Gay festival cancelled
(Beijing Weekend/China Daily)
Updated: 2005-12-24 10:03

Film director Cui Zi'en is sensitive to the topic of fire lately.

Last Friday evening, a quiet opening for the 1st Beijing Gay and Lesbian Culture Festival, in which Cui was the art director, had to be called off because the venue failed to meet proper safety standards, as police informed him.

Originally planned for the end of September, the first ever homosexual festival had already been postponed behind the schedule as organizers tried to get adequate preparation and find the right venue.

As a well-known avant-garde art area of the city, Cui had thought that the 798 art zone would be less conspicuous to host the gay and lesbian festival. Preparations for the opening were thorough and completed before the opening day. But failure to acquire an approval for an organized event forced the festival to look elsewhere, one day before the scheduled opening, December 16.

Yet the fire issue proved to be hazardous enough as the final opening at a gay bar near the Workers' Stadium had to be cut short because of it.

"We were told to stop because we did not submit our requisition to register to stage such a large-scale, organized activity," said Cui.

Consisting of contemporary art exhibitions, stage performances, a cultural forum and student campus activities, the three-day festival planned to run from December 16 to 18 was also highlighted for an exhibition of media voice that reviews the previous media reports across the country in recent years as supporting evidence backing up the festival solemnity and the organizers' confidence. As one of the festival's slogans says, the organizers and the festival attendants hoped to "say goodbye together to the mosaic age of homosexuality".

"This time we have more initiative with our own claims and beliefs. The festival is not simply an event of exhibitions but a specific allegation that we are not doing something without proper support. We have done a lot of things deep, meaningful, far-sighted and persisting," Cui remarked.

Sponsored by international foundations, the festival was managed by an equal-powered committee and relied heavily on volunteers and homosexual organizations across the country. Although receiving wide and earnest attention from home and abroad, the organizers, knowing the sensitivity of the festival theme, tactfully kept their operation low profile.

"Our committee is not a chaired committee as each member has equal power," explained Cui. "That's why we split over the discussion about whether we should inform the printed media early or not. In the end we decided to inform the press a few days ahead of the festival."

"The attitude towards homosexuality in China is to keep one eye open and another closed on the issue. You can do something related to the topic if the eye is closed to give you an acquiescent pass, and, of course, the same is true vice-versa," said Cui.

Such embarrassment is a good reflection of how homosexuality as an issue is treated in China. Traditionally labelled as a mental disorder only removed from the psychological disease category till 2001, homosexuality is still something that is left in between upright recognition and rigorous denial.

The lack of relative laws in China results in a vacuum that is easily subjected to administrative will, which, as Cui analyzed, is hardly going to improve because the government is dragging its feet on gay legislation.

"The government are not prepared and experienced in handling various social problems," said Cui.

According to the materials of the festival, major pride events in China's homosexual history can be dated back to 1990 when a drama called "Kiss of the Spiderwomen" was performed in the small theatre at the Beijing Film Academy.

In 1991, after Tang Libin and Lei Ou opened their homosexual identity to newspaper interviews from the Canadian Globe Mail and American Washington Post, various helplines, organizations, releases of movies, books, media reports, websites and other activities were charted.

"But all these are on a civil level and spontaneous, the work of mavericks. Such civil culture is often regarded as sub-mainstream, sub-culture, wild and sometimes dangerous so it is pushed aside instead of getting adequate approval," said Cui.

"An open and far-sighted society should observe such cultures and tolerate and embrace homosexuality. It is an important yardstick to measure the openness of a society," emphasized Cui.

Cui's opinions are well echoed by Li Yinhe, arguably China's most renowned sexologist. In her opening speech that was pasted on the festival's website, she pointed out that homosexuality is one of the basic behavioural modes existing in various civilizations throughout the world's history, no matter whether in a highly-developed industrialized society or primitive tribes.

"Homosexual people should be entitled to the same rights as any citizen of the People's Republic of China to freely choose their sexual partner and to get married, which, instead of being deprived and discriminated against, should receive protection. I believe that the successful presentation of a homosexuality festival will help promote public awareness of homosexuality as well as self understanding among the homosexual people themselves, and the prosperous development of homosexuality as a sub-culture in China," Li wrote at the end of her speech.

"As for the festival? Surely we will have a second one next year and a bigger one, possibly throughout the country," said an optimistic Cui.