For many gay men in China, family pressure is the biggest source of anxiety

It was just after midnight and a familiar early 80s disco beat was thumping beneath Adam Lambert’s version of Holding Out for a Hero as we pressed through a tightly packed crowd on the edge of the dance floor. Along a concrete corridor, a row of separate lounges catered to different tastes and tribes, with Harry Styles playing in the Bears’ room while groups were dancing in formation in the K Pop bar upstairs.

We were in Beijing’s oldest and biggest LGBTQ venue, which like the other huge clubs near the Workers Stadium, had been closed for much of the pandemic but was now as busy as ever. The club, which is open every night, also offers HIV advice and testing and hosts events and exhibitions aimed mostly at gay men, known in Chinese slang as tongzhi or comrades.

We had started the evening with a group of about 10 for dinner before going on to a cocktail bar around the corner that had an unusually elaborate entry system. When you go in from the street, there is a line of vending machines facing you, one of which is a door leading on to a corridor at the end of which is an elevator door which doubles as the entrance to the bar itself.

Inside, a couple of young women were smoking a sheesha pipe, eating takeaway food out of aluminium wrapping and drinking margaritas. Between them was a man with a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes, deep in sleep, while groups of mostly young men drank and chatted around him.

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China decriminalised homosexual acts in 1997, four years after Ireland, and the Chinese Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 2001

One of our party was pouring a bottle of gin and some tins of tonic into a samovar filled with ice, later turning the little tap at the bottom to serve large measures in small glasses. We talked about mahjong and whether it involved more luck or skill, a question that was debated with unexpected passion.

Some spoke of their plans for Wednesday’s holiday for Qingming or Tomb Sweeping Day, when families clean and decorate their ancestors’ graves. Most of those around our table were in their 30s and 40s and although more than half were in long-term relationships with other men, few were out to colleagues at work or to their families.

China decriminalised homosexual acts in 1997, four years after Ireland, and the Chinese Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 2001. Sexual orientation and gender identity are not explicitly protected by anti-discrimination laws and same-sex couples are not allowed to marry or to adopt children.

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One man in his 40s who lived in the United States for a number of years told me that he didn’t think so much about LGBTQ rights or identity now that he was back in China. “In the West, you think in categories but here everything is relational. I don’t have to think of myself as gay, I just think about being in love with someone. It’s not really about identity or rights,” he said.

Few people I have met complained about China’s lack of explicit LGBTQ rights but for those who do care, campaigning on the issue has become more risky in recent years. A number of the young people who were detained after last November’s protests against zero-Covid were LGBTQ rights activists and although the state does not usually police sexual behaviour, it does not tolerate unauthorised political activity.

Most of those in their 30s and 40s are only children and they make daily compromises as they try to sustain a long-term relationship with a same-sex partner without upsetting the parents who are increasingly dependent on them

Family pressure is the biggest source of anxiety for most of those I spoke to. One young man said he avoided going home for Chinese New Year because of his mother’s endless questions about why he hadn’t found a girlfriend. Another man who has lived with his partner for years told me he had to move out for the month of April because the other man’s parents had come to stay.

Most of those in their 30s and 40s are only children and they make daily compromises as they try to sustain a long-term relationship with a same-sex partner without upsetting the parents who are increasingly dependent on them. “So many of my friends have given up the chance of a better life in a bigger city and gave up on love to stay close to their parents who are getting older,” one man said.

For all the social and cultural differences, much of the atmosphere in the club was the same as every other such place in the world: the pulsing music, the premium on darkness, the endless wandering in circles.

And all along the corridor the most familiar sight of all as they stood one by one, leaning against the wall, looking straight ahead, hoping for something to happen but giving nothing away.