A queer history of China
Some say homosexuality is a “Western import.” The historical record says the opposite: same-sex affection runs through two thousand years of Chinese texts — the actual import was the later language of “this is a disease.”
Imperial China
Duanxiu, fentao, Longyang — same-sex affection sits in two millennia of Chinese official histories and classics, described with a matter-of-factness that surprises modern readers.
公元前6世纪
The Shared Peach: Mizi Xia and the Duke of Wei
In the Han Feizi, a philosophical text from the 3rd century BCE, Mizi Xia bites into a peach, finds it sweet, and hands the rest to his lover, the Duke of Wei — who is touched, not scandalized. The story's moral is about how a ruler's favor fades with time, not that love between men is wrong. "Fentao" (sharing the peach) became one of classical Chinese's enduring bywords for same-sex love.
《韩非子·说难》
公元前3世纪
Lord Longyang and the Fish
The Stratagems of the Warring States records Lord Longyang weeping while fishing with the King of Wei: like the first fish caught, he fears being cast aside when someone more beautiful comes along. The king responds by threatening anyone who dares so much as mention other beauties. The anecdote treats a male couple's insecurities as ordinary court drama — and "Longyang" joined the classical vocabulary for men who love men.
《战国策·魏策》
公元前1世纪
The Cut Sleeve: Emperor Ai and Dong Xian
Emperor Ai of Han woke from a nap to find his sleeve pinned under his sleeping companion, Dong Xian. Rather than wake him, the emperor cut the sleeve off. The historian Ban Gu recorded this detail matter-of-factly in the Book of Han; what he criticized was Dong Xian's excessive political power — not that an emperor loved a man. "Duanxiu" (the cut sleeve) remains the most famous Chinese byword for same-sex love, and gives this timeline its name.
《汉书·佞幸传》
17世纪初
Nanfeng in Ming Dynasty Notebooks
In his early-17th-century miscellany Wanli Yehuobian, the Ming scholar Shen Defu documented what his era called "nanfeng" (literally "the male fashion" — a period term for male same-sex relations): sworn male partnerships in Fujian, literati keeping male companions. His tone is that of an observer of customs — curious, at times opinionated — but the idea that this was an illness to be corrected simply did not exist in his vocabulary.
沈德符《万历野获编》
1849
Pinhua Baojian: A Novel of Love Between Men
Published in 1849, Chen Sen's novel Pinhua Baojian ("A Mirror for Judging Flowers") tells romances between Beijing literati and dan actors — men who played female roles in opera — using the full conventions of the classic scholar-and-beauty love story. Idealized devotion sits alongside sharp social observation, but author and audience shared one assumption: love between men was a subject literature could treat openly, even tenderly.
陈森《品花宝鉴》（1849）
Modern Chinese-speaking world
From decriminalization in 1997 to marriage equality in Taiwan in 2019 — change is happening, at different speeds in different places.
1997
Decriminalization: "Hooliganism" Repealed
China's 1997 revision of the Criminal Law abolished "hooliganism" (liumang zui), a catch-all offense that had often been used to punish consensual sex between men. Since then, consensual same-sex activity between adults has not been a crime in mainland China. This is usually cited as the moment of decriminalization — the law stopped treating it as a crime, though social attitudes would take far longer to shift.
《中华人民共和国刑法》（1997年修订）
2001
CCMD-3: Depathologization in China
The third edition of the Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders (CCMD-3, 2001) removed homosexuality itself from the list of mental disorders — China's depathologization moment. An entry remained for "ego-dystonic" distress about one's orientation, but being gay was no longer, in itself, something to be treated. Worth noticing on this timeline: the idea that same-sex love is a disease was itself a modern import into China, not a native tradition.
《中国精神障碍分类与诊断标准（第三版）》（CCMD-3，2001）
2014
Beijing Court Rules Against Conversion Therapy
In 2014, a district court in Beijing heard China's first lawsuit over so-called conversion therapy: a gay man sued a counseling clinic that had administered electric shocks to "cure" him. The court ruled against the clinic, writing in its judgment that homosexuality is not a mental illness and that promising a "cure" constituted false advertising. It was the first time a Chinese court put that sentence on paper.
北京市海淀区人民法院判决（2014）
2017
The Zhumadian Case: Forced "Treatment" Loses in Court
A man in Zhumadian, Henan, was committed to a psychiatric hospital over his sexual orientation and held for nineteen days of forced "treatment." He sued, and in 2017 a court ordered the hospital to apologize publicly and pay compensation. The ruling drew a baseline: even when a family disapproves, a hospital has no right to lock someone up in the name of a "cure."
河南省驻马店市驿城区人民法院判决（2017）
2018–2023
Hong Kong: Recognition Won Case by Case
Hong Kong has no same-sex marriage, but a series of judicial review cases has extended recognition to same-sex couples married overseas, step by step — dependant visas, civil-servant spousal benefits, joint tax assessment, public housing, inheritance. In 2023, the Court of Final Appeal ruled in Sham Tsz-kit's case that the government must establish an alternative framework for legally recognizing same-sex partnerships. The path has been built one judgment at a time, and it is still being walked.
香港终审法院岑子杰案（2023）等系列判决
2019
Taiwan: Asia's First Marriage Equality
In 2017, Taiwan's Constitutional Court ruled in Interpretation No. 748 that excluding same-sex couples from marriage was unconstitutional, and gave legislators two years to act. In May 2019, the enforcement act took effect and same-sex couples began registering their marriages — making Taiwan the first place in Asia to achieve marriage equality.
司法院释字第748号解释（2017）及其施行法（2019）
2019+
Voluntary Guardianship: A Tool That Works Today
Mainland China has no legal recognition of same-sex marriage or partnership. But "yiding jianhu" — voluntary guardianship, established in the 2017 General Provisions of the Civil Law and carried into the Civil Code — lets any adult formally designate a trusted person as their guardian. From around 2019, same-sex couples began notarizing such agreements, giving a partner legal standing at critical moments like hospital consent and care decisions. It is not marriage — but it is a real tool that works under current law.
《中华人民共和国民法典》意定监护制度（第三十三条）
The world
The pathologizing language of homophobia is a post-19th-century invention — and the 20th century saw science dismantle it piece by piece.
1969
The Stonewall Uprising
In June 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City. That night the patrons — many of them the community's most marginalized — did not scatter as usual; they fought back, and protests continued for nights afterward. Stonewall became the emblematic beginning of the modern LGBTQ rights movement; the marches held on its first anniversary grew into Pride as it is celebrated worldwide today.
1973
APA Removes Homosexuality from the DSM
In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the DSM, its diagnostic manual. This was not science suddenly changing its mind — it was the profession finally facing long-standing evidence that gay people are not inherently less mentally healthy than anyone else, and that the diagnosis had never rested on solid scientific ground.
美国精神医学学会（APA）1973年决议
1990
WHO Declassifies Homosexuality
On May 17, 1990, the World Health Assembly adopted ICD-10, removing homosexuality from the international classification of diseases. That date is now marked around the world as IDAHOT, the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. The world's highest health authority had said it plainly: being gay is not an illness.
世界卫生大会通过 ICD-10（1990）
2001
The Netherlands: First Same-Sex Marriages
On April 1, 2001, the Netherlands' same-sex marriage law took effect and the first couples married in Amsterdam — the first country in the world to open marriage to same-sex couples. In the two decades since, marriage equality has spread to dozens of jurisdictions across every inhabited continent.
荷兰同性婚姻开放法（2001年生效）
2015
Obergefell: Marriage Equality Nationwide in the U.S.
In June 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, making marriage equality the law nationwide. The opinion closes with a line quoted ever since: the plaintiffs "ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right."
美国联邦最高法院 Obergefell v. Hodges（2015）
2019–2022
ICD-11: Gender Incongruence Reclassified
In 2019 the World Health Assembly adopted ICD-11, which came into effect in 2022. The new edition moves "gender incongruence" out of the mental disorders chapter and into conditions related to sexual health — being transgender is no longer classified as a mental illness. The depathologization that began with sexual orientation now extends to gender diversity, and the process continues.
世界卫生大会通过 ICD-11（2019），2022年生效
After this timeline, the “Western import” claim deserves the full myth-busting treatment:
Is homosexuality a Western import? →