Monday, April 9, 2007

China's first gay TV show premieres online

At the risk of appearing as though we are once again fellating the "gay agenda", we thought we'd point out the interesting news announced Thursday that China aired its first program about gay and lesbian issues ... online. The show is called 同性相连 in Chinese and Gay Connections in English (although the Chinese press release calls the program Connecting Homosexual People) and it premiered its first episode of a 12-part weekly series on April 5 at 3 pm.

The producer of the show, Gang Gang (刚刚), claims it is the first Chinese first show of its kind to focus on gay issues and the first with an openly homosexual host. The program is hosted by AIDS activist Didier Zheng, of the Chi Heng foundation (pictured left, with Gang Gang on the right). It appears that the makers of the show, purposely chose to air the program online rather than face the possibility of being censored on broadcast TV.

The show debuted on Hong Kong-based Phoenix Television's website featuring an interview with Qiao Qiao (乔乔), the lesbian singer of the song "爱不分" or "Love Doesn't Discriminate". She is also the owner of Beijing's oldest lesbian bar, called "Pipe".
To the extent of Shanghaiist's knowledge, the program is not archived and can only be viewed at its designated timeslot of Thursdays at 3 pm. For more information, check out the homepage of Gay Connections (in Chinese).

Source: Shanghaiist

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