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Hello and welcome to Chinese Whispers with me, Cindy Yu. Every episode, I'll be talking to

journalists, experts and long-time China watchers about the latest in Chinese politics, society and more.

There'll be a smattering of history to capture you up on the background knowledge and some context as well.

How did the Chinese see these issues?

I recently caught a rare viewing of a 2001 Chinese film, Lan Yu.

It tells a story of two gay men falling in love

and finding domestic life throughout the reform and opening years. The filmmakers never bother

to apply for approval from the census, knowing that its homosexual storyline would never make

it past moralistic communist standards. On this episode, I take a look at the place of homosexuality

in traditional Chinese mindset and under these years of communism.

I'm delighted to be joined by Zhang Yuling, the producer of Lang Yu, who is now based in the UK, and Liu Yiling, a writer covering Chinese society, technology and internet culture, who has written on topic.

We spend a lot of time talking about gay men and not much about other LGBT communities,

but I'll certainly come back to those in future episodes.

I started by asking Ealing

how she thought that Chinese society saw homosexuality.

It's a broad question,

but I would say that it's definitely evolved over the years,

depending on how far you want to go back.

One thing I'd say is that China doesn't have a very deep-seated tradition of homophobia.

Or another way of saying it is that Chinese religious traditions, unlike, say, Christianity

or Islam, like, didn't necessarily condemn homosexuality,

...