Gay men margal provc like Haan are claimg spac and buildg muni their own secret worlds.
Contents:
GAY CHA
* china gay boys *
I’ll take you to see the place where the gays go to play mahjong. I’m here to take a tour of s gay scene and 29-year-old Ah Tao is my gui. There has been some excellent rearch to the emergence of gay and lbian inti Cha, cludg how the have been shaped by ro-Amerin ias of “gay sensibily” and characterised by “dividualy, difference, sophistitn, liberatn and morny”.
One 2018 study tailed gay bars Shanghai that rivalled those of any wtern pal, the anisatn of “pri” events and the tense ntexts which “queer” film ftivals and wir cultural productn and activism occur the face of ntued regulatn by the thorarian state. Back 2009-10, I spent 12 months studyg Mandar Che Haan and ma iends lol gay muni. Inspired by those experienc, for the past eight years, I have been rryg out rearch wh gay men the regn and, 2018, pleted a PhD this explorg gay liv Haan.
CHA’S TOP 10 GAYT CI
I wanted to fd out how gay liv are lived on the margs of global LGBT polics and activism, away om ci imaged as smopolan centr of morny.
My rearch explor how gay men Haan unrstand themselv, build muni and negotiate the prsur to nform to the heterosexual life script of marriage and reproductn.
I looked to how gay liv are figured out everyday teractns, how they are shaped by the spac which they unfold and how this plays out over time. Hidn gay spac. “When we get there, don’t say any gay stuff, ” Ah Tao warns me as we approach a shop the cut-out rner of a buildg at an tersectn wh an even narrower alley.