Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
WHAT ARE THE BEST PLACES IN THE CITY TO MEET OTHER GAY PEOPLE AND
HANG OUT?
Support group: The LGBT center ( www.bjlgbtcenter.org ) is a great, open-minded
place to meet gay people. You can also contact them for gay-related issues or ques-
tions you might have. There will always be someone there to listen to you.
Bars and clubs: Mesh is a lounge bar located in the Opposite House hotel and has
a weekly gay night (on Thursdays). It's a great place to have a drink with friends and
meet new people. Destination is considered the 7/7 party temple for gays in Beijing.
Its smaller counterpart, Alfa, has gay party nights only on Friday. Finally, Kai Bar is
one of those dance bars that turned gay, just because lots of gays started to frequent
it.
These few venues are the staples of Beijing gay life nowadays. Other bars come
and go, so keep your eyes and ears open. Because of the two scenes in the gay com-
munity that I mentioned earlier, these are the only venues that have willingly put
themselves on the expat radar, so currently the list seems rather short.
Religion
A common complaint in Beijing today is that China has become an ethical vacuum, a coun-
try without a religious or moral compass, guided instead by greed and financial targets. St-
ories of crime, corruption, and loss of humanity fill the newspaper pages and provide fuel
for explosive cyber rants. It's rare to hear people in Beijing talk about religion at all, and the
only time most locals visit temples is during national festivals or when traveling to tourist
spots. There is next to no discussion about the afterlife, but rather of how to have a more
affluent here and now.
Religion began its downward spiral in China in the early 1900s, and then when the Cul-
tural Revolution rolled through 1966-1976, it was all but obliterated. Places of worship
were demolished, ransacked, or sequestered for secular purposes, and Communism, an
ideology essentially opposed to religion, became the philosophy by which to live. Since the
country's opening up in the 1970s, the Communist Party has relaxed the laws surrounding
religion in society. Article 36 of the constitution even goes so far as to state that “Citizens
of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief.” The article's entire
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