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This is an Other Sheep website
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From: Felix Liew <felisefo@yahoo.com>
To: Stephen Parelli <sparelli2002@yahoo.com>; Jose Ortiz <bronzeprjo@hotmail.com>
Sent: Mon, May 31, 2010 9:45:03 AM
Subject: Re: Report on the Beijing LGBT Center

A Personal Visit to the LGBT Community of Beijing
By Felix of Southeast Asia

Dear Steve and Jose,

Visiting the LGBT Center of Being and Participating in Weekend Events:  
Openly gay author Xiaokie; Secretary General of IDAHO, Joe Bedos; Xu Bin,
Director of the LGBT Center

    One of the highlights of my Beijing tour has been the LGBT center. I attended
    their program at the center on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday afternoon's
    program was the launch of a gay novel written by openly gay author Xiaojie. I
    bought a copy for our GSMCC  (Good Samaritan Metropolitan Community
    Church, Malaysia) library. Every Saturday night is movie night and that
    evening they screened the film "A Single Man," after which they had an
    interesting discussion of the film. Sunday they had the Secretary General of
    the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO), Joel
    Bedos, to speak at the center. I understand that Joel was in town upon the
    invitation of the French Embassy to do an IDAHO event at the French Cultural
    Center on Saturday, and so he was invited as a special guest at the LGBT
    center on Sunday. The director Xu Bin, a dedicated lesbian activist proficient in
    English, was present to interpret. After Joel’s presentation, Bin reported on the
    events and activities of LGBT groups marking IDAHO around China. Photos
    and video clips were shared on the screen against the backdrop of the
    rainbow drapes covering the glass window on the 21st floor of an apartment
    block. Here’s a synopsis of the events just to give you an idea of gay activism
    in China.
 
Outreach in Beijing:  Making the LGBT community known to the general public

    At the weekend leading up to May 17, Bin's group did a series of events
    including the Mobile Rainbow campus outreach activity, in which a team of 17
    cyclists plus their families and others who took the buses (a total of over 30
    volunteers) cycled to seven colleges and universities in Beijing disseminating
    information about IDAHO and interacting with students. Only one university
    gave them official permission to do so, but they managed to enter six of them.
    At the seventh one, they were prevented by security from entering and did
    their work in a busy street next to the campus instead. May 16 was a Sunday
    and Bin led a team of 20 volunteers in a public outreach around the Houhai
    market area in Beijing. Four of the volunteers, two men and two women,
    dressed up in tiger costumes (as it is the year of the tiger) as a pair of same-
    sex couples acting up various intimate postures such as asking for the other’s
    hand in marriage. Friendly passersby were allowed to hug the tigers to show
    support for LGBT causes. Then the team circled the Houhai lake one round
    with a large rainbow flag, handing out LGBT materials to people they met
    along the way. Meanwhile, Queer Comrades, another Beijing LGBT awareness
    group, together with the British Embassy, co-organized the debut of QC’s short
    documentary The Story of Mr Gay China, which provided an in-depth look at
    the events leading up to the cancellation of China’s first gay beauty pageant in
    February 2010. Fridae.com has reported on this event earlier on. Queer
    Comrades had also screened Prayers for Bobby on May 21.
 
IDAHO events held in other cities around China

    Bin also reported on the IDAHO events held in other cities around China. As
    part of the Great Global Kiss-in, an official project of the Committee for IDAHO
    and Gays.com, Shanghai staged a kiss-in event on May 16. According to a
    report by Fridae.com, “Dozens of people – gay, straight, bisexual and
    transgender – gathered on a rooftop overlooking Shanghai's Bund waterfront
    on Sunday night” for the global kiss-in event to mark IDAHO. Some 60 cities
    around the world took part in this event, and Shanghai was the only Asian city
    to do so. Meanwhile, the city of Tianjin held a seminar for LGBT people.
    Nanning in Guangxi province saw a young lesbian group challenging the blood
    donation ban for gay people. In Xiamen of Fujian province, a university
    organization held a cycle tour along the coast handing out information
    brochures on sexual diversity and interacting with university students and the
    public on the beach. The majority of the participants were straight allies. The
    city of Zhangzhou in Fujian province also saw an LGBT group putting out a
    same-sex couple dressed up in tiger costumes lobbying for support of LGBTIQ
    people. Students wrote messages on the LGBTIQ board. Children loved the
    tigers and the mothers had no problem with LGBT people. A Guangzhou LGBT
    group held a graffiti activity in ten locations around the city. Volunteers went to
    work in the early hours of the morning spraying pro-LGBT slogans in public
    areas and leaving information brochures for the public to pick up. In 2006, the
    Zhongshan University of Guangzhou officially approved the founding of a
    Rainbow Society on campus, but revoked the permit this year. The society was
    forced to go underground. They have been operating openly on campus since
    2005, but this year they did it in a public park. Both teachers and students
    were involved in this year’s IDAHO event on May 20. They named it Gender
    Harmony Advocacy Day. A giant rainbow flag was laid on the park lawn. There
    they staged a variety of shows including drag. Ten cities around China and
    over a dozen groups held events to mark IDAHO this year. In a city in Jiangsu
    province without any LGBT organization, one gay volunteer made a May 17
    banner spelling out Love Regardless of Gender among other slogans.
 
Hello Comrade:  1000 smiles and messages of blessings from straight allies in
photos to be uploaded on blogsite http://tongyulala.org

    A lesbian group dubbed “Common Language” just launched the Hello
    Comrade (which refers to LGBT people in China) campaign running from May
    20 to June 20 to collect 1000 smiles and messages of blessings of straight
    allies in photos which will be uploaded on their blogsite (http://tongyulala.org)
    to express support and encouragement to the millions of LGBT people in
    China and to call for social tolerance. Another campaign organized by Les
    Webcast China which targets the global LGBT Chinese community will run from
    June 1 to 30 during the gay pride month. LGBT participants are invited to post
    their picture holding a paper spelling out their age, gender, sexual orientation,
    city, messages and wishes against the backdrop of well-known city landmarks
    around the world. Participants can go to http://blog.sina.com.
    cn/tongzhijiaoaoyue to post their photos.
 
    I came away from this program with a new respect for the LGBT activists in
    China. They are very courageous (and creative) in what they do given the
    sensitivity of the issues. In a country of some 50 million gays and lesbians, the
    majority of whom live closeted lives, their work is of paramount importance.
    The Beijing LGBT Center blogsite is http://blog.sina.com.cn/bjlgbtcenter. Their
    email is bjlgbt@gmail.com.   
 
A Christian LGBT Cell Group in Beijing

    I also met up with Darren, a Chinese Singaporean expat in Beijing, who leads a
    Christian fellowship cell group in the home of one of the members every other
    Sunday. They have about a dozen or so attending the cell group. Given that
    every welcoming church started as a small fellowship group, this is a good start
    for the LGBT people of faith in Beijing.
 

I'm leaving Beijing Friday for Hong Kong, and I’m already looking forward to more
opportunities to visit in the near future.

God bless China!

Felix
Reporting from Beijing, May 31, 2010
Visiting the LGBT Community of Beijing
Felix of Southeast Asia reports on his personal
visit to Beijing China  2010 May 31
You can email Felix of
Southeast Asia
at othersheepfelix@yahoo.com
Photo by
Steve Parelli
This webpage was built June 1, 2010, in the Bronx, NY,
and was published June 1, 2010.

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