The past 20 years have seen increasing research interest in issues of gender and sexuality in China. I’m here to take a tour of its gay scene and 29-year-old Ah Tao is my guide. With a population of about 198,000 Jiaji is a small city. I turn around to find Ah Tao* hurrying towards me, scrambling over a low hedge. I’m standing in a park watching middle aged women dance in formation to music blaring from a loudspeaker when a voice from behind me shouts: “Ah Kang! Let’s go! I’ll take you to see the place where the gays go to play mahjong.”
It’s around 7:30pm on a warm November evening in Jiaji, the county capital of Qionghai, on the east coast of Hainan, an island province of the People’s Republic of China.
