Resourceful? Convenient? ‘Smart Lies’ in the LGBT Chinese Community? How people are finding partners for Contract Marriages

Being gay in China is not easy. Powerful pressure from traditional Confucian ethics in society and from parents expect all young people to have children to carry on the family line. Faced with this dilemma, homosexual people in China are resorting to a resourceful solution: gays and lesbians  are marrying each other.

Photo: danlan.org

Being gay is not easy in China, especially when facing powerful pressure from parents and society, to marry and to produce an heir for their families. It has been three decades since the introduction of the open and reform policy programs, which have led to widespread transformations in China. Social attitudes towards homosexuality have become more tolerant since the mid-1990s but some stigma still prevails. In fact homosexuality was decriminalized in 1997, and only in 2001 was it removed from the National Health Ministry’s list of mental illnesses.

It is especially difficult for gay men to come out to their families in China as the traditional beliefs about the importance and responsibility of a man to carry on the family bloodlines die hard. A couple made of two opposite gender people is still the only unit acceptable by  society. Traditional Confucian ethics dictate sons and daughters produce children, especially when they are of marrying age in current China. This pressure on children has intensified due to the one child policy. Professor Zhang Beichuan, a famous sexologies at the Affiliated Hospital in Qingdao University in Shandong Province in east China, estimates that 80% of gay men in China choose to marry women because of pressure from society and their parents. Zhang’s research also counts the total  gay and lesbian population in China between 17 and 30 million, with 18 to 20 million gays and 9 to 10 million lesbians.

The phenomenon created by gay people choosing to marry straight people  is called Tongqi and Tongfu (homowives and homohusbands). These relationships can lead to tragedies such as deception, emotional violence and the transmission of HIV.

Now a more resourceful way to address this problem has been created — gay men and lesbians decide to marry each other. It is not just that gay men and lesbians marry each other to create a formal union to conform with the pressure to marry from both society and their families. The relationship is premised on a nonsexual partnership and intended to maintain both parents’ economic, physical, and personal independence in the guise of a husband and wife relationship.

How are people finding each other to create these relationships? Here are some ways for Chinese gay men and lesbians to find a “fake” partner and to create a contract marriage.

Professional Websites

There are some professional websites in China that help gay men and lesbians meet each other for matrimonial purposes. Among them, chinagayles.com 中国形式婚姻网, gayleshome.com 形式婚姻网 and ltsol.com 中国形婚网 are the three biggest. The website chinagayles.com is the earliest and biggest among these professional websites.  As of December 17, 2015 it had created 46972 contract couples and had 391441 members according to claims on their front page. This website was founded in 2005 and has been reported on by Lianhe Zaobao in Singapore, The Economist and The Atlantic. They cooperate with NGOs so that they have better access to reach thousands homosexuals in China. They provide services to help gay people find partners to create both contract marriages and non-sexual marriages with professional consultant teams, which provide professional legal and life help in order to avoid legal and domestic disputes. First, the user as an individual needs to register as a member, then upload personal information, including birth of date, height, weight, working area and monthly income, hobbies, hometowns and working cities, and very Chinese personal details, zodiac signs. Then, the will of having children needs to be distinguished. Some users claim that they want children, while some emphasize that they only seek for cohabitation without any sexual contact. An appropriate portrait photo is also needed. Afterwards, users can start selecting members they are interested in, or just wait for others to contact. As stated on their website, “by sincerely helping each other,” the website promotes you to pursue your freedom and happiness.

 

Photo: Chinagayles.com

Forums in General SNSs

People can also connect on general  Social Network Sites(SSNs on Chinese websites, some special BBSs or forums also provide the platform for gay men and lesbians to meet each other for matrimonial purposes with the keyword of “Xinghun” (contract marriage). Baidu Tieba, the largest Chinese communication platform provided by the Chinese searching engine company Baidu, has a “ba” (forum) created under the name Xinghun’. Users can publish posts in the forum and other users can comment. By December 17, 2015, it has 40075 members and 514857 posts. Another Chinese SNS, Douban, a website where people can comment and share movie and book reviews, provides forum function where people can create forums for different themes. Users publish posts in the forum, others can comment or directly send private mails to each other through the website’s mail functions. By December 17, 2015, there were 54 forums in Douban with the keyword “Xinghun”, the biggest one with 12518 members. Furthermore, compared with other websites, forums are special in Douban because many are localized for a certain areas within China, for example, there are “Xinghun” forums for Chengdu city, Shenyang city, Shanghai city, almost all major cities in China, and also for North America and Australia.

Photo: Sunflower LGBT Hangzhou

 

Local LGBT NGOs

There are NGOs in different provinces and cities in China that help local LGBT (Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgenders) groups deal with issues. Local LGBT NGOs in China hold “Xinghun” blind-dating activities for gays and lesbians to meet each other, and also provide some legal and psychological assistance for people who are seeking contract marriages. There are many local LGBT NGOs across China: for example, on October 10, 2012, the Sunflower LGBT Hangzhou held an activity at the China Academy of Art, with some professions in the “Xinghun” area. Similar activities also have been conducted in other cities by local LGBT NGOs like SAL in Shenzhen, Yunnan Parallel in Kunming.

Both the Internet and NGOs are helping gay people with contract marriages, however, still many of gay people who plan to create contract marriages are introduced to each other by friends. After having successfully created a contract marriage, individuals and couples still face various problems like economics, children and disguise. For some gay people, contract marriage is a resourceful and convenient way  to avoid the pressure from society and parents and allows them to enjoy their real lives with their own true partners. However, the day when the LGBT community doesn’t need to hide and they have the freedom to marry their own same-sex partners is still dream of the future. 


Chuyan Qiu is a Master student at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo.

By Chuyan Qiu
Published Apr. 20, 2016 10:26 AM - Last modified Jan. 7, 2021 11:58 AM