Questions for my friends #1: A

With A, who is my closest friend and also my girlfriend of 1.5 years whom I love so much, we talked about growing up weird, annoying, and gay, about Tumblr, about our first date together, about the way A relates to the people they're close to, about dealing with conflict, and ended with a James Baldwin quote. Thank you so much for speaking with me, A, today and every day!

If you're getting this as a newsletter, read the properly formatted post here: https://jiaqikang.mataroa.blog/blog/questions-for-my-friends-1-a/

---

The idea for this project is that I’m interviewing my friends and people I feel close to, who inspire me. There’s obviously a difference between this ‘on the record’ discussion, which will be published online for anyone to read, and the normal ‘off the record’ conversations we’d have as friends. I’m interested in the ways I might get to know you more through this slightly more ‘formal’ format and the choices you make in representing yourself. I’m also interested in oral history as a form, and in ways to preserve and archive intimacies and relationships in time and space.

Please come up with how you want to be called: name, initial, or pseudonym. I’ll be “Jiaqi Kang.”

The questions below are the 6 main questions I’ll ask you, but your answers will probably prompt some follow-up questions. Your answers can be as long or short as you want. The interview will be conducted orally, then transcribed using Loom and edited for length and clarity. You’ll get to take a final look at it before it goes up, and of course I can take it down anytime you like in the future (although it’s on my blog+newsletter which means that it will also exist in people’s email inboxes).

1. Please introduce yourself and your background, in any way you’d like.

2. How did you become politically engaged?

3. How did you and I meet?

4. What does the word ‘care’ mean for you?

5. What are some things you’re currently looking to learn, or learn about?

6. Is there anything else you’d like to say, or to ask me?

Thank you <3

With thanks to CM for helping me plug the audio files into Loom!

---

This interview took place in March 2025 and has been edited for length and clarity.

Jiaqi Kang: Please introduce yourself and your background in any way you'd like.

A: I'm Chinese, but I was born in England. I was born in Wigan, which is in the Northwest of England. When I was young, we moved around a lot because of my ex-father's job and didn't settle in a place until I was six. That was Lancaster. And that's where I grew up. Should I introduce myself in any way I like? Actually, I can’t think of anything else. What do you think I should say?

JK: Well, if you want, you can talk a little bit about what you're up to now. Or what other ways do you identify?

A: I feel awkward.

JK: Well, then you don't have to. That can be your introduction.

A: I don't know. When I think about introducing myself and who I am, it always feels like I should talk about, like, how I grew up. Can we start again? I'm embarrassed.

(JK pauses recording, then restarts it.)

JK: I would quite like for all of this to be part of it. A asked me how I would answer this question. And I guess I would talk about how I grew up and where I was born. But I would probably also say a little bit about how I'm a writer now, or where I am now.

A: It feels embarrassing to expose myself in such a way… I have to decide and then it's set.

JK: Yeah. So, in that case, we can also just move on if you'd like.

A: No, no, I think I want to say it, but I feel like I need more guidance.

JK: Do you want to restart or do you want me to just ask you some more questions?

A: I can restart. I just don't want to go off too much on a tangent as well.

JK: I want you to, and that's the point. All tangents are good. Please introduce yourself in your background in any way you'd like.

A: I was born in the Northwest of England in Wigan. I'm Hong Kong Chinese. My mum is from Hong Kong, and my ex-dad is from Macau. We moved around a lot when I was younger, blah blah blah, settled in Lancaster when I was six, and then lived my life like that until university. I feel like when I talk about who I am, I think a lot about how I grew up and where I grew up.

JK: Is there anything else that you feel like people should know if they want to know you? You can also be like, “I don't want people reading this interview to really know me that well.”

A: I don't know if I want to expose everything, but it's like, “Oh, I was a gay Chinese kid in the Northwest of England.” And I feel like I was a theoretical person in all these ways until I went to university and started living a lot of the things that I knew about myself. I went to university in London. I studied a subject that I didn't think that I should have studied. I thought that at the time when I studied it, and I maybe think that now too. But I don't think it really mattered because it was just a vehicle for me to start living.

It could have been anywhere, but I got so much enjoyment out of being away from a troubling home, a suffocating home and, getting to treat myself as bad or as good as I wanted to because it would be my choice, and that's nice. I could finally start being as annoying as I had already theoretically been before, which is very, very annoying.

I guess, through all of this, I should probably say something about: I think of my background as someone who grew up thinking that she was very well off, actually. Thinking that I was someone who actually had it really, really good. Maybe this is even backwards to many people's experiences, but it's like, not really realizing that there was stuff that was ‘undesirable’ about me, like race and like sexuality, until later on in life, because I was just too self-absorbed to even notice.

I don't know how to explain that… Jiaqi, do you know what I mean?

JK: You've said in the past that, in Lancaster, you felt as though you led a really middle-class lifestyle or occupied a middle-class position, and when you went to London you realized that so many people were so rich, and that because you went to a state school and because you're from the North, you were assumed [to be] or seemed to be someone from a working-class background.

A: Yeah. I guess it's like that. I think I just had a totally unrealistic thing in mind of what was working class. I thought that you pretty much had to be homeless, which one of my best friends in high school was, and I would be the one buying them lunch in the school canteen. Our car’s paid off, stuff like that. When I was growing up, I had all the things I needed in the world. I couldn't even imagine that there was more, like I didn't know that private schools actually existed in a real way. I thought it was like a convent.

JK: And in terms of sexuality, your mum was so accepting of you.

A: Yeah, so I didn’t think there was anything wrong with me. People at school thought [my gay friend group was] weird, we were just so utterly overjoyed, self-absorbed, self-enamoured. We were like, “Yeah, people are bullying us, but we're having a really good time.”

So, it's really funny, I think that a lot of the ways I grew up, which has really shaped my identity now… I knew that there were lots of things wrong, or lots of things that people would think are wrong, including stuff like having a physically abusive father, where I didn't realise until much later in my life that those things are bad. Because it was just my life.

I think I grew up with a very detached way of looking at myself and the life I led, but it was also due to quite a healthy (question mark) degree of self-acceptance and self-love, and maybe self-obsession, even. Just the brutality of being a teenager—you can get over anything, right?

That's still a bit who I am: easy to not see problems. Because, well, I just thought I was the bee's knees.

JK: Do you want to move on to the next question?

A: Jiaqi, I feel like I answered that first one really badly because it's the hardest question. Maybe I'd answer the question better through the other questions.

JK: How did you become politically engaged?

A: I became politically engaged growing up, maybe just from living life—early experiences of racism and not understanding, fundamentally, what I was up against. Also instances of sexism within my Chinese community. It was that same sense of self-belief and self-absorption, where I was like, “I don't understand why I'm being treated different, when I think of myself as being really great and clever and capable.” I was the only POC in my entire year in primary school.

There were lots of things that I was curious about. I remember teachers saying to me that I asked uncomfortable questions. I think it was just because I was so nosy—“Why do things work this way?” In primary school, when we learned about Pandora's Box, I was like, “Why is it always the woman who does the sin and gets it all messed up?” Another question I asked to a Chinese auntie in church was like, “Why would you assume that I wouldn't win at Chinese checkers? I'm much smarter than that stupid boy over there” (who was actually my friend).

Other things, like a girl bowing to me in the school playground and speaking Japanese, I'd be like, “That's so weird that you'd say that to me because I'm Chinese.” I think it also came because of like… I probably had a very healthy dose of autism. So I was like, “I just don't understand, that's so weird. You guys are so weird.” So, funnily, I think that a lot of these things never became internalized racism, internalized misogyny for me, because I was like, “I feel like everyone else is just being super weird, I've got to be right.”

All of these thoughts about how misaligned everything seemed to be, and feeling like I was the only person who thought these things were really weird, [it] became a relief when I logged on to Tumblr in high school. My friend was like, “Hey, I got Tumblr,” and they had a Superwholock blog. But I went on and I started following a bunch of funny meme-ers… But a lot of the big names on Tumblr were also people who posted a lot about social justice, SJW's, I guess.

JK: What year would you say this was?

A: Well, I was 13… 2011.

I don't know, like, I was so obsessed. I would go through all the chains and find the person that I thought had the best views on things, and then follow them and go back through their reblogs and find the person who… I was really digging around. Probably at times I could have been in danger of going down the wrong way, maybe, like, becoming a tenderqueer or whatever. I was reading everything on there, amassing, picking and choosing what I liked or aligned with my experiences of racism and misogyny and homophobia. I think a lot of it was [out of] a concerted desire to justify my own confusion and hurt. But I [didn’t see] it as hurt yet. I just saw it as: everything is really wack. It [was] a relief to see that I wasn't the only person who felt this way.

Also, feeling like a little kid who… no one ever takes my side. Realizing that there are people, at least—even if they don't know me—that talk about this stuff on the Internet, that perhaps they would take my side… As a relatively young girl who was Chinese and gay, and also kind of annoying, and also perhaps bad enough vibes that my dad is like, “What if it's just the kid that has really bad vibes?” Thinking about how, [at] a lot of [points in] my life, whenever I brought those things [that were happening at home], or perhaps if my mum had brought those things, we'd be turned away. I think it was a big drive towards why I was so interested in reading this stuff. There had to be a justification; there had to be a hope that people actually still care about this kind of thing. The ostracization that my mum [experienced] in the church that we were in, which was a Chinese church…

Oh, I'm telling this so out of order, so maybe you'll have to fill in the gaps. But I think that I had to care about a lot of this stuff. I had to seek out ways to self-soothe, turning to these online sources of information, which told me that it was okay to be angry and okay to be confused, and that it was actually the people who do harm who are the messed-up ones, and not me. I think that I've carried that since—wishing that someone had looked at me, at my stupid little gay friend group that everyone was mean to. Maybe it was cope that we were still so joyful, but we were.

Also thinking about the rejection that I faced racially, even within that friend group. But then in another space, in the very Chinese, patriarchal, religious space that me and my mum were in, then the rejection that we faced there, where it's not race, but it's gendered.

From my time seeing my mum reach out for help, and seeing my past, childish self, reaching out for help and begging… I just get really sad thinking about how this is the main cause for lots of evil in the world: ordinary people, who think of themselves as kind, turning away.

I guess that's why I'm politically engaged. It’s because I'm afraid of being left behind by the world… Meaning that I could never be the one to turn away, because I know how that feels. I can't look at little kids and not see myself in them. Do you know what I mean?

JK: I do. Thank you for sharing. I love you.

A: I love you.

JK: And when I hear you talk about that, I also imagine you as a little kid. Something that I was thinking about… You told me that you had read the whole Bible [as a child] because you were interested and you were curious and inquisitive, but also fundamentally questioning… And how ravenous you are/were, to know and to know and to know, so that you could then question and find out more. That open-mindedness and that curiosity and critical thinking.

A: You present my hunger and my curiosity as something much more caring and kind, but I don't think I was doing it because I was. I think I was hungry because I was hungry. Because I wanted answers for why I wasn't cared for.

JK: Well, I don't think that's bad. I think that's who you are and that's who you were and that's important.

A: Yeah, but I must have been angry.

JK: Yeah. And that's normal too.

A: Yeah. I think so. It's also just a better way to cope, right? When you're an angry and sad and rejected adolescent, to try and build a case against the world, to try and build evidence that it was never me. That it was wrong and I didn't inherently deserve to be treated that way. That's what built a lot of my practice, is that I was also a victim. And maybe that was a self-centered way to come to a lot of those realizations—around the world, many people face these sorts of injustices, and my injustices were just part of the whole thing—but I think it brought me reassurance. That I wasn't the problem, that I wasn't just the child that nobody wanted to vibe with, that [her] father didn’t want to vibe with, she just had a bad vibe. I was like, “Actually, all of this is a product of misogyny, racism, homophobia.” The way that my father was brought up was also a tragedy. [The issue] is that children don't have agency and can be abused. This feeling around the world, that people don't have agency and can just be killed and abused, just like that.

What was the question? Was it activism?

JK: I just said ‘politically engaged,’ because I also want you to interpret that term.

A: My answer for “How did I become politically engaged?” is probably literally to survive, like, to be able to live and to encourage myself to live. I had to find reasons not to succumb and believe that I was just that bad vibe.

JK: How did you and I meet? Let the record show that the subject is giggling nefariously.

A: You and I met because I liked you on Hinge. I liked the picture where you're pulling a funny face and you're playing the drums. Let it be shown on the record that another picture I really liked was the one where you were wearing that backless dress, the one that's hanging in my room right now. I sent it to [my best friend] Albert, and Albert was like, “I know why you like that photo,” and I was like, “Yeah, it's because it's basically them naked.” I'm sorry for objectifying you. Well, anyway, I was really drawn in by your good looks and your personality because another thing was, one of your prompts was “Something I'm passionate about is: police abolition.” I was like, “Wow, this is so sexy and cool.” I didn't send a message though. I just gave you a like, because I like to play coy like that, you know? And then you messaged me, and you sent me an opener that you have used on many other women, time and time again. Wasn't anything new and you told me so. Oh, I think the interviewer wishes to speak.

JK: No, not like that. I was nervous.

A: Well, anyways, we chatted a bit back and forth, and then we took it over to Instagram. You were trying really hard to keep my attention. You were in China.

JK: I had to keep your attention for three weeks.

A: You were sending me a bunch of cat pictures, of cats that you were seeing in China, and I like that our relationship has had a theme of cats the whole way through. Some of those cats were really chunky, really fat. One thing that, for me, sealed the deal was when you sent me this picture, when we first started talking on Instagram of Wigglytuff and Psyduck sitting side by side on a tree branch and staring at the moon. You sent, “Was thinking this could be us etc.” Oh, you're making my heart flutter, thinking about it. I liked you so much, I hadn't initiated with anyone else, and I really liked how you treated me, and the way you flirted with me was very bashful and gentle, but I could tell that you wanted me so bad, and I was like, “Wow, this is really nice.” And then for our first date in person, you had to come back from China, and I also [had had] COVID. Our date [was] literally the second day after you got back from China, because you really wanted to go on a date with me, huh?

JK: It was only a few days later, but in between, Yan Ge came to visit and I was interviewing her [for Sine Theta]. The earliest possible day that I could see you was Friday the 13th. The next day, we were having a PowerPoint party at my house and my friend Melissa was supposed to come on Friday the 13th and stay over. I uninvited her for that night because I was like, “I want to go on this date.”

A: You're funny. Our first date, hmmm. There are allegations that I was late. But I remember the weather was very bad and I was trying to really pretty myself up for the date because, obviously, I wanted you to fancy me. Also because I'm really bad at navigating so I was stuck on High Street for a bit, which made me a bit later than my estimation to you. I was like, “Oh, I really hope that they're not gonna be mad at me.” But when I went in, you were sat facing the door that I entered through, and now I don't remember if you stood up to greet me or not, but I would imagine that you did. And I think I saw you look at my chest. Yeah, you can have that on the record. And, well, I don't remember all of the date, but I remember some really nice parts where it made my heart skip a beat.

You were just so awkward and bashful. When you asked me if I'd seen The Bear, we were standing opposite The Bear, the pub, and I was like, “Yeah, like I've been there, it was actually the first pub I ever went to in Oxford, blah, blah, blah,” and I just started chit-chatting. And I looked at you, and you looked really constipated. And I was like, “What's wrong?” You just stood there for a beat, and you were like, “Well, the thing is, I was actually asking about The Bear, the show, but I didn't want to interrupt you and I didn't know what to say, so I just stopped talking.” I could see the loading symbol on your head.

It felt like the whole time I was having a precognition that we would be together, and these things would be an extremely beautiful memory in the future. I feel like I already knew that. I feel like, with our relationship, the whole thing has been a moment of knowing… Even when we were talking online, but especially when we met in person, I just had this feeling that was like, “This is going

to be something that I am not going to let go of.” Do you know what I mean? I don't think you know what I mean, because this was just my thoughts. How would you know? But I feel like the whole time I already knew. I felt so secure and like my quarry was already in my bag, like I had already hunted and gotten what I wanted. And I was like, “Now I'm not going to let go, never.”

JK: I was like, “This girl just showed up to our first date and immediately started acting like my girlfriend.” I really liked that. Even though I was also a little bit scared. I was scared of being played by you, of becoming your plaything.

A: Well, actually, like, you were always going to become my plaything, and even now you are my plaything.

Maybe you did sense that. But I felt like, from the very beginning, I already knew where I stood with you. It's not that I saw the future, but I think I just sensed it.

JK: I think I felt it too, but it took me a while to get used to it. I was mostly quite baffled by it, because I didn't understand why you would possibly have picked me. I thought maybe it was a trap.

A: I also don't really know how to explain it though, because I also [have] just never had such a feeling of surety. It was confusing because it felt like I didn't need to put a lot of thought into it.

You were mine, and I was yours. I just knew very well. I've always known my own mind very well, so I'm not really one to question if I feel sure about something. I know when I feel sure and I know when I don't feel sure.

JK: What does the word ‘care’ mean for you?

A: Sorry to center our relationship, but I think that I began to engage with the word ‘care’ in an entirely new and profound way when we started loving each other. It brought me a newfound sense of love and appreciation and patience that I had never really cared to cultivate before. I don't think I was really like a super caring person before that. In fact, I might have even been a bit too self-absorbed.

A lot of my relationships… I'd never found something I wanted to really, really hang on to. Some of my other relationships that were very, very loving were [of] a filial nature. I thought I didn't really have to engage with them that much. For example, my mum is someone who will always love me. It's something I took for granted. Since that turning point, which I guess I can pinpoint as meeting you, I've learnt to engage with everything in a more caring way—the daily routine of care, which is getting you water, or not being lazy, and stroking your hair because I want to, giving you a massage because I want to and I want your body to feel good and to not be in pain. [My feelings are] becoming a lot more externalized. Instead of being a hungry baby bird with its mouth open, wanting to be cared for, I found myself wanting to care for you.

And then that love overflowed and spilled out of me in other ways that I found reflected in my friendships and in my relationship with my mum. Before, maybe I was much less secure, but now I realize, actually I want to do lots of stuff for you and all the people I love. Caring less about what I receive and instead [about] what I give, just to see the other person a little bit happy, or a lot happy, both feel amazing. That feeling of care that I've learned from our relationship—wanting so much to give you everything, always giving the benefit of the doubt, always giving my trust and belief in you as a person—has also really reshaped the way I see political things as well. [It’s influenced] how I would handle disagreements and conflict in a caring manner. [This] has been really important, especially in recent things that I've been involved with, where I just simply don't think I could have been that person before really realizing what it is to care for someone truly.

Does that make sense? I don't really think I knew what it was to approach someone with love until I loved you. But now that I love you and I care for you, I find myself with so much more capacity to love everyone in my life.

JK: I love you.

A: It really did multiply. Like, it was never a finite resource, you know?

I just don't think I had that before dating you. My relationship with my ex was vastly different, and I don't think it ever made me more caring as a person. It maybe made me even more withholding. This is also the first relationship I've had where I've seen it have a positive effect on my relationships to my family or to my friends. Once it begins with one person, it really informs everything; how I treat everybody and how to nurture things, a movement… [it] always has to come from a place of care and of giving, a certain open-heartedness to receive everybody and a willingness to learn and to educate each other. I'm so lucky to be loved by you.

JK: I'm lucky too. Our first date was on the 13th of October 2023. And I think it's completely impossible to divorce all the things that have come from our relationship from all the ways in which Palestine solidarity work has transformed how I see the world, and how the events of the past year and a bit have changed the way that I think and act. I don't know how much of anything could have happened without you by my side, without getting to do stuff with you and you inspiring me.

A: I would have been much less brave without you.

JK: Me too. What are some things that you're currently looking to learn or learn about?

A: I'm still learning about, and I'm always seeking to learn about, how I can be brave. I hope to be brave in lots of different ways, in interpersonal relationships, how to do personal accountability, like with friends, in a way that achieves anything while staying true to what I know of myself, which is being kind and being generous.

I've become interested, recently, in what really gives movements longevity. I think that my conclusion is: genuinely, we all have to care about each other as people. But how to care when conflict arises? How to overcome that? How to remain faithful to my beliefs while correcting people on racism, for example? How to maintain that? Basically how to talk to white people about racism without compromising any of myself, but while still achieving something, because people are people. I keep hoping a eureka moment will come to me, which is like, “This is it, this is what we've been missing all along.” I keep having conversations with recurring people about, “What do you think is wrong? How can we start to care about each other again? How do I continue to care when sometimes I feel like my kindness has already been trodden upon? Is it a fallacy to continue on this way that I've set myself?” I want to know how to be kind and how to be strong—both of those things… We aren't militants.

I want to learn how to handle these interpersonal things in a movement. Another thing that I want to do is more actionable things that are informed by my beliefs. I want to learn to be brave. I also want to get back into reading a lot more. There are skills that I wish to learn; maybe I ought to learn these skills in therapy, but I don't know.

Recently I've been thinking a lot about all of these things, but I can't really figure out if there's any one way to address them all. I think I just have to keep living and keep learning like that.

JK: Is there anything else that you would like to say or to ask me?

A: Free Palestine.

I don't know if this can be appendaged to the beginning of my interview, but something that informs [my] politics: ever since I read it, that James Baldwin quote doesn't leave my mind. The one about the children all over the world being ours. The mothers and all the people, but mostly the children. I guess it's because I still feel like a child.

[“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.” —James Baldwin, ‘Notes on the house of bondage’, 1980]