Lesbian Culture in China: How My Definition of Freedom Changed, Part 2

Despite having the new vocabulary, I still hadn’t taken the necessary steps to seek out the relatively hidden queer community in China yet. I kept procrastinating, justifying my reluctance with excuses: I was too tired. I was too busy.

I finally searched for “female homosexual bars near me” on Baidu, the Chinese version of Google.

The results immediately revealed that, besides T and P which are gendered slang terms for lesbians, the general non-gendered slang for “female homosexual” in Chinese is most commonly “LaLa”^[1] or simply “Les.” While clicking around the results, I found an online group for Les in my region. I discovered addresses for four different Les Ba^[2]—what queer women in China call a “Lesbian Bar”—around the city in online forums. I picked one called “Joy”^[3] with the most detailed directions—they intentionally kept the directions ambiguous and address hidden to keep the locations secret—and decided to go on the upcoming Thursday.

[1] 拉拉

[2] Les吧

[3] All people and places are pseudonyms, and identifying information including locations has been changed to protect the identity of the individuals at risk. To protect the people and places in this article, I do not use photos.