Afterword by Petrus Liu
Publication: March 15, 2016 by The Feminist Press at CUNY. It may be acquired directly from the publisher or from other online sellers.
Written pseudonymously and posted on the internet in 1998, Beijing Comrades by Bei Tong is among mainland China’s earliest, best known, and most influential contemporary gay novels. It is also a path-breaking work of tongzhi (gay) fiction from the PRC. Set in Beijing, it opens in 1987 and tells the story of Chen Handong and Lan Yu, two men from very different social classes. Handong is a wealthy businessman in his late twenties, the spoiled offspring of elite Communist Party officials with a string of male and female lovers whose affections he secures by means of a generous stream of money and gifts. Lan Yu is a university student from a working class background who has just arrived in Beijing from China’s far northwest. Naïve but by no means dim, Lan Yu finds himself in Handong’s bed when he is alone in the capital and unable to make ends meet. Narrated by Handong, the story chronicles the joys, hardships, and no small amount of sexual bliss the men share as they navigate the uncharted terrain of a same-sex relationship in the time and place where they live.
In 2001, Hong Kong filmmaker Stanley Kwan made a movie based on the 1998 internet novel titled Lan Yu 《蓝宇》. In 2002, a revised, paper book version of Beijing Comrades was published by Tohan Taiwan.
Beijing Comrades is the first full-length gay novel from the PRC published in English.
In 2018, Beijing Comrades was published in French by Calmann-Lévy. Titled Camarades de Pékin, the book is a French translation of my English translation of the Chinese novel.
Also in 2018, a Philippines edition of Beijing Comrades was published by Anvil Publishing.
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