“With mobile, we can use our geolocation to connect with gay people nearby.” When developing the dating app, Ma saw a unique opportunity, given that most of his LGBT+ friends struggled with English-language apps like Grindr or Hornet. Its best-known products include Blued, which debuted in 2012 as one of the first gay social network apps in China, while the company also runs several online healthcare and family planning platforms, such as Danlan Public Interest, He Health, and Bluedbaby. On the face of it, BlueCity is an internet technology company that focuses on serving the LGBT+ community around the world via apps, online health platforms and community action, such as working with relevant NGOs on HIV prevention. “In BlueCity, people can express their gender identity and sexuality freely, without the fear of being treated differently or jeopardising their careers.” The office also provides gender-neutral toilets for LGBT+ team members, who make up more than half of the company’s 500-some employees. Colourful cartoons and illustrations of people holding rainbow flags adorn the walls while meeting rooms are named after LGBT+ films, such as Happy Together, Beauty, and Lan Yu.
Located in Chaoyang, a Beijing business district home to more than 3,600 national high-tech enterprises, the headquarters of BlueCity reflects the company’s youthful and inclusive spirit. Luckily for him, mobile technology was just starting to take off and it was in this fertile environment that BlueCity was born in 2011. Ma chose the latter, and at the time he remembers thinking: “This is not about me but about the hundreds of thousands of netizens Danlan has helped.”Īfter resigning from the police force, Ma moved to Beijing to devote his time to LGBT+ advocacy. His colleagues at the Public Security Bureau shunned him, while his supervisor forced him to choose between his job and the website.
The interview also complicated Ma’s professional life.
Effectively, this means that coming out remains a significant challenge for gay people since acceptance in Chinese society remains low. After the interview published, Ma received a flood of messages from friends asking him how and why he had suddenly become gay.Īlthough China decriminalised homosexuality in 1997 and later removed it from the official list of mental illnesses in 2001, the country still takes a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ approach. Ma revealed that he was gay in a 2011 interview about his charity work with Sohu, an online publication in China. During the day Ma worked as a police officer by night, he managed the charity website, answering several hundred messages a day and working until the early hours of the morning to keep up with inquiries. In order to protect his identity, career and fulfil familial expectations, Ma led an exhausting double life for over a decade. “I also wanted to share scientific knowledge about homosexuality and encourage the public to accept the LGBT+ community.” A Double Life “I wanted to tell other gay people in China that they are not sick and don’t need treatment,” he says, referring to conversion therapy, which was outlawed in China in 2014. Meaning “light blue” in Chinese, Danlan references Ma’s hometown, the port city of Qinhuangdao. The site gradually evolved into a charity known as Danlan Public Interest, which promotes greater awareness surrounding HIV and AIDS prevention. Ma resolved himself to helping others understand and accept their sexuality, launching the website “My Blue Memory” in 2000 in order to share personal stories and news about gay life. It dawned on Ma that homosexuality was accepted, if not celebrated, in a number of countries in the West. Turning his attention beyond China’s borders, Ma researched a number of prominent international groups, including the World Health Organization and the American Psychological Association, and discovered an entirely different worldview than the one he had grown up with. But to his horror, he encountered a barrage of negative comments and retrograde portrayals of homosexual life. When the internet boom hit China in 1998, Ma went looking for answers on local websites and social media platforms. On more reflective days, Ma would sit alone and wonder whether he was simply the “only weirdo in the world.” But entrenched cultural pressures and a lack of public acceptance kept him from coming out. And as far as Ma is concerned, he’s just getting started.īorn in 1977 in China’s Hebei province, Ma (also known by his pseudonym Geng Le) realised he was gay when he was 17. Over the past two decades, Ma transformed himself from a closeted gay policeman into one of China’s foremost LGBT+ activists and tech entrepreneurs. All things considered, Baoli Ma has led an unconventional life.