ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the development of queer community media in the People’s Republic of China from the 1990s to the present. Focusing on different types of community media – in particular, those prior to digital forms of mediation, such as leaflets, pagers, telephone hotlines, and zines – it highlights some key features underpinning queer community media, including identity, participation, and democracy. In the first two decades of the post-Mao and postsocialist period, homosexuality was seen as a criminal offense for a long time. Homosexuality is often seen as a Western import and thus incompatible with traditional Chinese values. One of the earliest known forms of queer community media are print publications such as leaflets, distributed by hand among small groups of queer people. Leaflets and letters together with gay and lesbian parties and meet-ups held in commercial bars and private homes, connected gay and lesbian individuals, but distance and location still mattered significantly to this form of communication.
