the only-child.
Beijing Comrade shows how this view on family and the relations between parents and child have a huge impact on gay men, in this case on Handong and his lover Lan Yu.
This book is not a romance, although it tells a love story. Handong’s and Lan Yu’s love story is as beautiful as it is ugly, as hopeful as it is hopeless. Handong is, especially in the first part of the book, not a very likeable character and remains egotistic over a long time, maybe even until the end. He changes a lot though and regarding character study and evolution this book has a lot to offer.
When describing the book, I always want to say that it’s very Chinese. But what does that even mean? Is there a Chinese way? I’m not a fan of stereotypes, so I am aware of the problem, of generalising.
I still want to give some examples what I mean with this and what is portrayed in this book.
There is, of course, the above mentioned important role of family. Above that, I’d say, in comparison to Western culture, it seems that ethics like honesty, faithfulness, and integrity are of lesser importance. It is way more important how things look like than how they really are, and help is taken in any form possible. It’s a constant bargaining in favours and being connected to important people is an advantage that is used for personal gain and protection.
What you can expect from Beijing Comrades – should you be as interested in the topic as I am and want to spent 15 bucks on a paperback – is not only a view into Chinese gay culture and society but also love, sex, and betrayal. You will of course be confronted with homophobia (also internalised) and wrong assumptions about homosexuality in general.
I found it a bit hard to rate this book because how do we rate cultural heritage, a work that on its own is important and has influenced many people in China? I think the translator did a brilliant job. I think this book is a bit long and repetitive and therefore I’m rating it with 4 stars.
______________________
Genre: gay fiction
Tags: M/M, China, family
Rating: 4 stars
Blog: Review for Just Love Romance
______________________
Reread this for my paper. My rating stands but, geez, am I glad it is over. The heavy things weighed down on me a lot more. No HEA for the queer couple, constant lying and cheating, constant ups and downs in the relationship, the unaccepting society... *sigh* Find me in the fluff corner of romance.
Some notes:
★ I am not really sure that Handong is gay. There is a lot that speaks in favour of it but also in favour of him being actually bisexual. Bisexuality is not really well researched in China yet (as far as I know) and I think it's not as common or even a hugely acknowledged sexual identity. The labels inside the book are either gay or straight.
★ I have to think some more about several points regarding the author's intention in writing the book. If they foremost wants to criticise the homophobic society, why present to us a couple that is so dysfunctional on its own until the end? If they wants to show that love is possible for gay people, why give us a story where the one protagonist dies and the other continuous a miserable life? And again, if they wants to show that gay people can have love - as opposed to only sex - why is the only thing that actually works for Lan Yu and Handong is the sex? They do love each other, I believe that, but they can't live happy together, and that is not the fault of the society. It doesn't make it easier on them but that is all.
Beijing Comrade is a fascinating story because of it’s authentic portrait of Chinese gay culture in the 90th and I am sure that many of its themes still have validity today.
As someone who grew up in a Western culture, lived two years in Macao, and now studies Sinology (China studies), I’m particularly interested in how life is and was for LGBTQIA people in a country with a complete different background than mine and I jumped at the chance to read this book when the first English translation was available in March this year. Beijing Comrades was not only entertaining to read but I took a lot of information and comprehension from it.
I think it’s really interesting how many problems and prejudices gay people (I am consciously not talking about LGBTQIA here, because the protagonist in this book is gay and I am sure that experiences for, i.e., transgender people are different) face that are quite similar to our own Western experience but are on the other hand rooted in a different origin. I grant that probably more or less all over the world people always feared and rejected people who were different and they didn’t understand, but while in Western culture a lot of the problems and rejection root in religion it does not so in China.
China is, to me, a very contradicting country. Apart from Korea, I can’t think of many countries that have changed so much over such a short time period, yet stayed the same in other aspects. Family is China’s cornerstone. It seems there is nothing quite as important. Coming from a Confucian background, it is moreover expected from the children to honour and please their parents. The highest goals are to marry, have children, take care of the parents, and have a good job and reputation.
You probably already see the problem with that. Now bring into account China’s (now abandoned) 1-child policy and you can imagine how much more pressure lies on the only-child.
Beijing Comrade shows how this view on family and the relations between parents and child have a huge impact on gay men, in this case on Handong and his lover Lan Yu.
This book is not a romance, although it tells a love story. Handong’s and Lan Yu’s love story is as beautiful as it is ugly, as hopeful as it is hopeless. Handong is, especially in the first part of the book, not a very likeable character and remains egotistic over a long time, maybe even until the end. He changes a lot though and regarding character study and evolution this book has a lot to offer.
When describing the book, I always want to say that it’s very Chinese. But what does that even mean? Is there a Chinese way? I’m not a fan of stereotypes, so I am aware of the problem, of generalising.
I still want to give some examples what I mean with this and what is portrayed in this book.
There is, of course, the above mentioned important role of family. Above that, I’d say, in comparison to Western culture, it seems that ethics like honesty, faithfulness, and integrity are of lesser importance. It is way more important how things look like than how they really are, and help is taken in any form possible. It’s a constant bargaining in favours and being connected to important people is an advantage that is used for personal gain and protection.
What you can expect from Beijing Comrades – should you be as interested in the topic as I am and want to spent 15 bucks on a paperback – is not only a view into Chinese gay culture and society but also love, sex, and betrayal. You will of course be confronted with homophobia (also internalised) and wrong assumptions about homosexuality in general.
I found it a bit hard to rate this book because how do we rate cultural heritage, a work that on its own is important and has influenced many people in China? I think the translator did a brilliant job. I think this book is a bit long and repetitive and therefore I’m rating it with 4 stars.
______________________
Genre: gay fiction
Tags: M/M, China, family
Rating: 4 stars
Blog: Review for Just Love Romance
______________________
Reread this for my paper. My rating stands but, geez, am I glad it is over. The heavy things weighed down on me a lot more. No HEA for the queer couple, constant lying and cheating, constant ups and downs in the relationship, the unaccepting society... *sigh* Find me in the fluff corner of romance.
Some notes:
★ I am not really sure that Handong is gay. There is a lot that speaks in favour of it but also in favour of him being actually bisexual. Bisexuality is not really well researched in China yet (as far as I know) and I think it's not as common or even a hugely acknowledged sexual identity. The labels inside the book are either gay or straight.
★ I have to think some more about several points regarding the author's intention in writing the book. If they foremost wants to criticise the homophobic society, why present to us a couple that is so dysfunctional on its own until the end? If they wants to show that love is possible for gay people, why give us a story where the one protagonist dies and the other continuous a miserable life? And again, if they wants to show that gay people can have love - as opposed to only sex - why is the only thing that actually works for Lan Yu and Handong is the sex? They do love each other, I believe that, but they can't live happy together, and that is not the fault of the society. It doesn't make it easier on them but that is all.
June 6, 2021
queer lit around the world’s next stop: banned chinese work from the 90s — set during the decade of the tiananmen massacre
definitely a page-turner, but not for the faint of heart (or well, conservative at heart) — at times very raw and vulgar
complex and layered character study on their romance, in the context of a more conservative chinese culture — confronting the tensions and the inner turmoil of coming to terms with one’s identity in the context of china during a time of political upheaval
4.5/5 - there were some questionable parts but ultimately a page turner that reeled me in with its characters + story
definitely a page-turner, but not for the faint of heart (or well, conservative at heart) — at times very raw and vulgar
complex and layered character study on their romance, in the context of a more conservative chinese culture — confronting the tensions and the inner turmoil of coming to terms with one’s identity in the context of china during a time of political upheaval
4.5/5 - there were some questionable parts but ultimately a page turner that reeled me in with its characters + story
March 31, 2016
Wow. Like WOW. Seriously I'm still reeling.
Review to come.
Review to come.
July 19, 2016
I don't quite understand why I liked this novel so much.
How was the writing?
Not stellar, or maybe it was just the translation. Not terrible, just not the kind of well-wrought prose that usually floats my boat.
In particular, the sex scenes – of which there are many...the two main characters pretty much can't keep their hands off one another anytime they are together, and each and every commingling is described in great detail – did not usually make for steamy reading. But one playful scene, where one of them is on the phone – I won't say any more – was sweetly memorable.
Didn't you learn lots about 1980s Chinese culture?
Not as much as I'd wanted to. But there is a harrowing account of the younger of the two lovers getting banged up pretty good at Tiananmen Square, and lots of interesting Chinese language customs and translated slang.
So, come on now, surely you can say why you liked it?
It was extremely moving in places, and I felt the writer – whoever he or she may be – nailed the reality of coming out in a homophobic culture, and the heartbreak of trying to forge a romantic relationship when one partner has not come out enough to love – truly, deeply, love – back.
OK, but you haven't really said what the book is about.
Handong is a twenty-something businessman, and more than a bit of a jerk. He's got a girlfriend and cheats on her with other women regularly; one day, on a lark, he goes to bed with a man. Quite liking it but not considering himself to be gay in any essential way, he varies his menu of sex partners accordingly. When he meets a younger guy, Lan Yu, fresh-faced and newly arrived in Beijing from Hicksville, China, Handong soon feels more than he's ever felt before, be it for man or woman.
The story goes from there, and the relationship is tempestuous, sexual, intermittently deeply loving, and on-again off-again. Lan Yu is easy to love as a character, and Handong's moments of extreme tenderness and generosity, scattered among all his hard-assed selfishness, made me care about him, too.
One more try: why did you like this book so much?
The coming out/staying in dynamic at the heart of the story. Western queer lit has been rolling its eyes at that particular plot line, saying "been there, done that, moved on," for a long while now. That's a shame, I think. That's why I responded so viscerally to Beijing Comrades. It could have been Tokyo, New York, Calgary or Santiago Comrades and resonated as deeply for me.
That resonance almost made up for what didn't work. The tale is elemental. Archetypal, even--as if I or anyone else has a clue what 'archetypal' means.
How was the writing?
Not stellar, or maybe it was just the translation. Not terrible, just not the kind of well-wrought prose that usually floats my boat.
In particular, the sex scenes – of which there are many...the two main characters pretty much can't keep their hands off one another anytime they are together, and each and every commingling is described in great detail – did not usually make for steamy reading. But one playful scene, where one of them is on the phone – I won't say any more – was sweetly memorable.
Didn't you learn lots about 1980s Chinese culture?
Not as much as I'd wanted to. But there is a harrowing account of the younger of the two lovers getting banged up pretty good at Tiananmen Square, and lots of interesting Chinese language customs and translated slang.
So, come on now, surely you can say why you liked it?
It was extremely moving in places, and I felt the writer – whoever he or she may be – nailed the reality of coming out in a homophobic culture, and the heartbreak of trying to forge a romantic relationship when one partner has not come out enough to love – truly, deeply, love – back.
OK, but you haven't really said what the book is about.
Handong is a twenty-something businessman, and more than a bit of a jerk. He's got a girlfriend and cheats on her with other women regularly; one day, on a lark, he goes to bed with a man. Quite liking it but not considering himself to be gay in any essential way, he varies his menu of sex partners accordingly. When he meets a younger guy, Lan Yu, fresh-faced and newly arrived in Beijing from Hicksville, China, Handong soon feels more than he's ever felt before, be it for man or woman.
The story goes from there, and the relationship is tempestuous, sexual, intermittently deeply loving, and on-again off-again. Lan Yu is easy to love as a character, and Handong's moments of extreme tenderness and generosity, scattered among all his hard-assed selfishness, made me care about him, too.
One more try: why did you like this book so much?
The coming out/staying in dynamic at the heart of the story. Western queer lit has been rolling its eyes at that particular plot line, saying "been there, done that, moved on," for a long while now. That's a shame, I think. That's why I responded so viscerally to Beijing Comrades. It could have been Tokyo, New York, Calgary or Santiago Comrades and resonated as deeply for me.
That resonance almost made up for what didn't work. The tale is elemental. Archetypal, even--as if I or anyone else has a clue what 'archetypal' means.
April 8, 2020
Its hard to rate this one! The writing engaged me so much that i finished it really quickly, it kept me turning the pages. That makes me feel like it deserves a high rating. But would i recommend this book? Not really, no.
I found the nuggets of information about life and politics in china during late 80s and early 90s very interesting. One of our main characters goes to tianmen square and tell of the state repression there.
But this is a romance novel, and I hated the romance. We are in the head of a businessman whos an absolute asshole, and when the relationship we follow starts, the other "man" is a boy of only 16 years. It bothers me more here than the similar age difference in Call me by your name, because here the power balance is more uneven. The businessman consistently tries to "own" the boy by means of buying him things and giving him money. We also hear him thinking things about wanting to dominate and control. Many sex scenes have dubious consent. I was wincing a lot while i read.
At the same time, i can see how this novel for someone other than me, in another time and place, could have been important because it deals with self hate and self acceptance as a gay man in a society that considers it "hooliganism". It was written in 1998 and has been significant in chinese gay literature. But i think that now, in 2020, you could find the same emotional themes explored in other books with healthier romance.
I found the nuggets of information about life and politics in china during late 80s and early 90s very interesting. One of our main characters goes to tianmen square and tell of the state repression there.
But this is a romance novel, and I hated the romance. We are in the head of a businessman whos an absolute asshole, and when the relationship we follow starts, the other "man" is a boy of only 16 years. It bothers me more here than the similar age difference in Call me by your name, because here the power balance is more uneven. The businessman consistently tries to "own" the boy by means of buying him things and giving him money. We also hear him thinking things about wanting to dominate and control. Many sex scenes have dubious consent. I was wincing a lot while i read.
At the same time, i can see how this novel for someone other than me, in another time and place, could have been important because it deals with self hate and self acceptance as a gay man in a society that considers it "hooliganism". It was written in 1998 and has been significant in chinese gay literature. But i think that now, in 2020, you could find the same emotional themes explored in other books with healthier romance.
July 7, 2020
“Some people said it was the most moving story they had read in recent years. Others said that the author was probably writing with one hand while masturbating with another.”
From the postscript of Bei Tong’s “Beijing Comrades,” this quote so perfectly encapsulates what is beautiful and important about this anonymously written book, banned in China, but hitting at the heart of queer experience.
Handong met Lan Yu before he knew that “gay” was a thing and they had the most intense sexual connection he’d experienced. For years, because of Handong’s own issue resolving his sexual identity, these two existed in a butterfly relationship: falling apart and back into love over and over. Tracing the lives of two gay men in China during the Tian’anmen uprisings, this book, better than almost any American gay book, captures the physical and emotional tensions of gay relationships and love.
“Beijing Comrades” is an important book for many reasons: it gives life to queer Chinese stories, it stomps on stereotypes about Asian male sexuality, and, most importantly, it gets the tensions inherent in gay relationships perfect. It’s a book you must read for it tells a story that will resonate over and over again.
From the postscript of Bei Tong’s “Beijing Comrades,” this quote so perfectly encapsulates what is beautiful and important about this anonymously written book, banned in China, but hitting at the heart of queer experience.
Handong met Lan Yu before he knew that “gay” was a thing and they had the most intense sexual connection he’d experienced. For years, because of Handong’s own issue resolving his sexual identity, these two existed in a butterfly relationship: falling apart and back into love over and over. Tracing the lives of two gay men in China during the Tian’anmen uprisings, this book, better than almost any American gay book, captures the physical and emotional tensions of gay relationships and love.
“Beijing Comrades” is an important book for many reasons: it gives life to queer Chinese stories, it stomps on stereotypes about Asian male sexuality, and, most importantly, it gets the tensions inherent in gay relationships perfect. It’s a book you must read for it tells a story that will resonate over and over again.
May 17, 2019
What’ve I just read?🥺 dammit!! Ever went into a book thinking it’s going to be one thing but turns out to be completely different?
This’s one of, if not the raunchiest queer lit I’ve ever read.
It’s about two closeted gay men, Handong and Lan Yu and their tumultuous, extremely toxic relationship in Beijing starting from the mid 80s right up until after the Tainanmen massacre.
While some may be turned off by the novel’s unabashed vulgarity and hard-core pornographic imagery (I’m talking... extremely explicit) what kept me going (with a racing heart) was Handong and Lan Yu’s highly dysfunctional and devastating love story as they navigate the uncharted terrain of same sex relationship.
The writing isn’t groundbreaking and nor is the plot, and most of the things Handong says and does is actually revolting in the first half of the book but their story itself? I felt like my insides were being slowly grated with a cheese grater.
You can feel the love seeping through the pages but the many obstacles they face, the constant on and offs, the near misses... oh, it’s was too much for my weak self.
Will definitely be rereading it soon. It was...
This’s one of, if not the raunchiest queer lit I’ve ever read.
It’s about two closeted gay men, Handong and Lan Yu and their tumultuous, extremely toxic relationship in Beijing starting from the mid 80s right up until after the Tainanmen massacre.
While some may be turned off by the novel’s unabashed vulgarity and hard-core pornographic imagery (I’m talking... extremely explicit) what kept me going (with a racing heart) was Handong and Lan Yu’s highly dysfunctional and devastating love story as they navigate the uncharted terrain of same sex relationship.
The writing isn’t groundbreaking and nor is the plot, and most of the things Handong says and does is actually revolting in the first half of the book but their story itself? I felt like my insides were being slowly grated with a cheese grater.
You can feel the love seeping through the pages but the many obstacles they face, the constant on and offs, the near misses... oh, it’s was too much for my weak self.
Will definitely be rereading it soon. It was...
February 3, 2024
There was a time when I watched Eastern movies. This consumed the bulk of my leisure time and over the course of hundreds of movies I was not only introduced (almost, technically I'd be watching Asian movies since a child when my father got me watch a whole bunch of Godzilla and probably changed my life) to novel languages- be they spoken, visual, gestural, and anything in between/beyond- as I became aware of many other titles. "Beijing Comrades", the extremely famous adaptation of this book, was one such movie that I did not actually see but of whose existence I had been keenly aware for well over a decade.
Being a massive fan of "Happy Together", another defining entry in the Sinophile queer movie sphere, I had been longing to read "Beijing Comrades" long before there was even a translation available. So the moment I stumbled on the book- in English- I immediately jumped to the opportunity. That this edition turns out be very solid, containing an introduction on the part of the translator with plenty of context as to the text(s)’ genesis- a fascinating subject on its own- a postscript by the author and a commentary by Petrus Liu, was icing on the cake.
Reading Beijing Comrades invoked a sense of nostalgia by connecting me to my experience of being immersed in Asian cinema. The many scenes in which Hangdong and Lan Yu stand holding each other right before on the entrance to several apartments, for example, immediately transported me to the highly marking image of the two leads in “Happy Together” doing just that (while gently dancing). That the movie is so deeply interwoven with the book, in the collective imagination, adds to this impression.
With this said, none of this is at all required to appreciate this book. It is impressively honest in its presentation of a narrator who starts out as a spoiled playboy, for one, and does away with attempts at sanitizing the story. This means that it is very graphic (this version, the author toned it down considerably in order to get it published in the PRC, to no avail) yet has come a long way from its original presentation, which was basically online smut.
If the novel has come a long way since its origins, that it was first conceived as an online text, cannot be overestimated. As the front and back matter explain, its quality as a cultural text divorced from an actual author, who created and made it public through the internet, reacting to readers’ feedback, makes it a pioneer in this space. It also makes it keenly apt to reflect the time at which it came to be, the late 98’s, as much as the time that it portrays, the late 80’s/early 90’s.
This is a period of time that is crucial in the PRC and the book does not shy away from engaging with real events. The increasing cruelty and alienation that followed the country’s rapid post-liberal boom is structural to the story, Hangdong’s lavish lifestyle, with his cellphone at a time virtually no one had even seen one, long term rented apartments at absurdly expensive hotels/country clubs, the flurry of high end restaurants and juggling of several business entanglements, could not have happened in his parent’s generation. That he is the son of a high ranking CCP’s member is no coincidence: his, in fact, is a “patriotic name” that refers directly to Mao yet Hangdong is surprisingly non-political.
The amount of money he splurges around may not come across as excessive until one factors in that the vast amount of the Chinese population, at the time, was not exactly doing that well. Just his owning a car, of any kind, is a symbol of wealth in 80’s China that would not be in 80’s America.
While Hangdong talks about those even richer than him, he is very much the 1% and has no qualms about it either.
It is against this background that one has to place Lan Yu, who is very much the 99%. Hailing from Xinjiang (but not of Uyghur descent), Lan Yu impersonates a rift that still exists in China: that of rural and urban. A very hard student and then worker, who tries his best to become an architect while struggling to adapt to the massive city that is Beijing, Lan Yu lives a double displacement. That of the centrifugal force cities exert for queer people, and that of migrants who head for the city in the hopes of making a better life for themselves. This second slant defines much of the Beijing of the time, migrant workers and their precarity being mentioned several times.
The imbalance of power is immediate, stark and quite common in romance. What distinguishes Being Comrades from a lot of these titles, is that it is aware that is an issue. In fact, apart- and directly linked- to the homophobia in which the two cannot help but be mired, the economic factor is one of the main sources of conflict between Hangdong and Lan Yu. The double bind is thus complete.
When so much of what passes for romance is swamped with narratives of rich partners sweeping poor ones off their feet and providing them with a dreamy existence, without ever considering just why it is that one has all the money and the other has none, Beijing Comrades is a breath of fresh air.
It avoids the pitfall of turning Lan Yu into an angel with no flaws. His struggles as a working class queer man resonate from start to finish but he is not beyond snapping and going full snarky. It would have been very easy to turn the entire novel into a programmatic humdrum affair, perhaps even more so in that the author surely consumed plenty of such material in their youth (then again, that may have been a reason to avoid creating it themselves) but through the rendering of characters who are believable as people, the anti-capitalist message just flows naturally.
It also ties in and is irrevocably connected to the modern presentation of homophobia. Production being valued as a good in its own, queer relationships, once they are front and center- displacing the heteronormative marriage contract in which children and accumulation of property are the result- cannot help but be devalued as a negative factor in society. That this view is articulated at different points of the narrative not only by Hangdong but my a gay man who keeps male lovers on the side, is not only not surprising but the logical conclusion of the double bind. If you keep your not typical sexual expression of partner in your private life, and you are privileged enough to be allowed the privacy of condos, hotels, and the like, then you are “free” to pursue the typical, public expression.
This is very much how Hangdong sees the women in his life. The one who sticks around the longest is constantly described as extremely attractive and thus a symbol of status to flaunt. In fact, almost always, Hangdong will comment, somewhat ruefully, that no matter what, he can ever have this kind of public acknowledgment of his relationship with Lan Yu.
There are older, deeply ingrained sources of homophobia that hark back to Confucian notions of duty and these, too, are presented. If anything, there seems to be a complete fusion between the two strands: what you owe to your parents and what you owe to the new, fast pace and production crazy society. Thus, Hangdong’s mother, who received “a Nationalist [and thus outdated] education, can perfectly denounce queerness in modes that match the demands of “One Country, Two Systems.”
On that subject, Hong Kong emerges as a haven of relaxation and opportunities unavailable in Hong Kong. It is the big city motif writ large and while cannot help thinking that part of this is down to the holiday feeling that is associated with travel, Hong Kong’s identity as “something different” is fully realized.
By not romanticizing the power imbalance in the interpersonal relationship, the novel is able to fully factor in homophobia in this regard as well.
Much can be said about the title, to the point that the two terms- “Being” and “Comrades”- are deserving of some analysis. The novel, at one point, was known as “Beijing Story”, the city’s central role surviving the change in title. I found myself thinking of another “Being Story” per excellence, Rickshaw Boy. There, the working life of another migrant who roams to Beijing in the hopes of a better life is told through a city that is vividly rendered in great detail. Down to the street, the by now most gone city is evoked as a locus of increasingly unfortunate circumstances that befall the underprivileged rickshaw worker. What it has in terms of geographic accuracy, it lacks in chronological points, giving it a timeless quality: it almost does not matter when this one Beijing story place.
“Beijing Comrades” follows an entirely opposite approach. In it, the Beijing depicted is surprisingly unfixed, swimming in a kind of vague geography in which fictional names are systematically applied (Huada, Lan Yu’s university, for example, does not exist under that name) and the colossal nature of broad avenues through which Hangdong can forlornly drive around when feeling down is perhaps the strongest image. On the other hand, the novel has a very steady hand on when the story takes place. It is probably not amiss that one of the few times the toponymy matches the real city is Tiananmen: the uprising is mentioned, by name, and Lan Yu’s participation in it.
While not the main thrust of the story, it would be enough to keep it from being published in China. It also serves to illuminate a facet that is perhaps unexpected: It is Lan Yu, who knows about political discipline and does believe in the equality promised by the CCP who takes a stance, and not Hangdong. In other words, Lan Yu is part of a tradition of wanting to reform the Party as opposed to abolishing it altogether, that is quite deep roots in Chinese culture but is not that well known abroad.
Case in point, Heavy Wings, published in 1981 is scathing in its criticism of the CCP in ways that made me question how it ever got published. Yet it does not seem to question the Party, as such, but how its very reason for being was betrayed over the decades, until it is need of a very serious renovation.
The border between the two, to keep the Party under the lines it should follow, or to scrap it entirely, is often too blurred for censors to allow books that straddle it to gain traction. What matters the most for the purposes of this review is that novel views China’s problem resting on its being Communist in name only. This is a political, intellectual and ideological narrative that does differ from a lot of anti-CCP rhetoric that is still around. This criticism, coming from within, is not what you will can still find in American media with its hysteria of the Communists that will take your cars, houses, phones!!
It is a criticism that Hangdong cannot endorse as the status quo is precisely the kind of cushy affair that gives him plenty of leeway.
In this light, the second term in the title, “Comrades” is energized. As the front and back matter explain, the term has been co-opted by some queer activists as a stand-in for queerness itself. This the subversive building of a collective identity through recasting linguistic meaning that strikes me as monumental. To this day, “Comrade” has a starkly strong presence in official CCP parlance. It has become jaded, in some circles, precisely due to overuse (in North Korea, where the Cultural Revolution never came to an actual end, it has reached peak saturation. I guarantee you’ll know it, in Korean, if you see a single North Korean movie. If it’s a military movie, it’ll be stuck in your head for days on end) but the turning of official speech on its head remains a powerful and very bold move.
Unlike “queer”, that had a negative valence, “comrade” always had a highly positive one. It implies “equality” (right down to the way to the characters used) and a community of peers. This novel usage opens up all sorts of possibilities for togetherness and a forging of a genuine Communism of sorts.
One particularly well accomplished episode, near the end, encapsulates this beautifully. While driving to the outskirts in the hopes of finding a secluded spot that is yet out in the open, and where they can be together without having to hide but in relative security, the two end up singing a military anthem “that had been around in various forms since the 30’s.” It is Lan Yu who starts but Hangdong picks it up as well, both clearly having a blast: “We fell into peals of laughter. Never had a song felt so good.”
The very next line: “We parked and walked into a secluded area of the Western Hills, hoping to avoid the judgmental eyes of the very Chinese masses we had been extolling in song just moments ago.”
A sober awareness of reality offers well needed balance for the high flowing melodrama. The overall effect is strikingly effective.
In some details, the novel does do its own thing with no regard for realism. For example, it is odd how little AIDS seems to matter. It is mentioned a couple of times but it is always something far away and a potential threat more than a real one. Once a queer community is alluded to, despite never actually explored, it becomes even stranger.
The language of emotion may seem very over the top when it gets voiced but this is probably because, for the most part, it does not: one of the recurring themes is precisely the lack of words into which to convey one’s feeling. Hangdong takes his sweet time getting to the point in which he is even fully aware of what these feelings are, but even then, he further struggles to get them across, repeatedly.
“Being Comrades” is more than just a novel. It is the synthesis of three very different texts, each of which addressing a certain audience, as well as the present translation which the anonymous author has endorsed and praised; it is also the movie, how it, itself, is read against the text(s); how readers/viewers react to these and to the dialogue established across the two medium; how the anonymous author themselves stands in relation to what has since gained autonomy.
It is not, however, a comforting read. So I will leave the reader with one suggestion: if you are curious about queer cinema in East Asian, and if you are well versed in it and would like to contribute, check out my ongoing list:
https://letterboxd.com/nocturnalux/li...
Here you can find everything, ranging from sleek, well produced titles to shaky handheld camera, silly romps that will make you laugh, plenty of tragedy and all shades in between. And a lot of it would not quite be as it is if not for “Being Comrades” and the millions of Lan Yus to whom the translator dedicates this present title, as does this reviewer.
Being a massive fan of "Happy Together", another defining entry in the Sinophile queer movie sphere, I had been longing to read "Beijing Comrades" long before there was even a translation available. So the moment I stumbled on the book- in English- I immediately jumped to the opportunity. That this edition turns out be very solid, containing an introduction on the part of the translator with plenty of context as to the text(s)’ genesis- a fascinating subject on its own- a postscript by the author and a commentary by Petrus Liu, was icing on the cake.
Reading Beijing Comrades invoked a sense of nostalgia by connecting me to my experience of being immersed in Asian cinema. The many scenes in which Hangdong and Lan Yu stand holding each other right before on the entrance to several apartments, for example, immediately transported me to the highly marking image of the two leads in “Happy Together” doing just that (while gently dancing). That the movie is so deeply interwoven with the book, in the collective imagination, adds to this impression.
With this said, none of this is at all required to appreciate this book. It is impressively honest in its presentation of a narrator who starts out as a spoiled playboy, for one, and does away with attempts at sanitizing the story. This means that it is very graphic (this version, the author toned it down considerably in order to get it published in the PRC, to no avail) yet has come a long way from its original presentation, which was basically online smut.
If the novel has come a long way since its origins, that it was first conceived as an online text, cannot be overestimated. As the front and back matter explain, its quality as a cultural text divorced from an actual author, who created and made it public through the internet, reacting to readers’ feedback, makes it a pioneer in this space. It also makes it keenly apt to reflect the time at which it came to be, the late 98’s, as much as the time that it portrays, the late 80’s/early 90’s.
This is a period of time that is crucial in the PRC and the book does not shy away from engaging with real events. The increasing cruelty and alienation that followed the country’s rapid post-liberal boom is structural to the story, Hangdong’s lavish lifestyle, with his cellphone at a time virtually no one had even seen one, long term rented apartments at absurdly expensive hotels/country clubs, the flurry of high end restaurants and juggling of several business entanglements, could not have happened in his parent’s generation. That he is the son of a high ranking CCP’s member is no coincidence: his, in fact, is a “patriotic name” that refers directly to Mao yet Hangdong is surprisingly non-political.
The amount of money he splurges around may not come across as excessive until one factors in that the vast amount of the Chinese population, at the time, was not exactly doing that well. Just his owning a car, of any kind, is a symbol of wealth in 80’s China that would not be in 80’s America.
While Hangdong talks about those even richer than him, he is very much the 1% and has no qualms about it either.
It is against this background that one has to place Lan Yu, who is very much the 99%. Hailing from Xinjiang (but not of Uyghur descent), Lan Yu impersonates a rift that still exists in China: that of rural and urban. A very hard student and then worker, who tries his best to become an architect while struggling to adapt to the massive city that is Beijing, Lan Yu lives a double displacement. That of the centrifugal force cities exert for queer people, and that of migrants who head for the city in the hopes of making a better life for themselves. This second slant defines much of the Beijing of the time, migrant workers and their precarity being mentioned several times.
The imbalance of power is immediate, stark and quite common in romance. What distinguishes Being Comrades from a lot of these titles, is that it is aware that is an issue. In fact, apart- and directly linked- to the homophobia in which the two cannot help but be mired, the economic factor is one of the main sources of conflict between Hangdong and Lan Yu. The double bind is thus complete.
When so much of what passes for romance is swamped with narratives of rich partners sweeping poor ones off their feet and providing them with a dreamy existence, without ever considering just why it is that one has all the money and the other has none, Beijing Comrades is a breath of fresh air.
It avoids the pitfall of turning Lan Yu into an angel with no flaws. His struggles as a working class queer man resonate from start to finish but he is not beyond snapping and going full snarky. It would have been very easy to turn the entire novel into a programmatic humdrum affair, perhaps even more so in that the author surely consumed plenty of such material in their youth (then again, that may have been a reason to avoid creating it themselves) but through the rendering of characters who are believable as people, the anti-capitalist message just flows naturally.
It also ties in and is irrevocably connected to the modern presentation of homophobia. Production being valued as a good in its own, queer relationships, once they are front and center- displacing the heteronormative marriage contract in which children and accumulation of property are the result- cannot help but be devalued as a negative factor in society. That this view is articulated at different points of the narrative not only by Hangdong but my a gay man who keeps male lovers on the side, is not only not surprising but the logical conclusion of the double bind. If you keep your not typical sexual expression of partner in your private life, and you are privileged enough to be allowed the privacy of condos, hotels, and the like, then you are “free” to pursue the typical, public expression.
This is very much how Hangdong sees the women in his life. The one who sticks around the longest is constantly described as extremely attractive and thus a symbol of status to flaunt. In fact, almost always, Hangdong will comment, somewhat ruefully, that no matter what, he can ever have this kind of public acknowledgment of his relationship with Lan Yu.
There are older, deeply ingrained sources of homophobia that hark back to Confucian notions of duty and these, too, are presented. If anything, there seems to be a complete fusion between the two strands: what you owe to your parents and what you owe to the new, fast pace and production crazy society. Thus, Hangdong’s mother, who received “a Nationalist [and thus outdated] education, can perfectly denounce queerness in modes that match the demands of “One Country, Two Systems.”
On that subject, Hong Kong emerges as a haven of relaxation and opportunities unavailable in Hong Kong. It is the big city motif writ large and while cannot help thinking that part of this is down to the holiday feeling that is associated with travel, Hong Kong’s identity as “something different” is fully realized.
By not romanticizing the power imbalance in the interpersonal relationship, the novel is able to fully factor in homophobia in this regard as well.
Much can be said about the title, to the point that the two terms- “Being” and “Comrades”- are deserving of some analysis. The novel, at one point, was known as “Beijing Story”, the city’s central role surviving the change in title. I found myself thinking of another “Being Story” per excellence, Rickshaw Boy. There, the working life of another migrant who roams to Beijing in the hopes of a better life is told through a city that is vividly rendered in great detail. Down to the street, the by now most gone city is evoked as a locus of increasingly unfortunate circumstances that befall the underprivileged rickshaw worker. What it has in terms of geographic accuracy, it lacks in chronological points, giving it a timeless quality: it almost does not matter when this one Beijing story place.
“Beijing Comrades” follows an entirely opposite approach. In it, the Beijing depicted is surprisingly unfixed, swimming in a kind of vague geography in which fictional names are systematically applied (Huada, Lan Yu’s university, for example, does not exist under that name) and the colossal nature of broad avenues through which Hangdong can forlornly drive around when feeling down is perhaps the strongest image. On the other hand, the novel has a very steady hand on when the story takes place. It is probably not amiss that one of the few times the toponymy matches the real city is Tiananmen: the uprising is mentioned, by name, and Lan Yu’s participation in it.
While not the main thrust of the story, it would be enough to keep it from being published in China. It also serves to illuminate a facet that is perhaps unexpected: It is Lan Yu, who knows about political discipline and does believe in the equality promised by the CCP who takes a stance, and not Hangdong. In other words, Lan Yu is part of a tradition of wanting to reform the Party as opposed to abolishing it altogether, that is quite deep roots in Chinese culture but is not that well known abroad.
Case in point, Heavy Wings, published in 1981 is scathing in its criticism of the CCP in ways that made me question how it ever got published. Yet it does not seem to question the Party, as such, but how its very reason for being was betrayed over the decades, until it is need of a very serious renovation.
The border between the two, to keep the Party under the lines it should follow, or to scrap it entirely, is often too blurred for censors to allow books that straddle it to gain traction. What matters the most for the purposes of this review is that novel views China’s problem resting on its being Communist in name only. This is a political, intellectual and ideological narrative that does differ from a lot of anti-CCP rhetoric that is still around. This criticism, coming from within, is not what you will can still find in American media with its hysteria of the Communists that will take your cars, houses, phones!!
It is a criticism that Hangdong cannot endorse as the status quo is precisely the kind of cushy affair that gives him plenty of leeway.
In this light, the second term in the title, “Comrades” is energized. As the front and back matter explain, the term has been co-opted by some queer activists as a stand-in for queerness itself. This the subversive building of a collective identity through recasting linguistic meaning that strikes me as monumental. To this day, “Comrade” has a starkly strong presence in official CCP parlance. It has become jaded, in some circles, precisely due to overuse (in North Korea, where the Cultural Revolution never came to an actual end, it has reached peak saturation. I guarantee you’ll know it, in Korean, if you see a single North Korean movie. If it’s a military movie, it’ll be stuck in your head for days on end) but the turning of official speech on its head remains a powerful and very bold move.
Unlike “queer”, that had a negative valence, “comrade” always had a highly positive one. It implies “equality” (right down to the way to the characters used) and a community of peers. This novel usage opens up all sorts of possibilities for togetherness and a forging of a genuine Communism of sorts.
One particularly well accomplished episode, near the end, encapsulates this beautifully. While driving to the outskirts in the hopes of finding a secluded spot that is yet out in the open, and where they can be together without having to hide but in relative security, the two end up singing a military anthem “that had been around in various forms since the 30’s.” It is Lan Yu who starts but Hangdong picks it up as well, both clearly having a blast: “We fell into peals of laughter. Never had a song felt so good.”
The very next line: “We parked and walked into a secluded area of the Western Hills, hoping to avoid the judgmental eyes of the very Chinese masses we had been extolling in song just moments ago.”
A sober awareness of reality offers well needed balance for the high flowing melodrama. The overall effect is strikingly effective.
In some details, the novel does do its own thing with no regard for realism. For example, it is odd how little AIDS seems to matter. It is mentioned a couple of times but it is always something far away and a potential threat more than a real one. Once a queer community is alluded to, despite never actually explored, it becomes even stranger.
The language of emotion may seem very over the top when it gets voiced but this is probably because, for the most part, it does not: one of the recurring themes is precisely the lack of words into which to convey one’s feeling. Hangdong takes his sweet time getting to the point in which he is even fully aware of what these feelings are, but even then, he further struggles to get them across, repeatedly.
“Being Comrades” is more than just a novel. It is the synthesis of three very different texts, each of which addressing a certain audience, as well as the present translation which the anonymous author has endorsed and praised; it is also the movie, how it, itself, is read against the text(s); how readers/viewers react to these and to the dialogue established across the two medium; how the anonymous author themselves stands in relation to what has since gained autonomy.
It is not, however, a comforting read. So I will leave the reader with one suggestion: if you are curious about queer cinema in East Asian, and if you are well versed in it and would like to contribute, check out my ongoing list:
https://letterboxd.com/nocturnalux/li...
Here you can find everything, ranging from sleek, well produced titles to shaky handheld camera, silly romps that will make you laugh, plenty of tragedy and all shades in between. And a lot of it would not quite be as it is if not for “Being Comrades” and the millions of Lan Yus to whom the translator dedicates this present title, as does this reviewer.
September 3, 2018
3~
Some thoughts:
(I’m no good at forming structured reflections…I offer only bits and bobs.)
- Myers’ translation is accessible….but the writing’s mostly unremarkable. Really did read like polished LiveJournal entries, and probably to the writer’s chagrin, also as if I were wading through some fujoshi’s melodramatic BL fantasy. (The anonymous author is a woman. Approach with a caveat..? Does it matter?) (...Maybe this is part of an anon’s guile? Red herring! Conspiracy in deep space dial up era.)
- The novel is set in the fever of China’s post-socialist economic boom and plays heavily on the idea that love and money are diametrically opposed. Some romanticised anti-capitalist themes here, gobbling the storyline.
- The writer attempts a laconic approach to the nightmare of TS 89—obscured somewhere in a brief moment. Admittedly, I went into this novel thinking that the event would lend some salient weight???? (oops)
- Although Handong’s character arc did have some interesting moments, he’s mostly tiresome and incorrigible. I don’t know what Lan Yu sees in him. Refer to pg. 378 for list of various foibles.
- Despite its shortcomings, the story "never congeals into a predictable coming-out narrative"—I agree with Petrus Liu here in his afterword, however, not so much with her comment that "Handong does not believe in labels such as gay and bisexual". He admits to being the former on pg. 232: "...I had known all along. I finally admitted to myself that I was gay" and to Lan Yu on an occasion after some 69th reconcilement.
The afterword's insightful nonetheless. I liked Liu’s take on Lan Yu.
I enjoyed it, though maybe not for its literary merit!!
Some thoughts:
(I’m no good at forming structured reflections…I offer only bits and bobs.)
- Myers’ translation is accessible….but the writing’s mostly unremarkable. Really did read like polished LiveJournal entries, and probably to the writer’s chagrin, also as if I were wading through some fujoshi’s melodramatic BL fantasy. (The anonymous author is a woman. Approach with a caveat..? Does it matter?) (...Maybe this is part of an anon’s guile? Red herring! Conspiracy in deep space dial up era.)
- The novel is set in the fever of China’s post-socialist economic boom and plays heavily on the idea that love and money are diametrically opposed. Some romanticised anti-capitalist themes here, gobbling the storyline.
- The writer attempts a laconic approach to the nightmare of TS 89—obscured somewhere in a brief moment. Admittedly, I went into this novel thinking that the event would lend some salient weight???? (oops)
- Although Handong’s character arc did have some interesting moments, he’s mostly tiresome and incorrigible. I don’t know what Lan Yu sees in him. Refer to pg. 378 for list of various foibles.
- Despite its shortcomings, the story "never congeals into a predictable coming-out narrative"—I agree with Petrus Liu here in his afterword, however, not so much with her comment that "Handong does not believe in labels such as gay and bisexual". He admits to being the former on pg. 232: "...I had known all along. I finally admitted to myself that I was gay" and to Lan Yu on an occasion after some 69th reconcilement.
The afterword's insightful nonetheless. I liked Liu’s take on Lan Yu.
I enjoyed it, though maybe not for its literary merit!!
January 9, 2015
Pre-review comment:
This story is freaking amazing! Bittersweet to the core yet so SO beautiful. Daring, vivid and haunting. I am left bawling here. Yes I am, but that doesn't stop me from giving it all my love and all the stars in the universe. No wonder this story has capture so many hearts eversince it was published online in 1996.
I am feeling indebted to the fan who had painstalkingly translated this Chinese online story to English. I thank you from bottom of my heart.
AND I am SO watching that movie adaption the story eventhough they say it didn't hold a candle to the original story.
* January 9th, 2015
PREVIOUS COMMENT ON October 18th, 2014:
October 13, 2025
Novela clandestina publicada en Internet en el año 94 en China. El autor, para evitarse problemas por abordar la homosexualidad (y encima de una forma tan explícita y pornográfica), optó por el anonimato y la publico bajo el pseudónimo de Beijing Tongzhi, que se podría traducir al español como «Maricón de Pekín.»
La premisa en sencilla. Un hombre de negocios acaba encaprinchándose por un chavalillo de dieciséis años y tiene una relación convulsa, donde se debate entre si debe entregarse a su amor o ser fiel a las convenciones sociales. Nada nuevo en la viña del señor.
La obra tiene más interés cultural que literario. Fue un fenómeno en China y el referente de la literatura tongzhi (en chino «camarada», que es el término utilizado para decir gay). Pero si nos limitamos a verla desde su valor artístico, encontramos una obra regulera, sin grandes ambiciones y que recurre a los temas más viscerales: amor y sexo. En fin, una novelilla wattpadera pero algo más refinada.
Los dos protagonistas son planos, los giros y los problemas que aborda son bastante tópicos y el final es muy barato y melodramático. Eso sí, anque no sea la gran cosa, la prosa es parca y muy de acción, por lo que es bastante ameno de leer. Está entretenida, pero sin pasarse. La forma en la que aborda la homosexualidad y el conflicto es bastante rudimentario, pero responde a un contexto donde la homosexualidad era un tabú enorme, por lo que tampoco voy a exigirle más. Mucho hizo para su tiempo.
Pero bueno, a pesar de las pegas que le pongo, sigo pensando que es una novela valiosa por su valor cultural. Me ha llamado la atención el género Tongzhi y he agradecido la introducción del sinólogo Remy Cristini y la del traductor, Carlos Sanrune, que dan un poco de contexto a la novela y al género literario.
La premisa en sencilla. Un hombre de negocios acaba encaprinchándose por un chavalillo de dieciséis años y tiene una relación convulsa, donde se debate entre si debe entregarse a su amor o ser fiel a las convenciones sociales. Nada nuevo en la viña del señor.
La obra tiene más interés cultural que literario. Fue un fenómeno en China y el referente de la literatura tongzhi (en chino «camarada», que es el término utilizado para decir gay). Pero si nos limitamos a verla desde su valor artístico, encontramos una obra regulera, sin grandes ambiciones y que recurre a los temas más viscerales: amor y sexo. En fin, una novelilla wattpadera pero algo más refinada.
Los dos protagonistas son planos, los giros y los problemas que aborda son bastante tópicos y el final es muy barato y melodramático. Eso sí, anque no sea la gran cosa, la prosa es parca y muy de acción, por lo que es bastante ameno de leer. Está entretenida, pero sin pasarse. La forma en la que aborda la homosexualidad y el conflicto es bastante rudimentario, pero responde a un contexto donde la homosexualidad era un tabú enorme, por lo que tampoco voy a exigirle más. Mucho hizo para su tiempo.
Pero bueno, a pesar de las pegas que le pongo, sigo pensando que es una novela valiosa por su valor cultural. Me ha llamado la atención el género Tongzhi y he agradecido la introducción del sinólogo Remy Cristini y la del traductor, Carlos Sanrune, que dan un poco de contexto a la novela y al género literario.
August 2, 2017
just tell him you love him handong
anyways. a lot of synopses for this book tend to revolve specifically around tiananmen square, while it doesn't figure particularly heavily into the actual plot, nor is it a specific plot point. HOWEVER, i still think it's an important feature in the text, as it grounds the particular moment of the novel spectacularly. everything about this feels real, honestly like a memoir.
the language and kind of clunky sex scenes are so.... charming? that's not the right way to put it. nor should a comparison to fanfiction be a statement on its roughness—it's a text that embraces the difficulty or jerkiness (ha) of writing about sex. rather i think it's a way to describe the particular kindness, softness, that the novel approaches sex, PARTICULARLY sex between lgbtq+ individuals. it's not written in a way that i have seen in any other romance/lgbtq+ novel OTHER than fanfiction. i think the text's first publication as an enovel really informs the way that it is portrayed, and that's a point that i think i'll continue to think about even after this book has long been finished.
i found the struggle between desire for money and desire for love/affection/relationship/what have you a really interesting aspect of the novel, as handong and lan yu (what a beautiful and tragic name) are on different sides of this spectrum. lan yu, a student and supporter of the democratic movement, is pitted against handong's bureaucratic/economic stance on the matter. and i don't think, as the novel plays out, it's possible for handong to find love with anyone—especially lan yu—as his propensity for wealth outshines his desire for love. i'm not a smart person and any conversation about wealth/economics is going to be understated at best. however, it's certainly a point of conversation that this book happens around the tiananmen square incident, as economic growth and political dissent are so hand in hand.
the ending is, like most things featuring lgbtq+ characters in this time period, tragic. i don't think it's fair or possible to say that it is a direct punishment for handong's behavior or actions throughout the text. rather i think it's a response to the way that handong fluctuated between desire and affection for lan yu and disregarding him. (the meat of the novel takes place over almost 10 years! and lan yu and handong are only actually together for a fragment of that time: 4 years at most.)
all in all, i deeply enjoyed the text. it's lovely and sad and maybe relies on tropes. still.
//
as a side note, i'm sure that the age difference between handong and lan yu is reason enough for many people to disregard the book (lan yu is an early college student, handong is an established businessman; they're about ten years apart in age). i think this is a difficult position to hedge on but in the end it's an important conversation to have, especially as age differences are a historically visible aspect that marks the lgbtq+ community. the particularly salient conversation about masculinity and queer desire juxtaposed against safety (handong has peers who dabble in the gay lifestyle (that's a bad way to put it) but they're never really at risk of being outed/labeled a "hooligan" because they have money, power, and the experience to get away with what they do) especially in the era is a backdrop to the text at all times. lan yu as a young student, and particularly as an immigrant, is, and always will be, more vulnerable than handong in the relationship that ensues.
anyways. a lot of synopses for this book tend to revolve specifically around tiananmen square, while it doesn't figure particularly heavily into the actual plot, nor is it a specific plot point. HOWEVER, i still think it's an important feature in the text, as it grounds the particular moment of the novel spectacularly. everything about this feels real, honestly like a memoir.
the language and kind of clunky sex scenes are so.... charming? that's not the right way to put it. nor should a comparison to fanfiction be a statement on its roughness—it's a text that embraces the difficulty or jerkiness (ha) of writing about sex. rather i think it's a way to describe the particular kindness, softness, that the novel approaches sex, PARTICULARLY sex between lgbtq+ individuals. it's not written in a way that i have seen in any other romance/lgbtq+ novel OTHER than fanfiction. i think the text's first publication as an enovel really informs the way that it is portrayed, and that's a point that i think i'll continue to think about even after this book has long been finished.
i found the struggle between desire for money and desire for love/affection/relationship/what have you a really interesting aspect of the novel, as handong and lan yu (what a beautiful and tragic name) are on different sides of this spectrum. lan yu, a student and supporter of the democratic movement, is pitted against handong's bureaucratic/economic stance on the matter. and i don't think, as the novel plays out, it's possible for handong to find love with anyone—especially lan yu—as his propensity for wealth outshines his desire for love. i'm not a smart person and any conversation about wealth/economics is going to be understated at best. however, it's certainly a point of conversation that this book happens around the tiananmen square incident, as economic growth and political dissent are so hand in hand.
the ending is, like most things featuring lgbtq+ characters in this time period, tragic. i don't think it's fair or possible to say that it is a direct punishment for handong's behavior or actions throughout the text. rather i think it's a response to the way that handong fluctuated between desire and affection for lan yu and disregarding him. (the meat of the novel takes place over almost 10 years! and lan yu and handong are only actually together for a fragment of that time: 4 years at most.)
all in all, i deeply enjoyed the text. it's lovely and sad and maybe relies on tropes. still.
//
as a side note, i'm sure that the age difference between handong and lan yu is reason enough for many people to disregard the book (lan yu is an early college student, handong is an established businessman; they're about ten years apart in age). i think this is a difficult position to hedge on but in the end it's an important conversation to have, especially as age differences are a historically visible aspect that marks the lgbtq+ community. the particularly salient conversation about masculinity and queer desire juxtaposed against safety (handong has peers who dabble in the gay lifestyle (that's a bad way to put it) but they're never really at risk of being outed/labeled a "hooligan" because they have money, power, and the experience to get away with what they do) especially in the era is a backdrop to the text at all times. lan yu as a young student, and particularly as an immigrant, is, and always will be, more vulnerable than handong in the relationship that ensues.
August 9, 2021
北京故事 (Beijing Story, or Beijing Comrades) was, as the note from Petrus Liu - an Associate Prof of Chinese & Comparative Literature - said, 'one of the most iconic texts of 1990s China' that encapsulated the experience of gay cis men in China, and to some extent, the queer community, in that era. (I wouldn't go as far as to say that a story about gay cis men completely encapsulated the experience of all queers, as gay cis men are wont to believe, but I don't know how other people feel.)
The translator's note, author's postscript, and Petrus Liu's note really helped me understand the context in which it was written, and how it gained its icon status. I am amazed to be holding and reading something rich with historical importance and also something that the online gay community was able to give input on as it developed - Liu described the novel as being influenced by a 'vortex of signifiers'.
This edition is apparently a collection of 3 distinct versions of Beijing Comrades - the first edition being the first part 北同 Bei Tong posted online and being basically smut, the second part being the 2002 print edition which is much more polished, and the third being the expanded version that was personally given to this translator by Bei Tong for translation.
The story revolves around the intimate and turbulent relationship of Handong and Lan Yu through various obstacles, the most obvious one being society, and the most annoying one being Handong's toxic nature. Their relationship was basically borne out of the grooming of a young person, Lan Yu, who was 16, new to the city, and relied on the older partner for money and guidance. Perhaps it was somehow relevant to the era back then but the topic of grooming wasn't addressed with a critical eye.
The other significant events or social happenings, such as Handong's marriage and divorce, TS89, the inclusion of gay men in society, were only lightly touched upon, even though TS89 was in all the blurbs I read. Liu espoused more in his short analysis, praising the book for showcasing key cultural points such as the dichotomy of love and money.
I actually found the character of Lan Yu fascinating and much more enjoyable than Handong (many times throughout the book I was muttering angrily to myself, "boy, you can do so much better"). Liu described him as not self-conscious of his sexuality, and that it appears to be an nonissue for him, because he was introduced to gay sex when he was completely inexperienced to sex. I found it hard to believe, that in China in the 1980s, that one would not be highly conscious of sexual norms and the hostile environment to queer people, and that this would not have some impact to how your perceive yourself. Lan Yu was at one point threatened to be outed, forcing him to leave his job. On the flip side, I am glad that this narrative is introduced to the story. Gay people are not always 'brave despite the odds', 'conflicted', or 'tortured' (though it's definitely a common theme amongst my friends for sure) - many of us are simply just living.
Liu also noted that the construction of Lan Yu as 'a figure of true love' is intentionally a contrast to the usual narrative of gay and young sex workers. Lan Yu's path of poverty points him towards sex work in all manners; yet he remains 'loyal' (again, urgh) to Handong - a beacon of maturity and reason in this whole shitshow. It is an interesting contrast yet I find this may have an unintended effect of perpetuating prejudice against sex work.
The book is highly problematic and Handong revels in overtly partaking in grooming, misogyny, colourism, and other toxic behaviours, all without a shred of self-awareness. It is hard to tell whether the character was written intentionally this way, or whether the author wanted to comment on the social issues through storytelling, because there was no reflection of any of these in the novel.
Lastly, I also found the identity of Bei Tong intriguing. Myers, the translator, basically confirmed that she uses she/her pronouns in his note, but nothing else is known about her. Is she trans? Gay? An ally? There is speculation of all sorts - ranging from her telling this story on behalf of a gay man, to that she's a straight woman who fetishes gay sex. I find it fascinating that the identity of the author will definitely change the way I read the book and I think I can say the same of many other readers.
Overall, I'm glad I read it for its historical significance, but I wouldn't recommend it in general.
The translator's note, author's postscript, and Petrus Liu's note really helped me understand the context in which it was written, and how it gained its icon status. I am amazed to be holding and reading something rich with historical importance and also something that the online gay community was able to give input on as it developed - Liu described the novel as being influenced by a 'vortex of signifiers'.
This edition is apparently a collection of 3 distinct versions of Beijing Comrades - the first edition being the first part 北同 Bei Tong posted online and being basically smut, the second part being the 2002 print edition which is much more polished, and the third being the expanded version that was personally given to this translator by Bei Tong for translation.
The story revolves around the intimate and turbulent relationship of Handong and Lan Yu through various obstacles, the most obvious one being society, and the most annoying one being Handong's toxic nature. Their relationship was basically borne out of the grooming of a young person, Lan Yu, who was 16, new to the city, and relied on the older partner for money and guidance. Perhaps it was somehow relevant to the era back then but the topic of grooming wasn't addressed with a critical eye.
The other significant events or social happenings, such as Handong's marriage and divorce, TS89, the inclusion of gay men in society, were only lightly touched upon, even though TS89 was in all the blurbs I read. Liu espoused more in his short analysis, praising the book for showcasing key cultural points such as the dichotomy of love and money.
I actually found the character of Lan Yu fascinating and much more enjoyable than Handong (many times throughout the book I was muttering angrily to myself, "boy, you can do so much better"). Liu described him as not self-conscious of his sexuality, and that it appears to be an nonissue for him, because he was introduced to gay sex when he was completely inexperienced to sex. I found it hard to believe, that in China in the 1980s, that one would not be highly conscious of sexual norms and the hostile environment to queer people, and that this would not have some impact to how your perceive yourself. Lan Yu was at one point threatened to be outed, forcing him to leave his job. On the flip side, I am glad that this narrative is introduced to the story. Gay people are not always 'brave despite the odds', 'conflicted', or 'tortured' (though it's definitely a common theme amongst my friends for sure) - many of us are simply just living.
Liu also noted that the construction of Lan Yu as 'a figure of true love' is intentionally a contrast to the usual narrative of gay and young sex workers. Lan Yu's path of poverty points him towards sex work in all manners; yet he remains 'loyal' (again, urgh) to Handong - a beacon of maturity and reason in this whole shitshow. It is an interesting contrast yet I find this may have an unintended effect of perpetuating prejudice against sex work.
The book is highly problematic and Handong revels in overtly partaking in grooming, misogyny, colourism, and other toxic behaviours, all without a shred of self-awareness. It is hard to tell whether the character was written intentionally this way, or whether the author wanted to comment on the social issues through storytelling, because there was no reflection of any of these in the novel.
Lastly, I also found the identity of Bei Tong intriguing. Myers, the translator, basically confirmed that she uses she/her pronouns in his note, but nothing else is known about her. Is she trans? Gay? An ally? There is speculation of all sorts - ranging from her telling this story on behalf of a gay man, to that she's a straight woman who fetishes gay sex. I find it fascinating that the identity of the author will definitely change the way I read the book and I think I can say the same of many other readers.
Overall, I'm glad I read it for its historical significance, but I wouldn't recommend it in general.
August 15, 2025
3.5
uno di quei libri che ti lasciano dentro un po' di malinconia, ma che sei contento lo stesso di aver letto.
Di certo non un capolavoro della letteratura, ma ci ho trovato verità e una forte urgenza nel voler raccontare una storia (presumibilmente la sua) da parte dell'autore.
uno di quei libri che ti lasciano dentro un po' di malinconia, ma che sei contento lo stesso di aver letto.
Di certo non un capolavoro della letteratura, ma ci ho trovato verità e una forte urgenza nel voler raccontare una storia (presumibilmente la sua) da parte dell'autore.
June 10, 2025
Mi sono convinta a recuperare questo libro grazie a Matteo Fumagalli (quell’uomo riuscirebbe a convincermi a leggere tutto) e non sono rimasta assolutamente delusa, anzi ne sono uscita particolarmente provata a livello emotivo: Beijing story non é la classica storia lgbtquia+ dai risvolti sociali e dal finale tragico, ma é un vero e proprio scavo psicologico dei due protagonisti e delle dinamiche di potere che regolano il loro rapporto così complesso e sfaccettato: il divario sociale, la differenza d’età, le pressioni familiari, la considerazione dell’omosessualità come malattia mentale e soprattutto la continua lotta contro la propria natura; infatti uno dei due protagonisti e voce narrante Handong si mostra continuamente nel corso della vicenda il peggior nemico di se stesso, tentando di autoconvincersi che quello che prova per lo studente Lan Yu non é altro che un divertimento passeggero e usando il sesso come strumento per rendere questa relazione affettiva un qualcosa di puramente carnale.
A questo proposito le numerose scene di sesso presenti non risultano mai romanticizzate o inserite per il divertimento del lettore, ma sono funzionali alla descrizione di questo rapporto disfunzionale e struggente che si sviluppa nella Pechino degli anni ‘80, in pieno fermento politico e sempre più vicina al massacro di Piazza Tien An Men.
Una lettura che consiglio caldamente a chiunque stia cercando una storia d’amore queer diversa dal solito e toccante.
A questo proposito le numerose scene di sesso presenti non risultano mai romanticizzate o inserite per il divertimento del lettore, ma sono funzionali alla descrizione di questo rapporto disfunzionale e struggente che si sviluppa nella Pechino degli anni ‘80, in pieno fermento politico e sempre più vicina al massacro di Piazza Tien An Men.
Una lettura che consiglio caldamente a chiunque stia cercando una storia d’amore queer diversa dal solito e toccante.
April 8, 2016
Riveting, a compelling page turner. A masterpiece of contemporary Chinese literature. Though set in Beijing you don't get a strong view of the city itself.This is modern Chinese queer writing at its best. Beijing Comrades encapsulates the worldviews, memories, and angst of the gay community in the making. This translation reads like magic. The prose is outstanding and actually feels like American writing rather than a stiff translation of a Chinese work.Bei Tong's frank depictions of gay sex are powerfully liberating. No shame. No euphemisms. No apologies. Handong, the protagonist, is an arrogant, young, wealthy businessman born to high-ranking communist cadres. He is confused about his sexual identity and goes from women to men to women and back to men again and again. In the process he does grow from a self centered unfeeling man to a man who finds a tempestuous love with a much younger man. I won't spoil the ending so I will leave it at that but the book is a must read.
December 19, 2023
3.5 stars
- the translation could have been better… idk, i might have to check out the chinese original
- i cried so much for lanyu. he deserved so much more
- handong is a piece of shit, but i feel for him too oddly enough
- i wished we explored more themes of 1980s/90s china. it was briefly mentioned during lanyu’s participation in the tiananmen protest but that’s about it. would have served well in the arrest event
- i loved the author’s portrayal of handong’s constant rejection of his gay identity, though his sudden acceptance was not as flushed out as i want it to be
- the [insert ending event] was cliche but what happened to handong at the end was realistic
- i wished they just talked it out :’(
- my intro to older chinese queer lit!
- might bump it up to 4 stars if i can’t stop thinking about it
- the translation could have been better… idk, i might have to check out the chinese original
- i cried so much for lanyu. he deserved so much more
- handong is a piece of shit, but i feel for him too oddly enough
- i wished we explored more themes of 1980s/90s china. it was briefly mentioned during lanyu’s participation in the tiananmen protest but that’s about it. would have served well in the arrest event
- i loved the author’s portrayal of handong’s constant rejection of his gay identity, though his sudden acceptance was not as flushed out as i want it to be
- the [insert ending event] was cliche but what happened to handong at the end was realistic
- i wished they just talked it out :’(
- my intro to older chinese queer lit!
- might bump it up to 4 stars if i can’t stop thinking about it
September 15, 2024
I have to agree with a lot of the reviews about this one. This book is a mess. The writing isn’t good, the pacing is frenzied and it could have served to be a 100 pages shorter. The MC is very unlikeable and there is a fair amount of misogyny and internalized homophobia. Also, Lan Yu I think is 16/17 when he starts having sex with Handong who is 26/27 at the time. Yikes.
Despite all this I still found myself burning through chapters and rooting for these boys to get their happy ending. I won’t spoil what happens, but overall I liked this story. It’s not hard to understand why at the time, a book like this would have gained popularity and earned a cult following. Looking forward to seeing the film adaptation as well sometime.
Despite all this I still found myself burning through chapters and rooting for these boys to get their happy ending. I won’t spoil what happens, but overall I liked this story. It’s not hard to understand why at the time, a book like this would have gained popularity and earned a cult following. Looking forward to seeing the film adaptation as well sometime.
July 31, 2023
I can appreciate the supposed cultural significance of Beijing Comrades, but literarily it’s nothing more than your average slash fanfic on wattpad or AO3. In fact, it pales in comparison to many better-written fan-published works.
The characterization is inconsistent, the pacing jumpy, the politics questionable… and yet something was worth reading this story through to the end.
Though I considering putting the book down for good on multiple occasions, I reasoned that I could slog through the gratuitous sex scenes and sloppy dialogue in order to see how things ended for Handong and Lan Yu.
A quick and easy read, just don’t go in expecting Shakespeare or even Nicholas Sparks.
The characterization is inconsistent, the pacing jumpy, the politics questionable… and yet something was worth reading this story through to the end.
Though I considering putting the book down for good on multiple occasions, I reasoned that I could slog through the gratuitous sex scenes and sloppy dialogue in order to see how things ended for Handong and Lan Yu.
A quick and easy read, just don’t go in expecting Shakespeare or even Nicholas Sparks.
February 27, 2025
Phew! This was steamy. So romantic and I was rooting for these two so much, even if the older businessman was clearly grooming this young boy (and don’t get me started on how he behaved throughout?). A heartbreaking story of love that has to be hidden and the writing at the end was so so beautiful, I bawled my eyes out. Feel this did what a little life was trying to do but was less trauma porn-y. Loved the money vs love dilemma throughout and the translation was beautifully written. When I picked this up I had no idea it was so influential in the queer lit world or that the author was so mysterious so was even more enthralled when I read the afterword! Highly recommend 🩷
January 14, 2019
This book was seriously everything and more than I could have ever imagined. I don't even remember how I came across the title of this book, but the fact that it's written by a pseudonym (that still has never revealed his/her true identity) and because it was banned at one point (and maybe still is?) really drew me in.
Beijing Comrades' main character Handong is a rich, successful, and wealthy business man. His family is well known, and he has a lot to hold up to. At the beginning of the book, Handong nonchalantly will hook up with men, but to him, it's only that - purely physical. He also is popular with the ladies whom he will also entertain. But when Handong's coworker and friend introduces him to 16 year old Lan Yu, his whole entire life changes. Handong reluctantly takes him out, and there begins the very bittersweet relationship between the two men.
The book goes so back and forth between them being together and then breaking up, and then being together, and then breaking up. But it absolutely works for this book. This book is so heartbreaking, because they aren't breaking up really because they want to. They fight because of what society tells them to be. They fight because Handong wants to give up on their relationship and so they can go find wives and start families, but he so desperately wants to be with Lan Yu too. So they will go their separate ways, only to realize they don't feel complete without the other. Handong is SO certain that they will be able to get rid of this "mental illness" and be like the rest of society, but Lan Yu isn't as certain. He feels gay to the core and knows he will never be happy without spending his life with a man (specifically Handong).
The pressures that these men feel are seriously heartbreaking. And I wouldn't even say that this book was very well written; it's only very to the point, but the emotion behind it is all too real. In the introduction in the book, it suggests the author of this book was most likely either a woman who's husband has left her for a man, or a man who was currently struggling with the same situation and needing to get it out through literature.
This book is VERY sexually explicit. I want to say it's the most explicit book I've ever read, but that might just be because I've never read graphic sex scenes between two men, but I'm not sure what would make it more graphic than heterosexual sex. It just seemed so different to me, but it was the most beautiful thing, I swear. The ending of this book totally rocked my core, and I am forever grateful for getting insight into the beautiful love of Handong and Lan Yu.
Beijing Comrades' main character Handong is a rich, successful, and wealthy business man. His family is well known, and he has a lot to hold up to. At the beginning of the book, Handong nonchalantly will hook up with men, but to him, it's only that - purely physical. He also is popular with the ladies whom he will also entertain. But when Handong's coworker and friend introduces him to 16 year old Lan Yu, his whole entire life changes. Handong reluctantly takes him out, and there begins the very bittersweet relationship between the two men.
The book goes so back and forth between them being together and then breaking up, and then being together, and then breaking up. But it absolutely works for this book. This book is so heartbreaking, because they aren't breaking up really because they want to. They fight because of what society tells them to be. They fight because Handong wants to give up on their relationship and so they can go find wives and start families, but he so desperately wants to be with Lan Yu too. So they will go their separate ways, only to realize they don't feel complete without the other. Handong is SO certain that they will be able to get rid of this "mental illness" and be like the rest of society, but Lan Yu isn't as certain. He feels gay to the core and knows he will never be happy without spending his life with a man (specifically Handong).
The pressures that these men feel are seriously heartbreaking. And I wouldn't even say that this book was very well written; it's only very to the point, but the emotion behind it is all too real. In the introduction in the book, it suggests the author of this book was most likely either a woman who's husband has left her for a man, or a man who was currently struggling with the same situation and needing to get it out through literature.
This book is VERY sexually explicit. I want to say it's the most explicit book I've ever read, but that might just be because I've never read graphic sex scenes between two men, but I'm not sure what would make it more graphic than heterosexual sex. It just seemed so different to me, but it was the most beautiful thing, I swear. The ending of this book totally rocked my core, and I am forever grateful for getting insight into the beautiful love of Handong and Lan Yu.
June 18, 2023
if you manage to look past the misogyny (time and place, I know) and the internalized homophobia (kinda the point of the novel, I know), you’ll find an interesting and moving tale of what it meant to be queer in china during the 80/90s
June 28, 2023
Great book!
February 11, 2021
I honestly thought I wouldn't like it and I hated the MC at the beginning. Then it got too real...
"I’d rather be a shattered vessel of jade than an intact but worthless piece of clay."
"What I didn’t know was whether or not he struggled with internal battles over his relationship with me. We never had a conversation about it, but my gut feeling was that he and I felt the same way: that what we were doing was ultimately abnormal."
"His only crime was that he loved someone he wasn’t supposed to. The world thought his love was ludicrous, sick, degenerate. But I knew it was pure, innocent, eternal."
"I’d rather be a shattered vessel of jade than an intact but worthless piece of clay."
"What I didn’t know was whether or not he struggled with internal battles over his relationship with me. We never had a conversation about it, but my gut feeling was that he and I felt the same way: that what we were doing was ultimately abnormal."
"His only crime was that he loved someone he wasn’t supposed to. The world thought his love was ludicrous, sick, degenerate. But I knew it was pure, innocent, eternal."
June 13, 2021
Wow, I didn't expect this be such a heavy and hard read. This really isn't for the faint of heart because this is emotionally exhausting. The toxicity and torture went on and on and at times, I hate both the lead characters in this novel. But what a story.
Deeply erotic, filled with vulgarity, but incredibly passionate intensified (or caused) by the 80s Beijing backdrop, this novel is about Lan Yu and Handong's decade-long affair. Their ending was revealed right from the beginning, so the question became less “Will they be together or not?” and more “When and how will it happen?” Between the start and finish, there were a lot of things that happened between the two men, but never gone was their searing affection for each other. An emotion so huge and all-encompassing, and so restricted and repressed by the society they lived in that they couldn't even express it properly in words and deeds. I hated most of their actions and decisions, but I guess it was hard to pass judgement when I wasn't in their time and in their places. And it's hard to use a modern-day rules and standard to a fictional relationship of two fictional people, both of which, more or less, symbolized the real events at that time.
Lan Yu and Handong reminds me so much of Lai Yiu-fai and Ho Po-wing's relationship in Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together (1997), a film that I love so much. But while Yiu-fai and Po-wing's relationship ended in less than two hours, Lan Yu and Handong's went on and on for so and too long I was almost numb.
But Bei Tong (and Scott E. Meyers) wrote the story with so much honesty and clarity. It was so well-written and the characters so complex. Hateful, yet complex. And ultimately, unforgettable.
Deeply erotic, filled with vulgarity, but incredibly passionate intensified (or caused) by the 80s Beijing backdrop, this novel is about Lan Yu and Handong's decade-long affair. Their ending was revealed right from the beginning, so the question became less “Will they be together or not?” and more “When and how will it happen?” Between the start and finish, there were a lot of things that happened between the two men, but never gone was their searing affection for each other. An emotion so huge and all-encompassing, and so restricted and repressed by the society they lived in that they couldn't even express it properly in words and deeds. I hated most of their actions and decisions, but I guess it was hard to pass judgement when I wasn't in their time and in their places. And it's hard to use a modern-day rules and standard to a fictional relationship of two fictional people, both of which, more or less, symbolized the real events at that time.
Lan Yu and Handong reminds me so much of Lai Yiu-fai and Ho Po-wing's relationship in Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together (1997), a film that I love so much. But while Yiu-fai and Po-wing's relationship ended in less than two hours, Lan Yu and Handong's went on and on for so and too long I was almost numb.
But Bei Tong (and Scott E. Meyers) wrote the story with so much honesty and clarity. It was so well-written and the characters so complex. Hateful, yet complex. And ultimately, unforgettable.
February 2, 2022
Una storia d’amore tragico, di sesso spinto, di pregiudizi e convenzioni, sullo sfondo di una
Cina in profonda evoluzione e lacerata da grandi contraddizioni.
Per sfuggire alle maglie della censura, l’omosessualità era ancora considerata una “malattia da sconfiggere”, il romanzo viene pubblicato nel 1996 solo sul web e l’autore è costretto a mantenere l’anonimato (Tongzhi è uno pseudonimo che vuol dire "compagno", ma negli ultimi anni ha assunto anche il significato di “omosessuale”), essendo questa anche una storia autobiografica.
Un ricco uomo d’affari, dedito ai soldi e al vizio, incontra un giovane studente con il quale intreccia una relazione appassionata fatta di evoluzioni ed involuzioni, tradimenti, profonda vicinanza e lunghissimi distacchi. Vite che si intrecciano in nodi di amore altissimo e profonda passione, alle prese con la faticosa presa di consapevolezza della propria omosessualità che non sempre riesce a bucare il muro del pregiudizio.
Un libro inaspettatamente travolgente.
Cina in profonda evoluzione e lacerata da grandi contraddizioni.
Per sfuggire alle maglie della censura, l’omosessualità era ancora considerata una “malattia da sconfiggere”, il romanzo viene pubblicato nel 1996 solo sul web e l’autore è costretto a mantenere l’anonimato (Tongzhi è uno pseudonimo che vuol dire "compagno", ma negli ultimi anni ha assunto anche il significato di “omosessuale”), essendo questa anche una storia autobiografica.
Un ricco uomo d’affari, dedito ai soldi e al vizio, incontra un giovane studente con il quale intreccia una relazione appassionata fatta di evoluzioni ed involuzioni, tradimenti, profonda vicinanza e lunghissimi distacchi. Vite che si intrecciano in nodi di amore altissimo e profonda passione, alle prese con la faticosa presa di consapevolezza della propria omosessualità che non sempre riesce a bucare il muro del pregiudizio.
Un libro inaspettatamente travolgente.
January 16, 2019
This gay love story from China is hard to rate because one can never be sure how well the translator conveyed the meaning of the text. Also because of the cultural differences between China and the West, some of the dialogue may appear stilted or unrealistic to us. Nevertheless, I found the book interesting because it does give us a poignant picture of what it must have been like to be "different" in such a repressive country, even for those who grew up as privileged as Chen Hangdong. Apparently there are several editions of this novel, this one being the most explicit. While it is over the top in its description of sexual situations, it is also a harrowing look at the consequences of "forbidden" love. I read this because the New York Times recommended it but it is clearly not for everyone. The sexual volume could havre been turned down a bit which might have made the story shorter and tighter. In any case, an interesting if offbeat read.
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