Honest Omissions – looking beyond the gay-eye: Gay Guy Goes Gay China

Gay China

I had the chance to
visit three gay venues while in Beijing, I also discovered how people keep in
contact. It is worth downloading and accessing a couple of social applications
for China; grindr, jack’d, and WeChat. The most popular gay chat device is
definitely Jack’d. These weren’t limited to access through a VPN either.

What’s important to
note, is that most of the Chinese live outside the central centre to Beijing,
but there are a couple of gay venues worth visiting:

Destination

7 Gongti Xi Lu

Subway – Dong
SiShiTaio

Next to walkers
Stadium, past Asia Hotel

Great on Friday and
Saturday. It has 1 dance floor – where everyone faces the DJ booth and Pole
Dance Station, very weird, and has a further 7 bars and several chill out rooms
that are well air conditioned.

Check out Bear Bar
– with Teddy Bears – intended for their own Chinese variety of gay men bears.

The entry is 80 RMB
entry including one drink. Drinks 30 RMB for cocktail / 35 RMB for a beer (at
time of print)

There were very few
westerners, about 10, when I was there but the place gets packed. Destination used
to be the number one club but with the opening of Funky it’s not as popular but
still the best by all accounts.

Mix with the locals
and dance, watch the locals drink and play dice games. It is a little hard to
start conversations with them but once engaged they really are quite sociable.

Destination is an excellent
mixed and diverse crowd that shows the new China and not that we see in the
West in gay bars.

Open until 5am

Take a taxi back to
the hotel and ensure it goes by a meter. Do not take a private taxi as it will
work out more expensive.

Just two roads away
from the main Bar street, next to the Workers Stadium

Kai Club

3^rd Floor,Tongli
Studio, Sanlitun (on the east side of the alley connecting Sanlitun Village and
Opposite House), it’s just by Mohito Man (ask a backpacker and they will know
this)  Take the stairway up to the
entrance on the 3^rd floor. This is really a very simple bar with
dance floor and DJ every night of the week. It tends to attract a slightly
younger audience.

Watch the boys order huge
quantities of drinks and spend hours knocking them plus shots back.

– Popular on week
nights though packed at weekends and overspills to straight bars

– Vodka red bull
10rmb though don’t expect high quality drinks

– Gets reasonably
busy post 11.30pm

– Good pop and
dance music

– Smokey bar

– Largely a young
crowd of 20 – 30 year olds

Funky

Apparently opposite
Destination.  Although could not find it, above Coco

6 floor, 8 Gongti
Xi Lu

This I was told is
one of the best to visit on a Saturday.

Mesh

The Opposite House, 1
Sanlitun Bei Rd, Sanlitun.

This is an upmarket bar
in a upmarket hotel that is popular with a gay crowd on a Thursday. It is
largely middle-class and tourists/ expats. The drinks are 3 – 4 times more
expensive than those on a regular street bar.