Beijing Zhongze Women's Legal Counseling and Service Center

Guo Jianmei

Beijing Zhongze Women's Legal Counseling and Service Center

Location: Beijing, China

Opened: 1995

Closed: 2016

From Shanhaiist:

Chinese authorities have ordered a leading women's legal aid center in Beijing to close down, shocking the country's legal rights advocates.

Beijing Zhongze Women's Legal Counseling and Service Center was established following the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing which took place in 1995. It was during a time when China was struggling for international acceptance after the events of Tiananmen Square a few years previously.

Led by Chinese lawyer and human rights activist Guo Jianmei, the center began its life at Peking University before it later moved to an apartment in northern Beijing.

"It looks like they are trying to crush all people with any influence, as far as well-known people go today, it's ‘kill one and scare 100’ to make sure no one else tries to do anything," said an anonymous source connected to the center. "Controls on thought and speech are intensifying. The repression of lawyers and NGOs is growing.” said a longtime woman's rights campaigner who requested anonymity."

The order comes just months after China expressed its support for women's rights at the United Nation conference in New York, with Xi Jinping's wife delivering a speech in English on women's rights that attracted considerable attention.

Ironically, gender equality is official Chinese government policy. Last September, China's State Council released a white paper titled “Gender Equality and Women’s Development in China,” which outlined the importance of using social resources to promote the status of women.

One might say that a center providing legal aid to female victims of domestic violence and helps resolve disputes over child custody, land rights and employment would be seen as important in achieving that aim.

Despite Guo deliberately avoiding sensitive cases for fear of offending the authorities, the government has still decided to take action and crack down on civil society.

By Kitty Lai

Beijing Lesbian Center

Beijing Chauyang District

Beijing Lesbian Center

Location: Beijing City Chaoyang district Sihui East Heng Shidai Building No. 3, 28th floor, Apartment no. 8

Opened/Closed: c. 2012

Perhaps the best description of the Beijing Lesbian Center is from a 2012 article at City Weekend. Notice that despite the name, the Beijing Lesbian Center wasn't exclusively lesbian at all, which is pretty typical of the confusing, co-opted times we live in. (How ironic that the gay men and/or trans people take over the women's restrooms in gay bars, so women can't use them. And then women can't even keep a "Lesbian Center" women-only.)

Here it is reported that the Beijing Lesbian Center is now closed.

La La Love: Hanging out at Beijing's Lesbian Center

by evacohen - Wed, Apr 11, 2012 08:16 AM GMT

“This is gay night, are you gay” This comes from inside a stall at [Alfa) where men have taken over the ladies’ washroom and are refusing to give up the space to women who need to use the facilities. Instead, they partner up in the stalls, shouting at the women that “only gay people” should be at Alfa on a Friday. The bar is teeming with Chinese men and a few expat boys, while a small group of girls huddle together on the second floor in the smoky haze. Sometimes it seems the gay scene in Beijing is really just for men. But is it? Language barriers and financial struggles make the growth of lesbian life in Beijing slower than volunteers and staff members at Beijing’s many gay groups and organizations would like, but a closer look reveals a vibrant community.

Beijing's Vibrant Lesbian Scene

At the Lesbian Center in Sihui—formerly known as Lala Salon—is volunteer Carina Rother. While it mainly serves as a hang out place for lesbians, what is most amazing about it, Rother says, is its diversity, with monthly meetings for transgender persons, middle-aged lesbians, and a night for lesbian mothers and mothers of lesbian daughters. “The program is quickly evolving,” she says. “There are new volunteers, ideas and interest groups every week.”
 

Carina Rother

While there are still many challenges to the future of the center and the community it serves, “the worst problem is definitely the money,” she says. The center’s five board members pay the rent themselves, with some help from the ¥25 fee for activities. But financial burden makes an uncertain future. Networking is another problem. The center lacks foreign NGO contacts, and because they use Weibo and QQ, it’s difficult for non-Chinese speakers to find them. Language issues also present difficulties for expat women looking to join local lesbian culture. Tongyu, a lesbian group whose name translates as “common language,” put on a well-attended play in Beijing last month, but, as the performance was in Chinese, foreign faces in the audience were few. Tongyu is involved in a variety of activities, but most are solidly aimed at the Chinese-speaking set, such as co-hosted Saturday afternoon salon for Chinese-speaking lesbians at J Bar, with a discussion or lecture. Tongyu also runs a hotline (132-4038-4246) and teams with [Aibai] to provide legal and health information to the queer community and to increase support for gay rights among the general public. English-speakers can find support through [BGLAD] (Beijing Gay, Lesbian and Allies Discussion), a Yahoo group.

Bringing Expats and Locals Together

Messages for Meeting Up In a quest to bring foreign and Chinese lalas together, a volunteer at the LGBT Center says they, in collaboration with the Lesbian Center, are planning an “international la la meeting” in the near future. She points out that on BGLAD, she will tag it as a “party” so people actually go. A number of lesbian-oriented groups have moved to the same building as the LGBT Center in Liufang, she says, and she believes it is a good idea to “pool resources, and, more importantly, to build a real physical sense of ‘community.’” Though there is a stereotype that lesbians are quick to settle down after meeting a new love, leading to a lack of a party crowd to support regular lesbian nights around the city, this isn’t necessarily the case, says Stephen Leonelli, program manager at the Beijing [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) Center. Chinese lesbian magazine Les Plus’s occasional fundraising events are a place for la las to let loose, he says. “And those girls really know how to party.”

Love, Marriage and a Supportive Community
The community also often gathers for non-party events, such as trips just for girls up to 798 or potluck dinners. Those interested in stepping out of the party scene to meet up can check out. While being gay in China is still not as socially accepted as it could be, those involved with the capital’s gay and lesbian centers say they don’t experience any organized or blatant opposition, an atmosphere that allows women to come to Beijing and feel free to be themselves. With several groups in operation and the drive to create a larger and stronger community, volunteers and members are optimistic about the future of Beijing’s la la scene.


Feng Bar (Maple Bar)

Feng Bar

Feng Bar (Maple Bar)

Location: Gongti Nan Lu & Sanlitun Nan Lu (Sanlitun area), Beijing (Municipality), China

Founded: In 2000--regularly identified as one of Beijing's oldest lesbian bars

Closed: Late 2008?

Frommer's Guide to Gay and Lesbian Clubs in China (or Rainbow Sexuality Under the Red Flag) generally has a lot of enthusiastic things to say about gay male life in Beijing. As for lesbian life? Not so much.

For lesbians, the scene is slightly grimmer. Women perceived as homosexual are often subject to harassment. In the context of Chinese patriarchy, lesbianism has never received much attention. Outside a brief appearance in the Chinese classic Dream of the Red Mansion, it is invisible in literature, and the pressures of China's skewed gender ratio -- an excess of boys brought on by age-old prejudices in response to the one-child policy -- has made many single Chinese men resentful of any reduction in the pool of potential wives.

Aside from Thursday nights at Destination, try the Feng Bar, just east of the south gate of the Worker's Stadium, on Saturday nights. As the scene is still developing, try connecting online, through Beijing's Other Attractions (www.boaevents.com), or more general websites for lesbians in Asia, such as www.fridae.com or http://www.utopia-asia.com/.

As TENG Jigru has noted, "lesbian space" really didn't exist in Beijing till the first half of the 1990s. She credits the 1995 Beijing World Conference on Women as providing the first time that Beijing lesbians appeared within a public forum as lesbians and made their presence known. But after that, lesbians were stuck with temporary and informal spaces within restaurants and shopping malls, or a "small and marginal space" within the gay men's bars--where lesbians were outnumbered nearly 10 to 1:

In 2000, a former lesbian singer Qiaoqiao decided to do something to change the situation. She built the first lesbian bar of China in Beijing, named Maple Bar, with its service exclusively for lesbians in Saturday evening.

(It should be noted, however, that there is at least one claim for an earlier lesbian bar in Beijing called "Diqiu" (earth bar)--at least according to one lesbian's recollections.)

Back in 2007, the owner of Feng Bar, Qiaoqiao, also made history by appearing as a guest on the first interactive online program about the life of homosexuals in China, Tong Xing Xianglian (Binding Homosexuals Together) on Phoenixtv.com. Quiaquiao is also described as "the first lesbian singer to have exposed her identity." In addition, we're told that "Feng is very famous among lesbians in China, especially among actresses and female singers."

There was a political price to pay for such openness. Apparently, Feng Bar was subjected to a lot of official harassment over the years. As one Chinese lesbian, Mei Bin, recalled back in June 2005,

Feng bar was the major hot spot for lalas until a few months ago, when it was closed by the police. I don't know why. The bars here are closely connected to the police. The owner has to know how to handle them. Maybe the shows were the problem, because there were often transsexuals performing there, as well as gays.

Lala is a slang term used by Chinese lesbians to describe themselves. It seems that Feng bar later reopened, as here's a January 2008 review of Feng Bar by lisa M:

Ahh Feng Bar (aka Pipes Bar)...what can I say about you?

All lesbian, every Saturday night for many years - Feng Bar is one of, if not THE longest running weekly lesbian bar in Beijing...

Frequented primarily by those lalas (Chinese slang for lesbian) on the younger side of 30, Feng Bar provides a girl-girl loving friendly night out in the heart of Sanlitun.

The dance floor is tiny, the drinks are not fabulous (35rmb for a mixed drink of questionable alcoholic content and quality), the music is downright appalling (think the same CD for 2 years and counting), BUT - its one of the only places where you can find 50-100+ lesbians every Saturday night in Beijing.

Be sure to get there early, the place tends to fill up around 9-10pm, and starts to empty out by midnight....

Most Saturdays feature some form of performance by a nubile young woman gyrating around in something skimpy - always a winner with the ladies of Pipes...certainly makes the 30rmb entry fee (50rmb for men) all the more worth it ;)

Those the the male species are not exactly unwelcome at Feng Bar (unless you happen to be a gay man - and even then preferably escorted by your lesbian sisters), but men as a general rule are not greeted with open arms...

Not that we have anything against men...its just a matter of having a women and lesbian friendly safe and secure place to be ourselves...

The majority of Chinese lesbians are not out to many people (if any) - Feng Bar provides a wonderful place to be "out" as a lesbian (if only for one night) - sometimes its nice to have a place to call your own...minus all those lovely gay-friendly supporters...

Will add more intel to this soon...stay tuned for my guide to the fascinating world of the T and the P...which are you?

For the uninitiated, "T" stands for "tomboy" (butch women) while "P" stands for "po" (femme or wife). Women who don't fit the T/Po stereotype are known as bu fen (not divided).

By December 2009, there were reports that Feng Bar had closed "last year"--apparently for good.  Presumably the reason was that it was being run in a way that was "too old" (maybe it was that ancient music?) and that it wouldn't change with the times.