Li and Xu, a gay couple who have been together since 2007, would walk out of the airport, get married two days later in Los Angeles, and, more important, start their journey toward parenthood.įrom 2015 to 2018, Li and Xu made four transpacific trips as part of their gestational surrogacy processes. There were a few other things they didn’t mention to the CBP officers. The unexpected incident was the prelude to a carefully planned trip into another country where their sexuality was much more accepted than at home. “But we felt kind of ashamed to say that,” he recalls. Xu learned that if they had said they were partners from the beginning, they would have been allowed to go through border control together, avoiding all the drama. Xu kept explaining that they were very close friends, until at one point the officer asked: “Are you two partners?”Īnd then everything changed.
An officer asked them why one’s documents were in the hands of the other. In the secondary screening room – commonly referred to by Chinese travelers as the “small dark room” – Xu and Li waited almost three hours, believing that they would be denied entry.
