Source: BBC News, London Telegraph, Shanghaist, DPA via Monsters & Critics 
After publicity about a low-key gay pride week in Shanghai, officials have warned the owners of two venues planning to hold a play and a film screening they would face “severe consequences” if they went ahead, BBC reports.

The weeklong series of events was designed to be held mostly out of the public eye, without a parade or festival in a public square. But a front-page article in the state-run China Daily that discussed the event might have been too much for officials

Ironically, the story and an an editorial in China Daily that ran the day before the apparent crackdown highlighted the tolerance of a city like Shanghai. It said Shanghai had proved itself “one of the most open and progressive Chinese cities” with its “increasingly active gay and lesbian community” and the festival.

The newspaper called the event a “good showcase of the country's social progress alongside the three decades of economic boom”, according to DPA

The editorial seemed to represent a shift towards a more tolerant attitude, BBC’s Chris Hogg writes from Beijing.

Chinese officials shut down parts of Shanghai Pride schedule [contd.]

The Telegraph’s foreign correspondent, Malcolm Moore, explains:

Homosexuality isn’t particularly repressed in China, but nor is it widely recognized. There are plenty of gay bars and clubs, but at the same time, most gay men remain in the closet and a large proportion bow to family pressure and take wives.

In that context, the fulsome praise from the country’s official newspaper surprised many.

“In the last decade, gay and lesbian organizations, websites, blogs and bars, teahouses and clubs have mushroomed, catering to an estimated 30 to 40 million homosexuals on the Chinese mainland,” China Daily reported in the front page story.

The newspaper said, “Shanghai Pride 2009 should be a source of great encouragement to the tens of millions of ‘comrades,’ as homosexual men and women are called in the Chinese mainland,” according to DPA.

Tiffany Lemay, one of the organizers of the Shanghai Pride event, told Moore of the Telegraph that attendance at events during the first two days had come from an even split of foreigners and native Chinese.

She said:

“We've been very pleased with the turnout so far because we're drawing people we would not have reached out to otherwise. At both the film screening on our opening night as well as the panel discussion on Tuesday we’ve had standing room only and we noted with interest the presence of several elderly Chinese men.”

Lemay told Smith that there had been one prior attempt to hold an LGBT Pride event in China, but she said the venues for festival in Beijing in 2005 had been raided by police.

She said organizers of this year’s event in Shanghai had been keenly aware of that history, but determined to go ahead with the festival in Shanghai. “This time around when we floated the idea to different sectors of the community, we found that people were actually very open to the idea and so we went with it,” Lemay said.

But shortly after Lemay talked to the Telegraph, officials in Shanghai were visiting businesses that planned to hold events as part of Pride Week and ordering them to cancel.

The BBC’s Hogg reports that festival organizers are “confused and frustrated” by the turn. “They do not know what is going on, and calls to the officials involved have gone unanswered,” Hogg reports.

Things had been going well for the festival up to now. For a panel discussion that was the highlight of the festival’s third day, about 150 people packed into an ornate ballroom to hear two history professors relate the stories of gay spaces in old Shanghai, Shanghaist reports.

Until the 1980s, those spaces included bathhouses, bars, and even some areas of public walkways. Prof. Wei Wei from East China Normal University told the crowd, according to Shanghaist:

Up until the 1980s there were more pure venues for gay people. People met, everybody was polite and gentle. Now we are missing these places. Meeting today is internet based, which means that seeing the person for the first time might be awfully shocking. We miss old times.

BBC’s Hogg reports that it wasn’t yet clear on Wednesday what the apparent crackdown might mean. He reports:

It could be that this is more the result of the authorities' nervousness about public events they do not control than about the official attitude to homosexuality.

But it shows how, in this country, any effort to advance the rights of a group in society is viewed with suspicion and sometimes alarm.

The festival's organizers face an anxious wait to see if their remaining events will be allowed to go ahead.

Source: China bans parts of gay festival | BBC News
China opens up: Gay Pride hits Shanghai | Telegraph (London)
Shanghai Pride Panel: Gay venues and spaces in Shanghai | Shanghaist
State media hail China's largest "gay pride" event | Monsters & Critics (DPA)

gay pride, country_china, area_asia