The opening of one “AIDS education” gay bar does not a tolerant place the country make. Q Bar, a new nightspot that opened in Shanghai’s gay district The Bund, was raided early this morning and some 50 patrons were detained and then locked up in a local jail, including the bar’s two owners (both named Tony) and the DJ. Two foreigners were released early. While there was no forced urine drug test, the men and women, who have since been (mostly?) released, were booked with the photos taken and national ID card numbers recorded, effectively placing them on the government’s master list of queers.
Shanghaist relays the story of one detained patron: “I was asked for my name, address, work details, why I went to this gay bar, how I got to know of this bar, was I there just to watch the sexy gogo boy performance. Then he told me, you know, we’ve invited you here to be a witness. This is not against you. You need to cooperate with us. Once you’re done cooperating, you can go home and rest, and won’t have to stay here any longer. Later, he asked me about the details of the two dance performances — was he wearing a transparent brief, was anyone inserting money into his underwear, etc. This went on for a while, and then he began typing. For most other people, he would type as the answers came to his questions, but in my case, he started typing only after he was done asking questions. When the computer printout finally came, it was just as I expected. The details related to the second dance performance were not what I said at all. I had said, I was drinking with friends, with my back towards the bar, so I didn’t notice what was going on. I said, I’m unable to sign this. Then the policeman told me to go back to the room and continue waiting.
[photos via Q Bar]
Doodles
Ok, since I live in China (American by the way), I can speak about what was the probable reason for this:
Local chinese person complained about the noise at the bar. Police showed up looking for a bribe from the bar owners to just go away. Bar owners decided not to pay the police THIS time for whatever reason. Police decided they couldn’t be bothered with this bar and just decided they were going to raid it, make a statement and arrest everyone. This happens several times in China, and it always comes with the fact that bar owners get sick at some point of paying police off to stay in business.
By the way, I’ve been a long time reader of this site and have been pretty quiet of all the terribly editing done on this site but this is just retarded.
The gay scene of Shanghai is NOT all on the Bund. Q bar is located IN that neighborhood. Why does something make me think that you guys just went on Utopia-Asia’s website and scanned the site, and saw Q bar located near the Bund and just made a general assumption? Seriously is this site not making enough ad revenue to hire even a decent editor? Seriously!?!
Shannon
I doubt it would have mattered being that there is NO dick to see there anyway!!!!
Hyhybt
@Shannon: ???
Tomcat
Sounds like Stonewall and the Tasty bust (Aus) all over again. China can pretend to have opened themselves up to democratic and capitalist values, but this sort of totalitarian rule (such as demanding irrelivant, personal information from people for merely attending a venue) gives a huge insight into the limitations of this development.
It’s rather sad to see that an issue that lead to riots in New York 30 years ago, is being largely dismissed by the GLBTI community today. I know there has been coverage of the development of this controversial bar in Shang-Hai, but we as a community can not allow groups and other nations to perpetuate a myth that they are doing the right thing for GTBTIs when the reality is it’s all just a smoke screen to be able to monitor a country’s gays and lead raids such as this.