Jin Xing: From Army Colonel to Ballerina from Shannon Van Sant on Vimeo. more ›

Here's yet another prime example of how Taiwan is light years ahead of the rest of Asia: A court has ruled against an employee of a gay massage parlour who sued his boss for defamation after he used his image in an advertisement placed on a gay magazine. The judge's rationale? The assertion that someone's gay is no longer defamatory today. more ›

In a story that will surely enrage penguin fundamentalists everywhere, two gay penguins at the Harbin Polar Land have become adoptive parents. When a female penguin hatched twin chicks on November 28, the park staff decided to give one of the little guys to a gay penguin couple who, get this, are notorious for trying to steal eggs from the straight penguins! more ›

An uproar broke out earlier this week in the Canadian province of British Columbia when a brochure sent by the provincial government to business owners entitled "How to Market Your Business to China" warned against promotions involving gay tourism, casinos or gambling. more ›

A man named nicknamed Junjun was looking for work in Nanjing, and met a man surnamed Zhang at a job fair. After being offered a place to sleep, Zhang took advantage of Junjun's kindness and raped his host. A later confrontation with Zhang resulted in Junjun attacking him with a stick, and then subsequently being charged and convicted of committing willful and malicious injury. more ›

All the things you'd want to do this Monday through Thursday. On the schedule this week: Shanghai PRIDE is in full swing, Briccocafe turns three, some movies about Burning Man, and Shanghai Tag Heuer Jazz Week! Read on for details, or check out our calendar for more! more ›

Xinhua today trumpets a series of changes to the national code of conduct for prison inmates made by the Ministry of Justice in order to "show respect for the human rights of prison inmates". Among the changes: an end to the practise of forcing inmates to squat with both hands behind their heads, a lift on the ban on dyed hair (particularly among female inmates) and the use of execution by lethal injection to replace the firing squad (we'll still kill you but in a more humane fashion). more ›

Early April this year, in the middle of a performance at Q Bar, a newly opened gay bar south of the Bund, police from the Huangpu district burst in, turned the lights on, and took about 70 bar employees and patrons (save the foreigners) with them to the Xiaodongmen police station. more ›

Tencent, the Chinese Internet giant that is known for its instant messaging software QQ, has apologised for describing Apple's new CEO Tim Cook as a "sufferer of homosexuality" ("同性恋患者") in a recent article on its content portal. more ›

Club Angel, the gay club caught in the middle of a bureaucratic wrangling with district authorities over its licensing after 40 complaint letters were sent to various government bureaus, has decided to temporarily move its parties to Obama Club, the ginormous club not named after the President of the US of A. more ›

It's been barely a month since gay megaclub Angel opened its doors, and now they're already threatened with closure. more ›

In a tweet sent just hours ago, Lady Gaga celebrated the news of China's lifting of the ban on her album "Born This Way". To be honest, we weren't even aware that the album was banned here to begin with, but this should come as no surprise -- many other conservative countries have banned the album for its outright pro-gay content. Lady Gaga has just wrapped up a tour of Asia. Earlier this month, the city of Taichung, Taiwan declared July 3 "Lady Gaga Day".
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Gays and lesbians across China were left pleasantly stunned last evening by an unexpected report from national broadcaster CCTV which not only slammed award-winning actress Lü Liping (吕丽萍) for stoking homophobia, but also assured members of the LGBT community of their place in society. more ›

The Golden Horse Awards (金马奖), considered the Oscars of Chinese cinema, has broken with its 48-year tradition of inviting the previous year's winners to present the next year's awards by announcing its decision to rescind its invitation to Lü Liping (吕丽萍) to its 2011 event. more ›

If you remember PinkHome, the erstwhile institution in gay clubland, chances are you've been in Shanghai for a long long time. The masterminds behind the club are back after a long break, and they're back with a vengeance. Their latest venture comes in the form of Club Angel, located underground on the corner of Wulumuqi and Hengshan Roads. more ›

The dust has yet to settle over the furore ignited by award-winning actress Lü Liping (吕丽萍) when she enthusiastically shared several homophobic posts on Sina Weibo by a Chinese pastor in Rochester, NY, decrying the legalisation of same-sex marriage by the New York State Senate. more ›

Gay groups have called for members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in China to boycott movies by award-winning actress Lü Liping (吕丽萍) and her husband, director Sun Haiying (孙海英), after the former kicked up a maelstrom of debate on Sina Weibo for expressing support for the homophobic sentiments of a Chinese pastor in Rochester, New York decrying the legalisation of same-sex marriage by the New York State Senate. more ›

The 5th Beijing Queer Film Festival, China's first full-fledged LGBT film festival founded 10 years ago, has concluded but not before demands by officials to shut down the event sparked off yet another round of cat-and-mouse which gay community organisers in China are by now so used to. more ›

Interesting:

For reasons that remain somewhat unclear, the 2010 Gay Games - which were held in Cologne, Germany in July 2010 - have bizarre landed a place on Baidu’s top ten real-time search rankings. The renewed netizen interest in the event appears to be derived from fresh information that the Chinese media has uncovered concerning last year’s Chinese delegation, a group of eight open homosexuals who competed in the eighth quadrennial Gay Games in Cologne. more ›

The United Nations Human Rights Council has passed a historic resolution on human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity by a vote of 23 to 19 with three abstentions, in Geneva yesterday. more ›

Grindr, the gaydar-in-your-pocket mobile app that's taken the international gay community by storm is now back online in China after an extended period of being blocked by the Great Firewall. more ›

In an announcement made on the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO) on Tuesday, May 17, multiple LGBT advocacy groups, mostly based in Beijing, say they have decided to cancel their accounts on Douban, one of China's leading social networks, in protest against its alleged homophobic moderation policy. more ›

The views expressed by Professor Peng Xiaohui (彭晓辉) of the Central China Normal University at a lecture last Tuesday entitled “Sex and Interpersonal Relationships" has fired up a maelstrom of debate, among students present at the lecture and online. more ›

28 year old singer Li Na (厉娜), one of top five finalists in the 2006 Supergirls talent competition and now a successful recording artiste with a huge following, has now become the first mainland Chinese celebrity to make an "It Gets Better" video. more ›

While most of the party-goers detained in the raid of Q Bar, a new gay bar on the Bund, have already been released, the story has only just begun. more ›

Early this morning at around 1am, police raided Q Bar, a new gay bar on the Bund, and detained at least 50 patrons of the bar. more ›

It sure looks like guerilla tactics are becoming the favoured weapon of choice for gay activists around China (see here and here). Inspired by the Qianmen wedding that took place in Beijing in 2009, a gay couple and a lesbian couple recently hit the streets of Wuhan and got "married" for the world to see. more ›

"POLICE in central China said they had busted a gay pornography website and detained 32 young women, including a 17-year-old, who allegedly wrote gay fictions for the site. Police in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan Province, said they had detained the website owner and his contracted writers for spreading obscene materials, the local Orient Today reported today. Police said the site provided nearly 80,000 gay fictions, including 1,500 with illegal porn descriptions, to about 600,000 registered members. Some fictions were open only to VIP readers who paid fees via cell phone. Its owner surnamed Wang, 28, said most fictions were written by women in their 20s in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chongqing and other cities. Most writers said they were paid less than 100 yuan (US$15.23) for each short fiction and some hadn't received money yet. One writer, Long Juan, said she took the job out of "curiosity" because gay novels were quite popular online." [Shanghai Daily] more ›

Earlier this month, sexologist-sociologist Li Yinhe (李银河) announced on her blog that she would be making five proposals at the "Two Sessions" for: more ›

Two days ago, on Valentine's Day, ballsy gay and lesbian couples in Beijing decided to gatecrash a kissing competition held by the New World Shopping Mall (北京新世界百货) to raise the visibility of China's LGBT community and to drum up support for same-sex marriage. more ›