'We don't want to shut them in the closet where no one can see them,' says Piao, an effervescent 54-year-old who works for a Shanghai cosmetics equipment company.
Piao and her fellow volunteers bridge the generation gap. But a new generation is more willing to take a stand on their sexuality, despite what their relatives may think. When Piao Chunmei's son told her he was gay, she reacted the way many Chinese parents do, sleepless and crying for days due to the lingering shame of same sex relationships in China.īut she eventually accepted her son and is now part of an expanding network of gays and their parents who help other families cope with the stress of coming out in a country which until 2001 classified homosexuality as a mental illness.ĭeep-seated cultural expectations for each generation to produce a male heir - heightened by China's 'one-child policy,' which expanded to two in 2015 - added to the pressure to conform.
