Duan was moved by one scene in particular, in which the businessman brings his lover home for the Chinese New Year to share a customary hotpot meal with his family.
When he was 17, he watched “Lan Yu,” a 2001 Chinese film about a love affair between a male college student from northern China and a businessman in Beijing, based on a novel published online by an author known only as Beijing Comrade. Online, he stumbled into a world where he finally felt he belonged, a place where gay people like himself sought kinship and connection. Even in grade school, while his male classmates talked about girls, he nursed a secret crush on a boy, a gregarious, basketball-playing class monitor. Offline, Duan had known for a long time that he was different - and he knew no one else like him. Then he’d go to QQ, the new instant-messaging service and online forum, and type in the Chinese word for “homosexual” - tongzhi, or comrade. He would pick a desktop facing away from the wall so that nobody could look over his shoulder. After school, he would visit the newly opened internet cafe in his hometown, Xinzhou, a small city in Shanxi Province bounded by a veil of mountains. Like many gay Chinese growing up at the turn of the millennium, Duan Shuai began his long, deliberate process of coming out online.
