Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the queer community media within the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. It traces an ‘archaeology’ of queer community media in the PRC from the 1990s: leaflets, zines, pagers, telephone hotlines, websites, and gay dating apps. The book then proposes a critical concept – the ‘queer generation’ by grouping together several Chinese queer filmmakers and their filmmaking practices. It also focuses on two instances of queer community efforts to document China’s gay and lesbian histories, represented by Cui Zi’en’s 2008 documentary Queer China, ‘Comrade’ China as well as Zhao Jing and Shi Tou’s 2015 documentary We Are Here. The book focuses on The Lucky One, a 2011 film about the last few days of a woman who lived with HIV/AIDS made in a participatory approach.