shanghai
– CHINA –
A perfect day for brunch, bathed in sunlight and warmth. From Highline’s rooftop, we looked out over People’s Square, a place steeped in history, while around our table, a different kind of history was unfolding. We had gathered from distant places, drawn to this city not just to live, but to blossom and become, finding new ways to exist in a land rich with tradition and transformation.
At the center of it all was Mcebo, a true gatherer, a voice that fills a room with warmth and presence. He has built a chosen family here, carving out space for himself and others to belong.
Among them, drag queens, performers, and dreamers, each embodying a different facet of reinvention, beauty, and defiance.
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The moment was fun and effortlessly classy, filled with big personalities, big laughs, and even bigger stories.
Brunch dishes with a Chinese touch arrived at the table, perfectly paired with endless mimosas, flowing like the joy around us.
Here, queerness was more than existence—it was renewal and redefinition, a celebration of becoming.
[ sift through photographs ]
After each gathering, I created a poem as a way to reflect on what we experienced together—a way of immortalizing the energy, questions, and quiet truths shared around the table.
[ listen to poem read by author ]
– FREEDOM IN RIGID FRAMES –
What does it mean to leave?
Queerness says:
To pack a suitcase with the weight of desired belonging,
to carry…
the weight of who you have been told to be,
and the shame of the time wasted pretending,
and the light of who you know you deserve to become.
What does it mean to arrive?
Queerness says:
To step into a place so foreign
that the binding rules no longer bind you,
where the frame is too rigid to hold you.
You don’t need to break free when you never fit
In Shanghai, queerness expands,
rebuilds, and becomes. And becomes. And becomes.
What does it mean to gather?
Queerness says:
To answer the call of divine fluidity-
a table set to hold the places we go to get free.
Shanghai, from all places, a blank slate to begin again.
We arrive from cities, countries, lives apart-
to become, to expand,
This place… holds… what our cities of origin could not.
At this table, home is not a nacionality—
home is the space we create.
For ourselves, for our previous selves, for our future beloveds.
What does it mean to rebuild?
Queerness says:
You can rebuild here.
Shanghai can hold every contradiction.
You can be you, the artist and the wanderer,
the dreamer and the performer.
No need to choose—you are all of it and whatever more.
What does it mean to expand?
Queerness says:
In this table, we are many things at once.
Many dim sum plates in motion [cliche alert, soooorrryyyyy],
all you can eat—all change and expansion on the menu.
Divine ambiguity—flavors that expand,
sweet, sour, infinite.
And still, Shanghai holds us.
Another story. Another guuuurl. Another becoming.
Queerness says:
There is no end to expansion.
Shanghai’s Gift: The Dragon
At each gathering, participants were invited to choose a meaningful gift to send to the next city—a symbol of what the moment held, and what queerness made possible for them.
These offerings—tender, playful, ancestral, or poetic—became a thread of connection across borders. Each one carried the love and intention of its table, a gesture of kinship to those still to gather.
In Shanghai, they offered the dragon—a mythical creature central to Chinese culture and full of magic and mystery. Though it has never existed, it has always been believed in—much like queer lives, which insist on being real even when denied. A wink from the drag performers at the table turned this into the drag-on, honoring both lineage and play.
Every beautiful moment at this dinner was captured
by The Grey Experience
