Beijing’s homosexuals live in the shadows

Posted on August 22, 2008
Filed Under Gay News Blog

The Beijing Olympics have not changed anything for Benjamin Han. He is still gay, still single and still compelled to hide his orientation from public view.

The 28-year-old employee of a large international public relations firm is one of an estimated 5 million to 10 million gay men in China who live, for the most part, in the shadows.

Homosexuality has only been legal for 11 years in China. Although the Chinese Psychiatric Association took it off the list of psychiatric disorders in 2001, same-sex unions are still considered immoral by the authorities.

The modernization of Beijing in preparation for the Olympics actually made things worse for gays. Several gay clubs were bulldozed during the frenzy of street-widening and high-rise building during the run-up to the games.

“It’s probably more restricted in Beijing than in other cities in the country,” said Han, sitting in a fashionable bar near his home in east Beijing. “In general, it is still very much a taboo topic. You don’t talk about it at work, you don’t talk about it with your family. You only talk about it when the other person knows something about it already and you really trust them.”

The government-controlled media in China sometimes hints about the subject, but it is never openly discussed. Han said he knows several Chinese journalists through his work who have told him there have been written notices from the propaganda department telling them not to bring up the subject.

Han was born in suburban Guangzhou. He was an only child, which is standard in China, and both of his parents worked, so a nanny took him to school. He said his mother and father were not like most other Chinese parents, who make most decisions for their children.

“I was growing up on my own most of the time,” he said. “It is not that they didn’t care. It is that they just couldn’t understand what I was up to.”

He came to Beijing in 2000 to study English and American literature and culture at the Beijing Institute of Technology. He continued his studies for one year in the United Kingdom, which opened his eyes to a wider world.

“There is a degree of choice and freedom that does not exist here,” Han said. “It was more or less a surprise.” See Beijing’s homosexuals live in the shadows

San Francisco Chronicle, USA