Chinese New Year was a chance to celebrate without ‘white nonsense’ and ‘toxic masculinity’ that felt all the more important in the age of Trump

It was Chinese New Year in New York’s Chinatown, and one of the neighborhood’s most hyped fusion restaurants – specializing in “Americanized oriental food” – had closed to the mainstream. As the year of the Fire Rooster began, the venue pushed an unorthodox door policy: in addition to being of legal drinking age, those who wanted to enter were also asked to check their “white nonsense” as well as “toxic masculinity” first – and, if they were not Asian-identifying, absolutely no Asian cultural garb.

Welcome to New York’s first queer lunar dance party: a designated “safe space” where several red qipaos and embroidered silk jackets flashed on the dance floor; and V-sign selfies were taken under gilded wooden dragons, porcelain bowls in hand (the cocktail of the night was sesame-chili infused). Soon, lovers kissed in dark corners in the basement and the queue outside reached down the block.

“I waited for this party all my life,” said Coco Layne, who kept finding herself at “white people’s parties in Bushwick”, wondering for years if she was the only queer Asian in New York. “This is a really beautiful way of celebrating each other, while the world is burning down outside: we’re here, we’re not going anywhere.”

Now Layne commiserated with hundreds of others of her tribe, many coming straight from the Chinatown parade (which had been queerer than ever). She wore a red “kimono” from Victoria’s Secret, not her ancestral Taiwan, for the occasion, matched with plateaued Doc Martens, waist-long turquoise hair (with coordinated eyebrows) and winged eyeliner.

“This is a piece of clothing that was appropriated by white people and then I took it back,” she said about the kimono, laughing. “And every act from now until the end of the term should be a middle finger.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Parissah Lin, a member of the collective, dances at the party. Photograph: Mengwen Cao

Under the nation’s new president, fond of China-bashing and hell-bent on drowning out America’s diversity, the party was both therapy and euphoric rebellion, a way to smash cliches of Asian Americans as a conservative, quietly well-behaved “model minority”.

Honoring the survival and resistance of “queer femmes of color” also came with strict guidelines, however, circulated ahead of the event by the organizers, Yellow Jackets Collective, a “queer/intersectional Yellow American collective”. The party, designated to “maneuvering, scamming and burning white patriarchy to the ground”, had no patience for homo- or transphobia, anti-blackness, fetishization or “yellow face”. The rules were plastered on the brick walls: “if you’re a privileged body, consider taking up less space”; “do not become violent if checked”; and a stern warning: “do not ask ANYONE where they are ‘from’ (WE ARE NOT HERE FOR IT – THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU AND YOUR ~~~ (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ cHinA gAziNg ~~~ FUCK YOU!!!).”

The collective was born out of disillusion with a mainstream America they felt still did not see them. By coming together, they found an outlet for the anger they felt had begun to choke them: why was it that even in a crowded queer bar, they – as non-whites – felt so alone?

“Whites love to decide what we are, who we are; why we are,” said collective member Michelle Ling Xuan, emphasizing that the Asian American person-of-color status was erased when they performed well, and highlighted whenever a token minority was needed. “Like, everything liberal about you comes from your proximity to whiteness – and everything conservative about you comes from China.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Queer Lunar New Year Party organized by Yellow Jackets Collective and Discwomen. Photograph: Mengwen Cao

“Our anger comes from this inheritance of all of these ghosts our parents have been living with in this country,” said Parissah Lin, another member of the Yellow Jackets Collective. “There’s a bitterness and kind of insanity that comes along with this isolation and alienation. We try to imagine a future we haven’t been given.”

As for Donald Trump, he was merely a symptom rather than the illness itself, according to the group. “This didn’t come out of nowhere,” Xuan stressed. “Trump didn’t just magically manifest himself into being and become super rich on his own. He came out of you, white America, so please take responsibility: this was literally hundreds of years of you building this empire and then your king came and sat on the throne. So why are you so fucking surprised?”

“Almost everything we do now is resistance, whether or not we want it to be,” explained Jes Tom, a standup comedian and fifth generation Asian American. “Maybe we don’t want it to be, maybe we want to have a party and have a good time, but it doesn’t matter, it’s resistance now.”

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They had arrived in a cab with another partygoer, Sueann Leung, who was “too emotionally exhausted” to deal with the racist, homophobic catcalls of the subway. (“We’re queer, visibly together, and I would receive a lot of harassment.”) Since Trump’s campaign began, the city had recorded spikes in hate crime.

“I can be in my regular clothing, with my hair up big, and it still becomes a racialized thing,” Leung said. “The moment I put up my hair, I promise you, at least two assholes will yell ‘geisha’ at me on the street. It doesn’t matter what I‘m wearing.”

Tonight’s party was one of few places where Leung, a costume designer, felt safe playing around with stereotypes of her Asian heritage on her own terms: in crimson lipstick, an embroidered, vintage mandarin-collared silk dress, and textile peonies in her curled hair.

With the night marked the beginning of a tough year, the group tried to stay in the moment and enjoy an unprecedented sense of belonging. After all, Tom stressed, New Year’s festivities – no matter culture or origin – was all about family union, new beginnings, and good fortunes for the future.

“And what do we need more right now, than a lot of good luck, right?”