The event's cancellation highlights suspicions about homosexuality in China, writes CLIFFORD COONANin Beijing
BEIJING’S LAN Club, conceived by French designer Philippe Starck, is a flamboyant lounge and restaurant where the glitterati of the Chinese capital meet and hang out.
Last week, however, it became a political flashpoint after Beijing police moved in to close China’s first gay pageant, Mr Gay China, saying the organisers did not have a licence for a planned floor show with a host in drag.
The organisers had hoped the pageant, featuring underwear contests and a freestyle talent display, would be a milestone heralding a change in Chinese society’s traditionally conservative attitude towards homosexuality.
Instead, it underlined the ongoing suspicion about homosexuality in China. Some old people, for instance, say it is a disease brought by foreigners.
It also highlighted China’s strong reaction to any event considered politically sensitive.
One of the contestants, who gave his name as Jay, lived abroad for seven years – five in Britain and two in Raheny, Dublin.
“I had no idea it would be stopped. There was a rehearsal the other day and they had set up the stage and everything. I don’t think it will happen again in the near future,” said Jay, who comes from Tianjin.
“People were very disappointed, especially the organisers and of course us contestants.”
Jay returned from Dublin a year ago. While living in Ireland he worked as an architect designing shopping centres.
Chinese police frequently use procedural reasons as an excuse to shut down events that the government might consider politically sensitive.
The Mr Gay China pageant attracted a lot of media attention, with plenty of coverage in the state-run media in the run-up to the event.
Sodomy was decriminalised in 1997, but homosexuality was classified by the Chinese government as a mental illness until 2001.
Gay activists are still regularly harassed by Chinese authorities, though Beijing and Shanghai have thriving gay scenes despite periodic police raids.
China, particularly its security forces, has occasional problems dealing with the radical social change that has accompanied the country’s startling economic rise.
As late as 2002, police shut down the Miss China pageant because they said the organisers did not have the right permission for the event.
The winner of Mr Gay China was supposed to represent China at a global event in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, next month, which has never before featured a mainland Chinese representative.
Contestants and audience members were disappointed, and said they did not think the event would be rescheduled.
“No reason was given, of course. They never give a reason for this, ever,” said one man who had arrived to attend the event but was disappointed to find it had been cancelled.
The forced cancellation took place as Germany’s openly gay foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, was visiting China.
Gay rights activist Xiao Gang, who was to have been one of the judges, described the shutdown as “heartbreaking”. He said there were homophobic elements in the decision to close down the pageant, which he insisted was not in any way political.
Gay men and women face powerful pressures because of social taboos, and also because China’s one-child policy makes parents push their only child to marry and have children.
Many gay men, for example, marry and have a child, but live active homosexual lives in secret.
In terms of assessing the progress of civil liberties in China, the timing of the event’s cancellation is significant. In recent months China has been stepping up a crackdown on freedom of expression, arresting dissidents and closing websites.
Last week, Google, the world’s most popular search engine, said it was considering quitting China after suffering a sophisticated cyber-attack
on its network that targeted rights activists.
Google said it was no longer willing to filter content on its Chinese-language google.cn.
The topic of homosexuality has been much in the news recently.
In December, China’s first government-backed gay bar opened, very discreetly, after the original scheduled launch was delayed for almost three weeks due to intense media attention.