“I had little exposure to Asians when growing up and thus no real feelings, positive or negative, towards them other than the obnoxious stereotypes I’d seen on TV,” Loveland writes in his recently released memoir, Beijing Bound: A Foreigner Discovers China, about his first year in the Chinese capital.
Also inexperienced in the local LGBTQ scene, he dived into the familiar but now defunct “men seeking men” classified section on Craigslist, and the first response was unexpected: direct, enthusiastic, erotic, contrary to the newcomer’s preconceived notions of the city’s conservative image.
“Once I arrived in Beijing, those American stereotypes immediately shattered,” says Loveland over a Zoom call from Arizona, where he now works as a university career coach. “Chinese men in Beijing were tall and more masculine than I’d expected … I was smitten.
“There was a lot of openness I didn’t expect,” he says.
Loveland had arrived in Beijing a year before the Summer Olympics, with the city abuzz with preparations. A decade had passed since China decriminalised homosexuality, six years since it was declassified as a mental disorder. Gay nightlife was gradually becoming visible in major Chinese cities, including Beijing. The city’s diplomatic and commercial conclave of Sanlitun had become home to several queer venues since Half and Half had opened in the mid-1990s. Opened in 2004, Destination club emerged as a cornerstone of Beijing’s gay nightlife, offering a safe space for many queer people. By 2007, smaller bars such as Alfa provided an intimate setting for young gay men who preferred to network while sipping mojitos, which Loveland says, was the drink of choice among gay men. Later, The Opposite House’s swanky lobby bar, Mesh, would also organise gay nights, where men drank, danced and networked.