In 1986, Wang Yi gave birth to a healthy boy named Chen Song.
After 16 years, Chen Song turned herself into a girl and changed her name to Xiaoqian.
For many years after this, Wang Yi fell into pain and self-blame. She opened old family albums. She often felt dazed and didn’t understand how the son in the photo gradually became what he is today. The daughter in front of me.
(In the early family album, young Chen Song hugs Wang Yi)< /i>
For her, she may not be able to understand gender from the same standpoint as her own children in her life, but in the second half of her life facing her transgender children In the movie, she decided to try to make it irrelevant, as Long Yingtai said in “Watching Off”:
“I slowly learned that a father-daughter-mother-child relationship only means that your fate with him is to watch his back gradually drift away in this life and this life. Standing on this end of the path, watching him gradually disappear where the path turns, and he silently tells you with his back: Don’t chase.”
(A group photo of Wang Yi and Xiao Qian in February 2017)
She struggled to look back at herself, what she cared about, what she wanted, and what it meant to be a mother.
Child “lost”
This is not the first time Chen Song “lost”.
The first time was one night in 1996. After school, Wang Yi didn’t pick up Chen Song. She waited at the school gate until all the children had left, and Chen Song did not appear. At that time, she and her husband had just sold an old Jiefang that was hauling goods, and changed the car for a taxi. She drove during the day and her husband drove at night.
(Chen Song in 1996)
The phone rang, it was the husband. He asked why he didn’t come back tonight, Wang Yi asked anxiously, has Chen Song come home? Husband said no. Wang Yi told her husband that she hadn’t received the child. She asked the teacher just now that Chen Song didn’t go to school. The husband asked Wang Yi to go home first. Along the way, she was thinking wildly, but she didn’t dare to think too deeply, and kept chanting, “Maybe he went to play by himself.”
Wang Yi was also restless when she got home. She asked about Chen Song’s whereabouts after asking relatives and friends, and she decided to call the police. Before picking up the phone, the door was knocked loudly. Wang Yi opened the door and saw a neighbor with Chen Song standing outside the door. It turned out that the child went to play and couldn’t find his way home. Wang Yi breathed a sigh of relief. Although he complained that he was worried to death, he still felt that the child was smart enough to know how to ask for directions from one family to another.
(Chen Song in elementary school)
One night in 2000, Chen Song did not go home again. Wang Yi didn’t care this time. After all, the child is 14 years old. If he gets lost, he should know how to get back, but he didn’t. It was not until the third day that Wang Yi felt that something was wrong and had to call the police. On the fourth and fifth day, Chen Song had no news.
When Wang Yi was driving every day, every person who got in the car would ask the other person if they had seen the child. The couple took turns to send the missing person notice with the child’s information and photos. Relatives and friends repeatedly inquired, but there was still no news.
Apart from crying, Wang Yi didn’t know how to express her feelings. She kept nagging about those worries. As time went on, even her husband changed from comforting to impatient, and the two ended up quarreling. . Any reason can turn into anger and accusation, asking why the other party is not optimistic about the child. After the scolding of “Why did you go then?” “Why did you go again!”, it gradually became silent.
When the couple opens their eyes every day, the pressure of life is in front of them. There are two parents who need to take care of at home. To give money to the company members, if you don’t work for a day, it means you will lose 300 if you don’t eat or drink, and now you have to find a child…
(The stress of life and The missing child once brought Wang Yi and her husband’s life to the bottom)
Wang Yi thinks every day, has the child been kidnapped by human traffickers? Then I called the police, and the answer I got was all searching. This answer could not satisfy her, so she called her relatives instead. The relatives were already impatient to repeat this over and over again. Some people comforted her a few words and then dropped a sentence, “Accept the reality.”
A year later, Wang Yi has gradually become numb. Although she still distributes leaflets and keeps in touch with the police, she has begun to accept it mentally. Another year passed, and the hope of finding Chen Song became increasingly slim. As a result, Chen Song suddenly came back, one day in 2003.
Wang Yi was in a trance instead of joy when she opened the door. The moment she saw the child, her first reaction was, who is this? In a second or two, she confirmed that this was her child, but in front of her was the appearance of a woman with long hair, wearing men’s clothes, and a large breast bulging in front of the clothes. He is Chen Song, but he is not Chen Song. After being stunned for a while, Wang Yi reacted and asked, “Where have you been?”
(Chen Song who became Xiaoqian)
Wang Yi has imagined the scene of reuniting with her child countless times, but the stranger in front of her made her completely forget that she had been praying to God for countless days and nights “to let the child” When I come back, as long as I see him, anything is possible.” She asks:
“What’s the matter with you?! Chen Song! What the hell are you talking about?!”
“I want to be a woman crazy”
“I started kissing my male god when I was in fifth grade. That was ’95.”
Xiao Qian recalled the past and felt that everything went with the flow. “I’m not a transgender, I haven’t crossed it at all. I felt like a girl since I was a child. Where do I go?” Xiaoqian said.
(When Chen Song was a child)
It’s just that she feels uncomfortable and awkward when she faces herself in the mirror, and when she’s tethered to her short hair and men’s school uniform every day. Xiaoqian recalled that at that time, she was not blamed for acting “very motherly”. Maybe there was, but she was ignored. She only remembered that relatives said, “This child is beautiful and gentle.”
“Maybe this recognition is very important to me,” Xiaoqian said, “If I was constantly blamed at that time, and I didn’t have any sense of recognition, I don’t know if I would still be so logical. Be myself.”
She got the news out of nowhere, there was a reverse show somewhere. Back in those days, cross-play was especially popular and a lot of people were talking about it. Curious Xiaoqian asked what it means to cross the line, and the other party said that it was a man disguised as a woman.
Xiao Qian seemed to be hit by something. From the vague description of the other party, after half a year of repeated searches, finally one day, she crashed into the corner of a street and walked away. After passing an oncoming path, I stepped into the door from the deepest part of the path, and there was a dim staircase. Climb the stairs to the second floor, and the sign reads—Earth Ballroom.
Xiao Qian opened the plastic curtain and went in. She used “shocked” to describe what she saw. In the music, the performers on the stage are wearing heavy makeup and twisting their bodies. Because of poor makeup, most people can see the appearance of men, but the one who is standing in the center of the performance is so easy to see that they can’t distinguish between men and women. Looks more like a woman. Xiaoqian’s eyes widened and she thought to herself, “I want to be like them too.”
After that day, Xiao Qian often went to the Dadi Ballroom, sneaking around to watch their performances, until one day a person in makeup noticed her and said jokingly, ” Yo, this kid is fine, come with us.” Xiao Qian agreed without hesitation.
“It really pays off! Haha,” Xiao Qian recalled, “this is life.”
From “Chen Song” to “Xiao Qian”, this decision was not difficult for her at the time, and she had no worries about her parents and family relations as she is now. At that time, all the thoughts in Xiaoqian’s mind were, “I have to do this every day”.
“I was crazy about being a woman.”
(Chen Song, who wanted to be a woman, became Xiao Qian)
Xiaoqian was only 14 years old at the time. She trained every day, learned to perform, started from supporting roles and dancers, and received very little income, but she included room and board, and her income was regarded as pocket money. At first, she also thought about going home, even if she went back to report safety, but after a long time, she thought that it would be impossible to come back after going back. She suppressed the thought of going home, and it was a few years in a blink of an eye.
“I didn’t even realize that so long had passed, maybe it was because I was so happy every day, but…” Xiao Qian patted her palm hard and said, “It’s hard to get through. When I got to the C position, it was finally my sister’s turn to stand in the center of the stage, all the hard work was worth it, just two days!” Xiaoqian spread her hands, “It’s over.” Xiaoqian suffered from severe psoriasis, and at first she just endured it. In the end, it became more and more serious, and there was no way to perform at all. “That ghost looks, his hands and feet are swollen, and he is old enough to scratch it. How do you say it.”
What makes Xiao Qian even more uncomfortable is that she managed to save money for breast plastic surgery. She planned to continue saving money and have a gender reassignment surgery, but the sudden illness hit her. messed up all her plans.
If she can’t perform, she has no income, and the boss doesn’t even want her to stay in the dance hall for fear of infecting others. She usually spends a lot of money, and soon exhausted her savings due to treatment and living expenses. When she was ill, she discovered that those people she usually had a good relationship with were just plastic sisters, and they wanted to stay away from her. At this point, she had only one way left – to go home.
(Desperate Xiaoqian can only go home)
never come home again
Xiao Qian, who was standing at the door, said nothing, even the word “Mom” became very difficult to say. She knew very well what the outcome would be when she went home.
Parents scolded her face to face, and even threatened her with no treatment. As for how ugly and vicious the scolding was, Xiaoqian can’t recall at all, but what she will never forget is that she was dragged to the hospital to take out the breast prosthesis, and hid in the toilet alone, crying while cutting it off. own long hair.
(Grandma died, Xiao Qian went back to the funeral disguised as a boy.)
“Xiao Qian” changed back to “Chen Song”. The parents took turns to criticize, as if to vent all the negative emotions derived from her disappearance in the past few years, and blame it on his behavior of wanting to become a woman. Even if sometimes she just wants to talk to her parents about her life in the past few years, but soon the conversation turns into a cycle of “I’m a girl!” “What the hell are you talking about!”
Xiaoqian suppressed her emotions and asked, “Have you never thought that I didn’t have boys’ clothes except for school uniforms before? Haven’t you thought about why I don’t play with other male classmates? ?” But the parents didn’t listen at all.
Xiaoqian began to want to escape from the house again, so her parents chose house arrest. They started driving the next day, taking turns staring at her and not letting her go out. Finally one day, Xiaoqian jumped from her room on the second floor. The first time she failed, she broke her foot and was caught back. After recovering, Xiaoqian danced again, and this time she succeeded.
She decided she would never go home again.
(Xiao Qian also has a yearning for family)
Wang Yi sometimes thinks, I love to go for a walk, it is better not to come back, I will not be happy for a moment when I come back! But thinking about it, she started to cry… In the resentment and quarrel day after day, the most important thing in her emotions was the powerlessness that she couldn’t break Chen Song over. “I feel like this kid is over, but I can’t accept it.”
The couple started arguing frequently for no apparent reason, taking anger at each other and complaining to each other, “Just because you didn’t care about anything before! What a fucking shame on me! I even have friends I dare not see you!”
(Because of Xiao Qian, the relationship between Wang Yi and her husband also dropped to freezing point. 2017 During the Chinese New Year, their family rarely reunited and had a meal together.)
Relief
In the days when Xiao Qian left again, both parents and Xiao Qian felt relieved.
(Wang Yi is walking the dog)
Wang Yi is used to answering relatives and friends’ cross-examination of Chen Song. She answered that she is working in another place, which is very good. Wang Yi has a dog and two cats, and they talk to themselves about cats and dogs. At least cats and dogs won’t be as impatient with her as their husbands are. But sometimes she would still cry secretly, although she couldn’t tell exactly what she was crying for. Xiaoqian only left her phone number, but the two of them rarely spoke except when they had no money. My husband doesn’t know all this.
Xiao Qian is trying to build her own life, she longs to have a “home” of her own. But she was not so lucky. She bumped and bumped for several years, tried many times, and couldn’t find a right one. It was hard to find a good one, but she gradually couldn’t stand the other party. In most cases, the other party couldn’t stand her.
(Xiao Qian with her boyfriend)
“My career is mixed with all kinds of men every day, normal people can’t stand it, right? But if you say you support me, and I don’t want it, I will start to ask for it, I can’t stand it,” Xiaoqian said, “My mother can’t stand me, how can others stand me?”
Unsolved life
One midnight in 2015, Wang Yi was woken up by a phone call. The other party told Xiao Qian that she had been stabbed in the stomach with a beer bottle, and she was in the hospital for emergency treatment.
In a panic, Wang Yi hurried to the hospital. This time, she cried and thought outside the operating room, “As long as the child survives, I can accept anything.”
She fell into deep self-blame, and her mind kept rolling over “What did you do then?” “What did you do back then?!” The words that I would say every time I quarreled with my husband turned into arrows that were shot at me.
Xiaoqian woke up a few days later, looked at her mother, and cried silently under her father’s reproach.
Xiao Qian is crying)
(
It’s business as usual when I get home. Wang Yi would still talk back when her husband persuaded, “Tell me about him! What’s it like!”, but more often, Wang Yi didn’t push back, but said, “Let him go, you have what you have. How?”
During so many years of separation and contact, Wang Yi sometimes wondered what she was afraid of when Chen Song became like this, and was worried that he would be in that group Will you be hurt, or will you not be able to hold your head up in front of others for fear of being laughed at by relatives and friends? Maybe both.
But let the child live the life he wants, he will be happier; no, there must be bad people in there, otherwise how can the child be stabbed? She discussed with her husband: “Do you think it would be better for him to change his working environment?” The husband snorted and said, “If he is like this, who wants him?” So Wang Yi was pushed back to the starting point.
(Xiao Qian also has a lot of struggle and pain)
She also tried to talk to her son, but every time Xiaoqian’s answer was “I think I’m fine”, which made Wang Yi uncomfortable. Once she got angry, she said angrily, “Are you going to become a Venus?” Xiaoqian replied calmly, “I can’t.”
Actually, Xiaoqian is also running away, and anti-string performances have long been out of favor. She is often anxious about what to do, but without education and skills, where can she go? She has even become accustomed to using two sets of organs for men and women to deal with life, and has lost interest in becoming a “real woman”, but she still has to face this society after all, and she has to admit that she is a woman in her social identity. A man or a woman, but the outcome doesn’t seem to be up to her to decide. Every time she thinks of this, Xiaoqian feels that this problem is unsolvable, and in the end she has no choice but to let it go.
(Xiao Qian lost interest in becoming a “real woman”)
later
“You come to work with me.”
Xiaoqian’s old friend, Lao Ma, the head of an AIDS charity, offered her an olive branch after a transgender campaign. Talking about the current situation at home, Xiaoqian said that it was still the same, and the old horse replied, “You don’t move a step, of course you are the same, you have to live your own life, and you have to bend over when the pie falls from the sky. Pick it up!”
(Xiao Qian works in a trans agency)
Lao Ma helped Xiaoqian establish a transgender institution, which was affiliated with her institution as an incubation project. In the face of Xiaoqian, who has no idea what to do, and forgets everything after teaching, Lao Ma said frankly that in the group of people he faced, Xiaoqian was already considered good. Lao Ma said, “If you can look at transgender in layers, you will gradually find that there are many people like her, and there are worse or more complicated situations.”
Half a year passed, and when Lao Ma saw that her work had not improved much, he suggested to her that if she could not do it herself, she could consider asking her mother for help. a way”. But when Xiaoqian proposed, Wang Yi refused. Muttering, “Can I do this?”
Wang Yi couldn’t tell what she cared about. She couldn’t accept their world and didn’t want to go into this muddy water. But in the heart, the child kept sharing the work situation with her, saying that many people and many parents are curious to find out when they are facing a more complicated environment than their own family. In the end, this curiosity, the old horse who was sent to the west by the Buddha and her private conversation, kept emphasizing “Don’t you want to get to know your child well? Have you ever understood your child?” Li promised .
In the new job in the organization, what Wang Yi did in the early stage was nothing more than accompanying and watching Chen Song. For the first time in her life, Wang Yi felt idle. She even had enough time to play her favorite table tennis twice a day in the morning and evening to re-establish friendship. She hadn’t had a friend for a long time. Because of her status as a child, she cut it off almost all acquaintances.
It was also in this job that Wang Yi thought about some problems consciously or unintentionally in Xiaoqian’s sharing, or searched for the reason why her child was like this from other people’s experiences. Although she still expects Chen Song to return to the track of an ordinary person, have a serious job, get married, have children, and raise children, everything is quietly changing.
(Wang Yi is playing table tennis)
For more than ten years, how to “break” the child’s gender has occupied almost all her energy. Now she seems to be able to not think about this aspect, but how to make The child and himself live a little more comfortably, which may be the biggest leap in the relationship between the mother and son over the years.
One thing changed Wang Yi’s thinking a lot. Chen Song’s eldest cousin is the benchmark of the family, but she died of cancer last year. She satisfied everyone’s imagination of “a good life and a good life”, but she left everyone behind and died before forty. “Maybe you have experienced the moment of robbing a child with death, and gradually understand what you care about more?” Wang Yi said.
Last year, Wang Yi proposed to live with Xiao Qian to save money and to take better care of Xiao Qian. Xiaoqian readily agreed. After living together, they talk more about what kind of hair to do, what kind of clothes to wear, or where to go to eat.
(Wang Yi helps Xiao Qian comb her hair)
Wang Yi thinks that maybe after sharing and communicating with so many transgender parents and listening to so many rhetoric of “they are born like this”, she slowly accepted that she could learn from Looking at this matter from this premise, especially when she is often responsible for solving some children who are not accepted by other parents, she needs to put herself in a position of “no fault”. This allowed her to reflect on her past self, how uncomfortable and unworthy she was who could only understand them as “wrong”.
Wang Yi even began to quietly contemplate her future, and when everything was slowly on the right track, she and her husband would go to a strange city and live her life well , As for Chen Song, it’s good to be safe and happy, to be able to help him wherever he can, and to be able to see him when he wants to see him.
After more than ten years of struggle and suffering, Wang Yi has been squeezed into this moment. Now she knows very well that she only cares about her own children, regardless of his Is his name “Xiaoqian” or “Chen Song”.
(In order to protect the respondents, the characters in the text are pseudonyms.)
*The content of this article is for the popularization of health knowledge and cannot be used as a specific diagnosis and treatment suggestion, nor can it replace the face-to-face consultation of a licensed physician, and is for reference only.
*The copyright of this article belongs to Tencent Medical Dictionary. Unauthorized reprinting by media is prohibited. Illegal reprinting will be investigated for legal responsibility according to law. Individuals are welcome to forward to the circle of friends.
*Welcome to search on WeChat and pay attention to the public account “Tencent Medical Code” to get more knowledge about health science.