From closet to classroom in china.

By Howard W. French The New York Times

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2005
SHANGHAI As the class got under way, the diminutive teacher standing before an overcrowded lecture hall in this city's most exclusive university handed out a survey. The first of several multiple-choice questions asked students what their feelings would be if they encountered two male lovers: total acceptance, reluctant acceptance, rejection or disgust?

As a way of breaking the ice, the teacher, Sun Zhongxin, 35, with a doctorate in sociology and a fondness for PowerPoint presentations, read aloud some of the answers anonymously. Judging by her sample, most of the 120 or so students said they would reluctantly accept gay lovers in their midst.

The Fudan University class, Introduction to Gay and Lesbian Studies, is the first of its kind ever offered to Chinese undergraduates, and Sun briefly wondered why it was so well attended, before providing her own answer.

"The attitude toward homosexuality in China is changing," she said. "It is a good process, but it also makes us feel heavy-hearted. What's unfortunate about such heavy attendance is that it indicates that many people have never discussed the topic before. Not only are people hiding in the closet, but the topic itself has been hiding in the closet."

Among China's gay and lesbian population, which may be as large as 48 million by some estimates though it remains largely invisible, the new course is being portrayed as a major advance.

Less than a decade ago, homosexuality was still included under the heading of hooliganism in China's criminal code, and it was only in 2001 that the Chinese Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses.

"This is definitely a big breakthrough in the contemporary society, because for so many years, homosexuals, as a community, have lived at the edge of society and have been treated like dissidents," said Zhou Shengjian, director of a gay advocacy group in Chongqing, an inland city far from Shanghai's cosmopolitanism.

"For such a university to have a specific course like this, with so many participants and experts involved, will have a very positive impact on the social situation of gay people, and on the fight against AIDS."

However much they welcomed the academic breakthrough, which is likely to prompt similar courses on other campuses, many gay and lesbian activists in China say they are no longer willing simply to wait patiently for the society to accept them. In particular, gay activists have been able to leverage the rising alarm over the spread of AIDS to win more maneuvering space, including more acceptance from the government.

Currently, by some estimates, there are as many as 300 Web sites in China that cater to the concerns of gays and lesbians.

Some of the sites focus strictly on health issues. Others tread into the delicate area of discrimination and human rights, and these are occasionally blocked temporarily or shut down by the government.

Others feature downloadable fiction by gay writers, who deal candidly with matters of sexuality in ways that few publishers in China's tightly controlled book industry would allow. One of the most popular sites (www.gztz.org) includes detailed maps of gay entertainment areas, from saunas to nightclubs, in China and overseas.

"In each provincial capital there is at least one gay working group that is active on HIV-AIDS prevention," said Zhen Li, 40, a volunteer for a gay hot line based in Beijing. "AIDS is not the main focus of our lives, though. We use the discussion of AIDS as a way of coming together on other issues, from getting coverage of gay life in the media to starting a discussion with the society."

For the most part, activists say, the government's attitude has been pragmatic. Groups that say they want to work on AIDS get official support. Those that focus on equal rights for gay people generally do not.

In almost the same breath, though, many also acknowledge that their strategy of using AIDS to create greater freedom carries a risk that they will be blamed for the spread of the disease.

"This is a very sensitive issue among homosexuals, thinking that outsiders are equating them with AIDS," said Gao Yanning, a professor in the school of public health at Fudan University, whose course on homosexual life for the medical school was a precursor of the new undergraduate class.

"But we, the professors, have been very careful about this. When I was first thinking of a course called the theory and practice of homosexuality, I was approached by another professor who told me I should call the class 'Homosexuality and AIDS."'

Gao said he would have refused to teach the class if he had been forced to use such a name.

Many gay Chinese say that it is social conservatism more than the government, whose policies during the communist era have veered from repressive to prudish, that has discouraged gay people from publicly acknowledging their sexual orientation.

Chinese are hard pressed to name a single celebrity or notable person from their country who has lived an openly gay life, meaning that except for foreigners, young gay men and lesbians have no prominent role models. Explicitly gay literature or cinema and television roles are equally scarce.

A 52-year-old lesbian in the northeastern city of Dalian who gave her name as Yang said she had discovered her sexual identity only at age 36, after marriage, when she had her first relationship with another woman, a factory co-worker.

"When we were together, people would talk about our relationship behind our backs or sometimes ask outright whether we were gay people," Yang said. "I was just ashamed and didn't know what to say, so I avoided my girlfriend in public occasions. The young gay people in Dalian today, though, seem to live in a very comfortable time."

"They're not forced to get married," she said, "and they take new partners one after another."

Many others, however, said the issue of marriage continued to weigh heavily.

"If you tell your parents you have a boyfriend, that may be O.K., but you've still got to get married," said Wang Xieyu, a junior at Fudan University. "The parents have their own concerns, their friends and their reputations. China today is like the U.S. in the 1960s, but we are changing faster. What took 40 years in the States may only take 10 years in China."

NOTE: This class at Fudan is extremely packed all the time and overenrolled. I'm going to sit in eventually but am putting if off until the end of the semester, since I hope my chinese will be better then.

Better late than never.

I've been having a lot of anxiety towards my return home. Even though I'm only going to be back for less than a week it scares me. Well, I should be more specific really... I'm having a lot of anxiety towards returning to Berkeley.

Like... I don't want to see... people. I've noticed that the thought of running into people from the past scares the crap out of me. Even if they didn't really have any particular meaningful role in my demise, I still fear.

I tend to associate places with events. It's why I can never go back to Boston, really. The place reminds me of too many things that I want to forget. But Berkeley should be different. I spent almost four years of my life there and had many good memories among the bad ones.

I'm riding my bike through campus. It's beautiful weather here in Shanghai. Sunny. Cool. Breezy. Why am I so ready to throw this place away? And relationships with so many people who may not have even known what was going on inside my head?

I started thinking about what I'm doing in Shanghai... besides for occasional studying and working on my portfolio. I mean, what am I really doing in Shanghai. Did I come here to find myself, or did I come here to run away?

I remember once when I was six, my parents got into a fight. My mom walked out of our little apartment in North Hollywood, got into our one and only car... a broken down BMW, and drove away. She came back two days later and said nothing. Sometimes people leave for a short while when they know they have responsibilities. In this case: me. But then sometimes people leave for a while, and once they've past a certain time, they never come back. They stay away because they never came back to take care of that certain responsibility... and after a while they just think it's too late. The damage is done. (Which incidently is the way many of us think about walking into class 5 minutes late.)

I realized that I have a responsibility that I haven't taken care of yet. It's in Berkeley, but I can deal with it here. And well, even though you might think it... it's never too late.

I never forgave myself for what happened. For punishing myself everytime I met a boy who wouldn't love me back. For the night I spent wondering what the tiling would look like red. For giving in and giving up, I never did. But you can't forgive someone who never apologized. So I guess what I'm trying to say... is sorry.

I'm sorry I let it get so bad. I'm sorry for blaming myself for everything that went wrong. I'm sorry that I said I deserved it, and that I would never be happy. And I promise that in the future, I will take my feelings more into consideration.