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Year of Gay China

By Christine Laskowski (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-12-28 10:14

July 27-Aug 2: The World Outgames, Copenhagen

2009 marked the first time a Chinese delegation attended the World Outgames held in Copenhagen. Tongyu founder and director, Xu Bin, who attended the first Outgames conference in Montreal in 2006, said she immediately felt the need to form a Chinese delegation for the next one.

Fan Popo, an LGBT activist who is very involved in the community and an avid marathoner, told METRO: "I was out and willing to accept the media attention that would be part of going to the Outgames, I decided to compete in the marathon competition."

With financial support local organization the Outgames committee in Denmark , Fan was able to attend the Outgames. It was a life-changing experience for him.

"The environment in Denmark is really wonderful," he said. "I found that the people there were really tolerant of LGBT people. They treated them like ordinary people."

While Fan did not bring home a medal, the Chinese delegation succeeded in coming home with a Gold Medal in beach volleyball and a Bronze in ping pong.

August: Courage by Xiao Jie

The gay-themed novel, Courage, was published in the Chinese mainland by China Northern Publishing House.

"In terms of the content, I thought it was no problem to get it published," said Zhang Jingqiu, who owns the publishing house. "It depends, sometimes certain editors get nervous."

For a publishing house, often they were afraid of creating problems for themselves, said Xiao Jie (a sobriquet) of his most recent novel, Courage.

"There's not a government regulation that says no, but there's not much of a precedent for it."

Cui Zi'en, director and activist and organizer of the Beijing Queer Film festivals, however, was the first to set the precedent in terms of gay-themed literature on the Chinese mainland. After writing a novel in 1997, the author found it very difficult to find someone willing to publish it.

"I almost tried every publishing house in the Chinese mainland, but it never worked out," he said.

"At last, it was published in Hong Kong seven or eight years after it was written."

"There are gay novels published in China, but they're written by foreigners and imported," Xiao Jie said.

August: iLOOK magazine's "Happy Gay China" Issue

The August 2009 issue of iLook Magazine marked the first time gay-related issues were made the main theme of a mainstream Chinese magazine.

Fashion designer, Xander Zhou, was invited by iLook's managing editor, Hong Huang, to be a guest editor because the issue would appear exactly one year after China hosted the Olympic Games, he said in an interview.

"I thought this would be an interesting theme to explore visually...hence the Gay China issue."

"I didn't really set out to tell readers everything about gays in China - I think a lot is written about that already. I didn't intend to 'discuss the social issue of homosexuality'," he said. "I just wanted to explore the connection between the gay world and the fashion world."

The issue devoted 233 pages to the theme and the first 50,000 copies were sold out within a matter of days. "So the issue got a reprint," Zhou told METRO.

October-November : China Queer Film Talk Tour

Taking Chinese LGBT-themed films on tour to 16 different cities, China Queer Film Talk welcomed its second year.

The 2009 tour was organized by Xiao Gang, founder and one host of "Queer Comrades", an online talk show that has run webisodes each month for the last three years related to LGBT topics in China.

The idea behind the tour, as with the Beijing queer film festivals, is that LGBT-themes films are not allowed in the Chinese mainland.

"Some people don't really have a chance to see Chinese queer films," Xiao Gang said in an interview at the opening China Queer Film Talk screening.

The tour stopped in major cities, like Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Shanghai and Suzhou, offering many the opportunity to view films about queer culture in China in an open and safe environment.

Nov 20-22: 3rd Annual Lala Camp, Guilin, Guanxi

For Xu Bin, who helped organize the first Lala Camp held in Zhuhai in 2007, the camp was an effort to "get the next generation of young lesbian activists to share the same experience and to make connections for joint projects -- to do something to change Chinese community."

The first camp was so successful that the next year had the main camp in Shanghai, with four mini-camps in Beijing, Chengdu, Kunming and Anshan. It culminated in the establishment of the Chinese Lala Alliance, which organized this year's Lala Camp in Guilin.

The camp, which spanned two and half days of intensive training and lectures, gathered over 50 lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth organizers across the Chinese mainland, as well as Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the US. According to Xu, funding for the camps receives most of its funding from overseas Chinese women's foundations.

"We have three major overseas women's foundations: two in the US and one in Europe," she explained. "They have a history of supporting lesbian activities, and it looks like they are happy to support a fourth."

Dec 19: Gay bar opening sponsored by the government, Dali, Yunnan

For the first time, the government of the city of Dali, in Yunnan province, helped provide funding for a gay bar.

Scheduled to open on Dec 1, World AIDS day, Zhang Jianbo and local officials decided to postpone it until Dec 19 due to privacy concerns for volunteers and customers involved.

Zhang is the founder of the Dali HIV/AIDS Prevention and Health Center.

The bar received partial funding from the Dali health bureau and two local NGOs.

Its main function is to reach out to gay men, who are among the most at risk for HIV/AIDS.