August: Courage by Xiao Jie

The gay-themed novel, Courage, was published in the Chinese mainland by China Northern Publishing House.

"In terms of the content, I thought it was no problem to get it published," said Zhang Jingqiu, who owns the publishing house. "It depends, sometimes certain editors get nervous."

For a publishing house, often they were afraid of creating problems for themselves, said Xiao Jie (a sobriquet) of his most recent novel, Courage.

"There's not a government regulation that says no, but there's not much of a precedent for it."

Cui Zi'en, director and activist and organizer of the Beijing Queer Film festivals, however, was the first to set the precedent in terms of gay-themed literature on the Chinese mainland. After writing a novel in 1997, the author found it very difficult to find someone willing to publish it.

"I almost tried every publishing house in the Chinese mainland, but it never worked out," he said.

"At last, it was published in Hong Kong seven or eight years after it was written."

"There are gay novels published in China, but they're written by foreigners and imported," Xiao Jie said.

August: iLOOK magazine's "Happy Gay China" Issue

The August 2009 issue of iLook Magazine marked the first time gay-related issues were made the main theme of a mainstream Chinese magazine.

Fashion designer, Xander Zhou, was invited by iLook's managing editor, Hong Huang, to be a guest editor because the issue would appear exactly one year after China hosted the Olympic Games, he said in an interview.

"I thought this would be an interesting theme to explore visually...hence the Gay China issue."

"I didn't really set out to tell readers everything about gays in China - I think a lot is written about that already. I didn't intend to 'discuss the social issue of homosexuality'," he said. "I just wanted to explore the connection between the gay world and the fashion world."

The issue devoted 233 pages to the theme and the first 50,000 copies were sold out within a matter of days. "So the issue got a reprint," Zhou told METRO.