Today we are headed to China to cover one of the most inspiring transgender activists of our time. An individual who is defying gender binaries in a country that has done very little in the way of LGB rights, and even less for trans and gender non-conforming folks. Despite this, activist and business owner Chao (Chow) Xiaomi (Shou-me) is not one to be deterred. Though she identifies as gender fluid, she uses feminine pronouns and has a feminine expression. And though she has lived openly for the last 15 years, it is only recently that her work has drawn any attention. To understand Chao’s (Chow) predicament, we must understand the climate between China and its LBGTQ citizens. Much like the rest of the world, China has a long history of homosexuality and gender fluidity. The earliest same-sex relationships in the country were documented as far back as the Shang Dynasty which ran between the 16th and 11th centuries (BCE). Meaning, long before white Christians were even around to ordain it a sin and spread lies of perversion. For 3,000 years, documents and records show countless stories of same-sex love and affection. By the Liu Song Dynasty of the first century A.D., it was reported that homosexuality was as frequent as heterosexuality. And when the 12th century rolled around and white Europeans began to turn on their own homosexuals and gender non-conforming folks, the Ming Dynasty embraced and showed appreciation of queer love. However, Western influence would soon catch up and under the Quing Dynasty rule of the 16 and 1700s, social constructs of marriage and gender became more prominent. In 1740 the first anti-homosexuality law was passed forbidding the act of sodomy. The punishment required a month in prison and 100 blows from a bamboo rod. With the rise of the Peoples Republic of China and the controversial Mao Zedong (Tse Tung), LGBTQ became a dirty stigma that brought shame to families and communities. In 1997 homosexuality was decriminalized and in 2001 it was removed as a mental disorder (compare this to America which had removed homosexuality as a mental disorder nearly 30 years prior). However, to this day, the queer stigma still remains across the majority of China. A 2016 United Nations survey revealed the staggering cultural weight placed upon LGBTQ Chinese individuals. We don’t have the statistics on how many LGBTQ people there are in the country. Though it has been speculated that there are around 4 million trans and GNC people. And if statistics run as they usually do with trans/non-binary people making up the smallest percentages, then we can safely guess at least another 10 million people are gay, lesbian, or bisexual. And that’s using incredibly conservative estimates. What the 2016 survey revealed was the incredible pressure put of LGBTQ Chinese to remain closeted. Only 5.5% of respondents said they were fully open, 14% said they were open to their close friends and family, and 74.9% said they were not out of the closet at all. [3] Furthermore, more than 84% of gay and lesbian people said they were in an opposite-sex marriage due to the large cultural pressure to marry. 13% said they were in beard marriages (meaning both parties were gay and married for convenience).[3] 2.6% of the respondents had been able to get married to their partner in an overseas wedding as China does not allow same-sex unions.[3] The most recent poll among the Chinese population as a whole, in 2013 ,showed that 57% believed homosexuality should not be accepted by society. However, it should be noted that statistic had dropped significantly since 2007, when 69% of Chinese opposed homosexual expression.[3] The cultural oppression and extreme limitations of rights could attribute to the increase in Asian immigration in the United States. Today, Asian and Pacific Islander people are the fastest growing population in the U.S. And 15% of undocummented LGBTQ folks are Asian or Pacific Isl...