Pride Festival in Shanghai

Just recently, Shanghai played host to an event that came out (no pun intended!) of left field. Conservative and tradition-steeped China saw its first gay pride festival. Radio86 spoke with Hannah Miller, one of the organizers of the festival about this milestone in the Chinese LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community.

Radio86: How long had you been planning this event?

Miller: We decided to do it about six months ago and actually we started planning four months ago. But really we kind of kicked it into high gear just a few months ago.

How long have you been in Shanghai?

I first moved to Shanghai in 2002.

Were you part of the local gay-community in the States before you left?

Well, actually, I came out just when I moved to college, when I was 18. I was not so active in the gay-community in college. I was pretty busy playing sports and doing all those other things that lesbians like to do, you know. I was out with my friends and my family and a member of our college's gay-club, but that was as active as I was. And then, right after I graduated, I moved to China. So I've been here since right after my graduation.

When I first got to China I didn't really know how homosexuality was accepted or perceived. And the year I went to China was the year they took homosexuality off the list of mental diseases. So I moved here thinking that “Oh, at least I'm moving to a country where I'm not considered insane!” (laughs).

So that was a really big step, so I was interested in seeing how I would be perceived. I didn't become involved in the LGBT-community right away, I wanted to just learn a bit about the culture first. And by the time I moved to Shanghai it was a lot easier to get involved.

How open is the scene in China today? Can you walk down the street holding hands today?

I can't speak for other cities, because I've been in Shanghai for a while, but it's quite common to see especially girl-girl couples holding hands in the street, in the subways, on the bus. Yeah, you can definitely see it.

Is there a difference for men and for women?

Hannah Miller (Image: Grant Oh!, Magic Bus Creative)Well, in general, lesbians have a bit more acceptance publicly. And I think that is true all over the world, not just in China. Of course, coming out and being accepted in your family and community involves various struggles for everyone, but it seems that in society – especially a patriarchal society where masculinity and being the dominant leader of the family is valued – when a man rejects that masculinity and embraces his true nature as a gay person, it is seen as bit of a step down, relinquishing power or maybe embracing a more feminine life.

Whereas women, when they reject the femininity and embrace the masculine aspects of society. When they reject their heterosexual lives and by not conforming to that which is expected of them, you know “a good girl that gets married and has a baby” – that is something that is seen as empowering. So I think that that is something that makes it easier for lesbians to be accepted in public.

But you know, even with that it's not uncommon to see boys that are outwardly or at least visibly gay. You can definitely spot them everywhere.

How much information does the straight population have about gays, lesbians, bisexuals in China or in Shanghai?

I don't know, but I think that is starting to improve as well. Since China has such a traditional history... there's a “don't ask, don't tell”-type of policy here which keeps it from being an open discourse about sexuality. I think that in the future if there are more successful events like Shanghai Pride or we start to develop a more open discourse about it and the LGBT-community becomes more visible, then I hope that the straight community here will be able to embrace it as well. Like the gay community is doing it now.

How big is the Shanghai LGBT community today?

There are probably more than ten bars around that are pretty easy to find and welcome everyone. There are also a lot of community organisations that organize community events and sporting events, movie-nights and bar-nights. Shanghai LGBT, my group, is just one of those and there are lots of other groups that do lots of other things.

When I first moved to Shanghai it was harder to find because I didn't know where to look. But now that I've had a chance to live here and meet people... You know, everywhere you go you meet people that are in the gay-community or supportive of the gay-community and that has been a really nice transformation to see happen.

Could this have happened anywhere else in China than Shanghai today?

I think that Shanghai would definitely be the place for it to start. This festival did not happen overnight. Shanghai has been progressively building up its LGBT-community here. I think that if you went to a small town in “real” China and tried to start a pride festival that would be a big disaster. Shanghai has a really well-established community here, there has been gay-bars open for a long time. It's easier to go out and meet people now, they have a more visible presence in the media. I don't think we would have tried to organize this festival if we didn't feel that we had the support of the people around us. So it didn't happen overnight, at least the last decade has been building up to this.

During the festival itself, there were news reports that some events were rescheduled while others were closed down?

Shanghai hosted China's first gay pride festival. (Image: Charlie Xia, SmartShanghai)Yes, some were cancelled and some were rescheduled, that's true. And there was a lot of rearranging at the end so I can see how the details got jumbled a bit. So our original Wednesday night film screening was cancelled because the police came to the venue just a few hours before the event and we did not have time to reschedule that. So Wednesday night was the first event that got cancelled. Since the Friday night film screening was set to take place in the same venue and the venue didn't have the license to show the film, we thought Friday night's event would be cancelled as well. We ended up finding a venue that has the right to screen a film so we relocated Friday night's event. So Wednesday night's event was cancelled, Friday night's was relocated. The other event that was cancelled was the Friday night's play, “The Laramie Project.” They had a similar visit on Wednesday from the local authorities and were told they didn't have the right to perform.

Was it a coincidence that it was just these events that got shut down? Was there any content in those that were more alarming to the authorities than others you had planned?

Well, the first three nights of our festival were very successful. We started off the week with a film screening on Sunday that was fine. It was called “Queer China” and it was an excellent film. The next night we had a panel discussion and that was a success as well. So, it was frustrating to us that those events were allowed to go on and they were such a great success, and then Wednesday and Friday's events had trouble. That was obviously disappointing to us, but over all we made it through the week and Saturday was just a phenomenal day, so we were all really happy with that.

Do you expect it to be easier or more difficult to arrange the festival next year?

Well, I think it is going to be easier. We got a lot of really great feedback, particularly from one of the local publications here called the China Daily, which is a newspaper here. They wrote two really excellent editorials. And this is you know the voice of the government coming from China Daily. The two editorials they wrote really praised the festival and talked about how it is bringing power into the Chinese community and they called it “an event of profound significance.” And that really meant a lot to us, that was really exciting when we saw that. So, I'm optimistic about next year, I think it can be really great and we can reach a lot more people. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.

How do you feel about the future? Are you optimistic, seeing how the country has changed or opened only during the years since you came to China?

Definitely. I mean, the transformation I've seen since I first came to China in 2001 has been phenomenal. I never would have imagined that Shanghai would be able to have a gay pride festival. When I first moved here, like I said, there were only two gay bars in the city and they were hard to find. I didn't have any way of really getting in touch with the gay community, it was kind of very hard to see and not very visible. Now it's everywhere.

The entertainment media in town write about it. For example, I write a LGBT-night life column in one of the local magazines here. And we speak openly about the venues and the parties that we have. It's great! So I think there is a very big transformation here and that is really great news.

Some events had to be rescheduled after police visited certain venues. (Image: Grant Oh!, Magic Bus Creative)I think what's really the most important thing is for people who are living here – Chinese people, foreign people, anyone who lives in the Shanghai community – to have space around them where they feel safe to come out and make friends and feel supported. And we are definitely seeing that happen, so I'm very optimistic about the future.

This festival's success has left me with a very optimistic feeling about the state of gay people's lives and the LGBT-community in China. You know, there has been some upsets, we've had a little bit of trouble with the police, but it wasn't anything that shut us down. The news about the Green Dam blocking homosexual content online is also discouraging, but people who were there during the week at the events can just tell you there was such an air of excitement in the air and people were so excited to be there. I don't think that that's going anywhere. I think that is what is going to carry the gay movement forward in China.

So, when do you think there will actually be a parade down through the streets of Shanghai?

That's a great question, I have no idea!