The importance of lesbian bar culture in various countries has long been discussed by scholars of sexual cultures and gay and lesbian histories alike (Jeffreys 1989; Kennedy and Davis 1993; Valentine 2000; Wolfe 1997). Anthropologist Antonia Chao conducted longitudinal research into the T/Po communities (similar to Hong Kong’s TB and TBG) in Taiwan by immersing herself first in the bar culture of Wang You Gu (Forget-sadness-valley), a 1980s T-bar situated within the red-light district in the city of Taipei (Chao 2002). The category of purely private businesses also refers to karaoke bars located in commercial buildings in busy shopping areas. Even though the owners of these bars might be lesbians themselves, the bars are more profit-driven than the upstairs venues discussed above and are not known to hold community gatherings. Yet the significance of these spaces should not be underestimated as they hold distinctive positions in the memory archives of Hong Kong lesbian history. Since the 1990s, karaoke bars have been opening up in various commercial buildings, often located within the districts of Tsim Sha Tsui, Mong Kok, Wanchai and Tung Lo Wan. These districts are known as everyday spaces with a mix of residential and commercial zoning. Shops catering to both local residents and tourists are abundant in these areas, not to mention cafes for students and the alternative culture and literary crowd.
The women who run the Same-Sex Desires Oral History Exhibit Working Group (2005) have compiled a list of bars that are or used to be frequented by lesbians including Virus, Cash, Perfect Life, Myth, Elements, Velvet and OA2. Some of these bars were similar to lounge bars where customers drank and socialised in small groups. Others were set up for karaoke where customers went up to a mini-stage and sang in public facing the audience. These bars have now all closed down with the exception of Virus, a karaoke bar that has survived throughout these years but had to open its doors to include male customers in order to survive the high rental prices. This is not to say that there are no new bars. On the contrary, other bars have opened up in various commercial buildings in the same districts as in Tsim Sha Tsui and Tung Lo Wan, including Temptation and the S Club. Les Peches is another successful venture that has been attracting a steady crowd of two hundred women for their twice-a-month lounge parties. Organised by Abby and Betty, a Singaporean Chinese-French lesbian couple, Les Peches has collaborated with different bars in the popular clubbing area of Lan Kwai Fong to host queer women’s events for the last seven years. During 2012, I visited both Temptation and Les Peches and noticed differences among the partygoers. Temptation attracts younger people in their early twenties and there are clear gender demarcations between TB and TBG. One can easily spot TB and TBG couples in the crowd. Les Peches tends to attract older and middle-class crowds with a mixed clientele including gay men, TB, TBG and ‘Pure’ (women who identify as neither TB nor TBG). The location is important as Les Peches parties are often held in collaboration with bars in the financial area which is more associated with white collar employment and expatriate communities.
One informant, Bik Bik, who was twenty years old at the time of the interview, adopted a blase attitude towards going to Virus during 2002 when she was only fifteen years old. Bik Bik went with her classmates and described the experience as ‘nothing special’. She continued to describe the drinking and smoking practices in the bar as indicators of transitioning to adulthood, ‘it’s heavy drinking, but it’s not like I haven’t drunk before and it’s not like I haven’t smoked before… but it’s a relatively safe space because I will not bump into my family’. Going to a bar, as with young adolescents who go to heterosexual bars, often signifies an urge to be recognised as an adult by indulging in forbidden leisure activities. Bik Bik’s visits to a lesbian bar is presented with a not-so-naive stance by demonstrating her familiarity with the bar culture.
Other informants were not so relaxed and comfortable in their debut into lesbian bar culture. Twenty-seven-year-old Kitman, who worked at a non-governmental organisation, found out about lesbian bars on the Internet. Through joining an online lesbian social group, Kitman was able to attend gatherings at lesbian bars with her new-found online friends. She recalled how exciting it was for her to go to her first lesbian bar, but she was quite disillusioned after she arrived at the scene. She explained, ‘when I got there I didn’t know what to do. Everyone there was playing and drinking hard. I don’t like approaching others or playing chai mui [a dice game commonly played during drinking]. I [felt] I [could] not fit in’. Kitman further commented, ‘but still, lesbian bars are considered to be a form of tungzi space; sometimes I do have the urge to go to these spaces even though I don’t feel comfortable there’. What is interesting in Kitman’s account is her persistent back and forth argument that a place that seemed uncomfortable for her was also the place for her to be a neoitungzi. The issue of drinking seems to be of particular concern for both Bik Bik and Kitman. Bik Bik feigns an air of indifference to drinking in bars, whereas Kitman seems to be more concerned with the heavy drinking that occurs in these spaces. The act of social drinking is associated with a form of TB masculinity within lesbian communities.
Other informants in the study used male gay bars as their initial entrance to gay and lesbian culture. Gay bars are more easily accessible via general gay information websites and gay travel websites. The physical location of gay bars on the street level also makes them more visible as gay bar owners are able to afford higher rental prices than lesbian bar or cafe owners. The heightened public visibility of gay male culture in comparison to lesbian culture steered some of my informants towards gay bars as their initial access points for learning about gay and lesbian culture.
Forty-two-year old Beatrice grew up in Macau, a former Portuguese colony that has since become a Special Administrative Region of Mainland China. She has climbed up the corporate ladder, despite lacking a university education, and would travel to Hong Kong for a regular pilgrimage to gay bars. She first intended to visit gay bars as an experiment in testing out her lesbian desires as part of a process of coming out and self-exploration. She approached a male colleague whom she knew was gay and he suggested that they should go to a gay bar for Beatrice to find out for herself. She told me, ‘so I went with him and when I just walked in, wow! It felt like I belonged there and then when I saw the people there, it felt great and very compatible’. Relieved at her own self-affirmation, she went every weekend to the same gay bar, and then the Yin Yang Disco afterwards, and used these Hong Kong spaces as a way to break out of her usual daily routine and to put distance between herself and people whom she might know from Macau.
Connie, an informant mentioned earlier in this chapter, recalled her experience of visiting a gay bar in the 1980s. In the interview, Connie described how she thought there were only gay men in the city since the news media only reported on gay men and never on lesbians. She proceeded to read English magazines catering for expatriate communities and thought that ‘lesbians only exist as foreigners’. She later found out about the Yin Yang Disco through gay publications and went on her own: ‘I went at nine and waited for almost an hour downstairs from the club, almost forty-five minutes… I was very nervous. I kept asking myself like what to wear, will people kiss each other freely, will someone [a girl] come over and flirt or talk with me, what should I do?’ For the rest of that night, Connie stayed alone at the bar with a beer in her hand because ‘I didn’t know what else I could drink’ and observed the surroundings. No one approached her and she summed up her first experience as: ‘So this is it?’ Connie’s statement can be read as an expression of disappointment where a first pivotal visit to a gay bar did not produce any social connections or generate any excitement.
Private businesses that cater to lesbians can be used as spaces to celebrate rituals such as anniversaries and wedding ceremonies. These rituals are particularly salient to lesbians given the general lack of role models and relationship patterns. So they make up their own rituals to celebrate life markers that are otherwise celebrated among heterosexuals. It is also fascinating to hear accounts of informants who feel that going to these commercial bars means being a part of a members’ club which fosters a sense of camaraderie. This sense of camaraderie is more commonly expressed among women who appear masculine in appearance, regardless of their sexual identification as TBs or not. In one instance, Alex was recruited by a party sitting at another table in the lesbian bar to join a wedding ceremony. She recalls the laid — back atmosphere at the bar and how strangers would strike up conversations to make friends with each other. By participating in drinking games and taking turns to sing karaoke, one can easily befriend another customer in the same bar. For the wedding ceremony, Alex was invited to be the witness for the lesbian couple. As same-sex partnerships are not legally recognised in Hong Kong, she was excited to be a part of the celebration and to make new friends. Women in lesbian bars may not necessarily understand themselves as possessing lesbian or bisexual identities, but rather, the lesbian bar itself appeals to customers as a women — friendly and safe environment, and for some customers, as a place without harassment from heterosexual men.
Conclusion
This chapter has provided an overview of Hong Kong lesbian culture against the backdrop of a global Chinese city. A state-imposed policy to ensure land scarcity and maintain high rental prices means that social spaces for marginalised communities — including lesbians as well as art collectives and activist organisations — are constantly disappearing and emerging in other cheaper spaces, as rental prices fluctuate and neighbourhoods are gentrified. Hong Kong women with same-sex desires or neoitungzi participate in the local bar culture and attend parties to cultivate a sense of community, to assert their lesbian subjectivity and to feel safe. These conditional spaces help us to understand the intersections between sexual identities and city spaces, erotic desires and consumption, bodies and regulations.