Shanghai Returns With China's Second Gay Pride Celebration
PUBLISHED: OCTOBER 10, 2010
Mainland China's first large-scale Gay Pride celebration, Shanghai Pride,
had a shaky debut last year, but this year organizers promise a bigger
and longer festival.
Several of last year's events were canceled at the prompting of officials.
A screening of the lesbian-themed film Lost in You and a staging of
The Laramie Project were forced to close. The play reconstructs the
gruesome 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, the University of Wyoming
student beaten, shackled to a post and left to die in a field by two men
he had met in a gay bar.
Other events – art exhibits, food events and panel discussions – went off
without a hitch.
take place over 3 weeks. The festival gets started on October 16 with its
official party. Added this year is a queer film festival that will take place
over 5 days.
Twenty-eight-year-old Shanghai Pride spokesman Kenneth Tan told
Time Out Shanghai that the Internet has fostered the burgeoning gay
community in conservative China.
“Pride took so long to get here because everyone was still in the closet,
but the Internet has changed all of that,” he said. “A certain 'ecosystem'
has to develop before the elements are in place for Pride to happen.
This process took a while here in China.”
BY ON TOP MAGAZINE STAFF
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