How Chengdu Became China’s Most Inclusive City

In June last year, more than 100 locals and expats gathered on the lawn of the Temple House, Chengdu’s most stylish hotel, to celebrate the marriage of an academic-turned-entrepreneur from the U.S. and a Sichuan-born lawyer. The guestlist didn’t quite end there though: 150,000 more people watched the service live streamed by Yu Shi, an LGBTQ+ activist and enthusiastic guest.

Shi also happens to own the city’s most famous lesbian bar, Moonflower, which she opened in 2002. The low-roofed hut has a few stools and chairs on its patio; a large, rainbow-colored half-moon on its sign is the only hint the place is anything other than another of the city’s famous tea rooms. It was there that the happy couple, Pat Tietgens and Michelle Zhang, first met. Same-sex marriage isn’t legally recognized in China—the couple’s official paperwork was filed stateside—but the ceremony drew such attention because it was the first, high-profile lesbian wedding in the country.

In fact, the first widely reported gay marriage in China also took place in Chengdu. That was eight years ago, when architect Zeng Anquan married his partner, military vet Pan Wenjie. It’s no coincidence that both same-sex ceremonies occurred here: Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, has become the Middle Kingdom’s unofficial LGBTQ+ capital. So much so, that it’s earned the soubriquet Gaydu among Chinese millennials. Demographic data in China is notoriously hard to source or verify, but most anecdotal evidence suggests the proportion of locals who identify as LGBTQ+ is markedly higher than in larger cities like Shanghai or Beijing.

Internationally, of course, the city is renowned for panda-spotting (80 percent of the 1,800 or so giant pandas still living in the wild are in the Sichuan province, and major research facilities are based in Chengdu) as well as its food—fiery Sichuanese staples, such as mapo tofu and kung pao chicken, form the backbone of many Chinese restaurant menus in the U.S.. Domestically, Chengdu is also synonymous with a slow-paced lifestyle compared with the frenetic day to day of Shanghai and the buttoned-up bureaucrats who live in Beijing. Locals are renowned for spending hours idling over a cup or two at Chengdu’s numerous teahouses.

A healthy work/life balance is a signature of the Chengdunese; and that laid-back approach is present in every aspect of life there—including social mores. It confers on the locals a reputation for tolerance that has helped its LGBTQ+ population feel more comfortable being open and out. “It’s the lifestyle here—people don’t work so hard, they’re outdoors all the time,” says Kurt Macher, the openly gay general manager of the Temple House. “People look at you here, they smile and they don’t care. I see many gay Chinese couples walking down by the river, hand in hand, and I’ve never seen that in Beijing, Shanghai, or even in Hong Kong.”

Wei Lai is an openly gay professor at a local music college who was born and brought up in Chengdu. “Everybody in China knows that Chengdu is a very famous gay city. It’s much easier to be gay here than in Shanghai or Beijing. There’s no judgment. Gay men can hold hands and no one cares,” he says. “In Beijing, people would care.”

Certainly, the locals’ reputation for tolerance has been a crucial factor in creating such a thriving LGBTQ+ scene, but quirks of geography have been vital, too. Far from Beijing, Chengdu has always received less scrutiny from the government—whether now or in the Imperial era. Put another way, the city could crib an unofficial motto from another, glitzier city here in the U.S.: What happens in Chengdu, stays in Chengdu.

While China decriminalized homosexuality in 1997, and removed it from an official list of mental disorders four years later, taboos still persist, especially in more rural areas. Chengdu, meanwhile, is one of the few major cities in the west of China, and as such has long been a draw for those throughout Sichuan who felt less comfortable, perhaps, in their village or town. Michelle Zhang, 38, was one of them. “I moved here when I was 19 or 20 years old, and I could immediately feel the difference,” she says. “Chengdu people are just more relaxed and friendly.”

The cost of living is cheaper here, too—rents can be 30 percent lower than in the east coast hubs, which keeps the population younger and so likely more open-minded. Take Chengdu’s music scene, which has become the heartland of an emerging Chinese language hip hop and trap culture, spearheaded by the likes of the Higher Brothers, a quartet of local rappers. There’s also a thriving WeWork-like shared office concept, Base & Co, for local millennial creatives inside the 339 Shopping Mall under the West Pearl TV tower—and it includes a couple of nightclubs, with a typical Chengdunese emphasis on enjoying life.

But Zhang believes that history has played a part, too. In the 17th century, Chengdu was the capital of a rebel kingdom, ruled by Zhang Zianzhong. When the Manchu army from Beijing bore down on him, he massacred swathes of locals, leaving the city virtually uninhabited when it was recaptured by Imperial forces. The Emperor then ordered citizens from elsewhere in the country to move there and rebuild Chengdu. It created a classic melting pot atmosphere that welcomed, and assimilated, anyone.

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“Historically, it’s been a city of outsiders—it’s like the Gold Rush in California, when all the outsiders came in,” adds Tietgens, Zhang’s wife. She is from Northern California herself, but first moved to Chengdu while still at university, keen to study the LGBTQ+ population as part of her degree. “That outsider culture is part of the local identity. You learn to be more flexible in how you view people.”

The social scene in many high profile LGBTQ+-friendly cities tend to skew male, and in Chengdu there are certainly gay-focused venues—take nightclub Max, and the Thursday’s weekly Pride party at Underground bar, run by openly gay English expat Gary Daniels. But Chengdu is unusual in that there is also a vibrant and visible lesbian community, filling bars like Queen Bee and Yu Shi’s Moonflower (though the latter has recently, and unexpectedly, been threatened with closure). It's a legacy of the city’s reputation as being less macho and patriarchal than many Chinese cities, according to Tietgens, whose thesis explored this topic. She points out that it would be appealing to women looking for a safe, female-focused space: “Chengdu is famous for beautiful women with a quick temper, who wear the pants. Men here tend to be less dominant—straight men aren’t ashamed to cook for their wives at home,” she says.

More recently, Tietgens says, pop culture intervened via a female, fan favorite contestant on China’s The Voice-style singing contest was from Chengdu. Though not openly gay, online chatter about her visits to lesbian bars and her various girlfriends was widespread. “I’ve heard people say, ‘Oh, wow because of this singer from Chengdu, that’s why I want to go there.’”

Though she and her wife are now living in the U.S., Tietgens loves her adopted home city. “Shanghai and Beijing have a lot of outside influence on the local culture,” she says. “But Chengdu seems to have its own way of advocating for gays and lesbians that is totally, authentically Chinese.”