On March 27, 1998, a newspaper in China, Southern Weekend, the weekend edition of the Southern Daily, published an article titled "If the Society Tolerant".  This article reported a survey to gay man in all 30 provinces in China.  Started in 1997 summer, the survey was conducted by dermatologist and sexologist Zhang Beichuan and his research team at Qingdao Medical College, and has had some preliminary results.  Nearly 1000 questionnaires were sent out through gay men who had had contact with the researcher, and more than 400 answered questionnaires had been returned.  With Dr. Zhang's permission, the newspaper reported the results from the analysis of 230 returned questionnaires:

The average age of respondents was 31.3, and 62.1% of them had at least college education.  The majority (78.9%) considered homosexuality and bisexuality to be normal phenomena, and 89% longed to establish stable family relationships based on loving affection, but 65.6% also wished to have children through relationships with women.  The reporter reminded the reader to notice that 75.3% of the respondents believed that the what mainly prevented gays from forming stable relationships was the discrimination of the public.  Near all of the respondents (97.8%) thought that the public's understanding and acceptance to lesbigay people would be helpful in improving the lives and work of lesbigays people's.  The overwhelming majority (94%) believed that it is a right to be responsible to oneself, one's family, and the society simultaneously.

“The data illustrated clear what kind of a society the respondents are facing,” the reporter commented.  Among the respondents who were singles, 66.4% were pressured by parents and society to get married.  For those who are married, 52.9% lived with their spouses in situations that actually like separation, and 57.6% or them got married due to the pressure from family or society.  Other data include that 30.1% of the respondents had suicidal ideation due to the public’s view on homosexuality, while 9.1% had suicidal attempt, and 10.7% hire people to meet their sexual needs.

The preliminary conclusions the researcher drew from this survey were:

• Loving relationships between people of the same sex has been not rare in the modern China.  The researcher has found a lesbigay subculture all over the country through the lesbigay people with whom he had had correspondence contact.
• In China, the prevailing value on sex is still based patriarch and reproduction-orientation.  Although homosexuality has some impact on it, lesbigay people face pressure in such a nation that has not established a sexual value based on humanistic concepts.
• Although quite a few people in China have begun to choose, consciously, to practice their love according to their own beliefs as well as a principle of “being good to myself and others without hurting anybody”, without an atmosphere of tolerance, understanding and the absence of the discrimination based on sexual-orientation, lesbigay people do not live in peace.  The public should not underestimate the negative impact of such an social atmosphere on the health of lesbigay people, which also has negative impact on the society as a whole through family and other social interactions.

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