Tag Archives: Gay

Written on by

同志 tongzhi getting queer in china

It could have been the part of town I was hanging out in, or it could be that Guangzhou is getting queer as fast as it can. Last time I was there, I saw guys who looked like they lived in Taipei or Hong Kong, and had too much style to be straight, and the suburb I was staying in seemed to be full of international jet-set fags. Not that I made it to any of the clubs or bars, but lots of people were very keen to tell me the town is awash in homosexuality. So maybe they can stop pretending they’re straight because they’re married.

China Daily plasters cute young fags on the top of a piece about how fast China has gone from gay equalling mentally deranged hooligans to wanting a piece of the pink pie in a matter of years. Though they still like shutting down the gay festivals.

Conan Liu, 24, a tax consultant with one of the Big Four accounting firms, told Beijing Review that he has never tried to conceal his sexual orientation since finding out he is gay.

Unlike the older generation, Conan’s age group is more willing to talk about their lives and love experiences. Fashionably dressed and charming, Conan is proud of who he is. “My friends usually say that I need to be protected,” he smiled, saying that he seldom has difficulties either at work or in his life.

“Most people around me understand and accept my homosexual orientation,” Conan said. As for those who don’t like men behaving in a feminine manner, he’s defiant. “I like the way I am and I will stay away from those who dislike me. It’s no big deal.”

— Beijing Review

Conan Liu - gay in Beijing Conan Liu – gay in Beijing

Continue reading →

Written on by

同志 tongzhi studies at fudan university

Here’s another piece on the new queer studies class at Fudan University. Besides thinking this is really cool and China is so ready this, the remarkable thing is the way most progressive gay issues are presented as another round of patronisingly applauding backwards old China as it finally tries to catch up to progressive and been-there-forever English-speaking utopia.

I’d be surprised if there was any country that could claim to have a nation-wide group of universities which have had an established queer studies department of more than 15 years. Even Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, which is pretty much a pivotal text in the whole identity politics field was only published in the early 90s. And as I think I’ve said before (wow!, I actually did), there’s an attitude to sex in China that is wholly and intrinsically different to that of the Christian English-speaking enclave of countries, which would be much more interesting to see evolve than to have Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, coloured handkerchiefs, and pissy queens calling each other ‘sister’ transplanted onto a hundred million Chinese queers.

A class like this would be unremarkable in the US, where many students are quite open about their homosexuality and the curriculum has long included offerings reflecting their interests. But among China’s gay and lesbian population, which may be as large as 48 million by some estimates, the new course is being portrayed as a major advance.

Less than a decade ago, homosexuality was still included under the heading of hooliganism in China’s criminal code, and it was only four years ago that the Chinese Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses.

“This is definitely a big breakthrough in contemporary society, because for so many years, homosexuals have lived at the edge of society and have been treated like dissidents,” said Zhou Shengjian, director of a gay advocacy group in Chongqing. “For such a university to have a course like this, with so many participants and experts involved, will have a very positive impact on the social situation of gay people, and on the fight against AIDS.”

— Taipei Times

questions before class questions before class

Continue reading →

Written on by

queer in china

The last week or so I’ve seen alot more stuff on gays in China in the press. Maybe it’s something to write about after the Taiwan Strait war, anti-Japan war, and numerous other doomsday hysterics of the first few months of the year, coz it’s pretty quiet around here right now, and fucking always gets the tourists in, especially when it’s two guys.

First up was the deal in Hong Kong with the age of consent for queers being the issue. Then on China becoming a pink giant as it undergoes its own queer sexual revolution. Or something. It is self-evident that the country with the largest population would also have the largest number of friends of Dorothy. And just like pretty much every other country in the world, anyone not hiding the sausage in the holy union of matrimony is going to get burnt at the stake at some time.

It’s kinda unfortunate that the issue of gay rights gets presented through the filter of American gay rights, in that it’s seen as a political movement, and more-or-less analysed through this pre-existing historical context. What’s be really nice to see is someone actually not marking China at a certain point on the international fag roadmap – currently somewhere between John Wayne and Stonewall – and instead look at what is unique and specific about being queer in China. At the very least there’s the lack of an overarching christian religious hegemony and absence of that religious association of sex and guilt. Though in counterpoint there’s the whole deal of not pissing off your parents. Maybe somewhere like Thailand is a good place to start, which seems to have an attitude in places that leaves the English-speaking world look like parochial hillbillies. Either way, painting gays in China primarily as sexual political dissidents is lazy journalism. And at least mention Menbox

At a smoky bar in southern China I caught up with the country’s underground gay scene.

As disco lights flashed red, green and blue and music blared, a transvestite on stage strutted his stuff in a red bikini with gold tassels.

One of the performers was 28-year-old Yuan Bing, a slender boy from the country in a white diaphanous dress. He discovered as a child that he liked dressing up in girls’ clothes.

He said the audience reaction to his drag act was generally positive, but it could get nasty.

“When we are performing, sometimes customers really react against us. They simply can’t bear us and they verbally attack us. We love what we do and we sometimes get angry with this response,” he said.

— BBC News

chinese circuit queen chinese circuit queen

Continue reading →

Written on by

let’s talk about sex baby

It’s a sex-arama in across China and Taiwan this week. Leaving behind me in Guangzhou is the second annual sex festival, and splashing down in Taipei I’m just in time for the second Taiwan Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Parade. There’s a whole lot of love in the air, but things aren’t all Castro or Oxford St just yet.

Those gathering at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall on Saturday afternoon for the second annual Taiwan Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Parade (台灣同志大遊行) were greeted by admonitions from a Christian group warning homosexuals, “If you do not change your sexuality, you will not enter heaven.”

Another group of Christians took a more embracing approach, choosing rather to invite parade-goers to Sunday church services. But while the church took a divided stance, Taiwan’s homosexual community chose to unite.

Organizers estimated around 3,000 people turned up to have their voices heard, their presence felt, and — because it was a parade — to fill the streets with music, dancing and bacchanalian revelry.

[...]

Last year, 1,000 people participated and the larger-scale event this year may indeed bode well for the Pride Parade’s future in Taiwan, yet one attendee took a more jaded and perhaps more realistic view of Taiwan’s state of affairs. “Society doesn’t have a problem with gay people in the public sphere, but when gays enter the home, when a gay is in their family, that’s where they draw the line.”

True enough, unlike similar manifestations in New York, San Francisco, or Sydney, one did not catch a glimpse of parents out to support their gay children. But reaching that level of acceptance might be a long-term project, or at least an aspiration for the next Taiwan Pride Parade.

the village people in taipei the village people in taipei

Written on by

同志 tongzhi queers in China

The fifth 同志 Tongzhi conference has just wrapped up in Hong Kong, where thanks to easing of border restrictions many mainland Chinese were able to attend. Tongzhi generally means ‘comrade’, but has been appropriated to mean something similar to queer, covering gay, lesbian, bi and transgender. The Tongzhi conference was frist held in 1996 in Hong Kong, where a manifesto of the group was released.

In the last two years there appears to have been a relaxing of the formerly harsh repression by the Chinese government towards tongzhi, characterised by mass arrests and the Chinese Pyschiatric Associations listing it as a mental disorder. In 2001, this listing was dropped, and while there is still police harrassment and no specific law prohibiting it, being queer in China is roughly analogous to America in the 1950s.

An article today covers the immense difficulty of being tongzhi in China still, where issues of coming-out, HIV/AIDS and safe-sex, and basic recognition are the current issues, issues which in the west feel 20 years old or more.

Perhaps the most significant development since the last conference has been the explosion of gay Chinese Web sites, now estimated by Chung to exceed 300. Government censors have been lax in curtailing Internet content dealing with homosexuality, even as they ban books and films on the subject, so thousands of gays and lesbians turn to online chat rooms and message boards to ease their sense of isolation.

The medium was so important in helping Echo Chen, 29, of Shanghai cope with her sexual orientation that she now hosts a site, www.lescn.net, that Webcasts China’s first lesbian radio program. The 2-year-old site has 15,000 registered users and is supported in part by donations from four Chinese American lesbians in the United States, she said.

“I was so pleased to find out there were other girls like me,” Chen said, recalling her discovery of gay Internet sites during her mid-20s. “I confirmed my identity on the Internet, so I’m very happy with what I’m doing now.”

It’s amazing that in spite of China’s well-deserved reputation on censorship and human rights, there are strong signs of improvement, like the recent transsexual marriage of Zhang Lin. Now if only someone like WenJiabao would come out.