But China's female gay community is more concentrated, monogamous and anonymous than the men, preferring discreet Internet chat rooms and private salons over the bar scene, she and others say.

Li Yu, director of China's first lesbian feature film, never told her male actors their on-screen blind dates weren't interested.

By the time the amateur beaux found out the leading ladies were gay, Li's cameras were already rolling.

"It was an experiment, an exploration, to see how people in society really view lesbians," said the rookie director of "Fish and Elephant", a prize winner at the Berlin Film Festival.

Shot on 16 mm film in a shabby pocket of Beijing, the movie stars real-life lesbians nagged by the daily pressures of their Confucian, marriage-minded society: a match-making mother, a deadbeat husband and a bevy of desperate, single men.

A murderous ex-girlfriend on the run from police only complicates matters.

The 2001 movie was part of a flurry of recent breakthroughs for China's largely closeted gays, officially deemed mentally ill until last year.

But while homosexuals are freer to swing at a growing number of gay bars in big cities and have even "come out" on newsstands and web portals, public awareness is lacking.

Li, like many independent movie makers in China, did not bother asking for the approval of Beijing's film czars.

Her film has been screened at more than 70 film festivals overseas, but only once at home, where homosexuality remains near the top of the list of taboo topics.

China's first gay and lesbian film festival, where "Fish and Elephant" made its domestic debut, was shut down days later.

Government censors have exacerbated Li's struggle to demystify a quiet subculture of "women comrades", Chinese slang for lesbians, who in contrast to gay men are almost unheard from.

"No way," blurts one eligible bachelor, in disbelief, when the lesbian protagonist Xiaoqun tells him she likes women.

Dumbfounded and without a script, he fumbles for words. "So, what's your blood type?"

The actor was furious, according to Li. "He said, 'How could I possibly act in a lesbian film?"'

Rare Voice

Li Yinhe, a prominent sociologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, says some 3 per cent of women and 4 per cent of men in China are probably homosexual.

Western estimates suggest 10 per cent of a given population may be gay.

But China's female gay community is more concentrated, monogamous and anonymous than the men, preferring discreet Internet chat rooms and private salons over the bar scene, she and others say.

"Lesbians very seldom enter people's field of vision," Li said.

Cui Zi'en, a gay filmmaker and professor at the Beijing Film Academy, agreed. "It's easy to get impression that there aren't any," he said.

By contrast, gay men have public gathering spots in every district of Beijing, Cui said.

Director Li, a former State television announcer turned documentary maker, got the idea for her film after meeting a celebrated female couple in Shanghai who traded vows - China does not recognize gay marriages - with their parents on hand.

Although it is common for Chinese girls to hold hands in public, the straight actresses Li tried out could not pull off the part. "They would not even let their skin come in contact."

She said her main characters, a zoo-keeper and a clothes maker, represented the urban every woman rather than the artsy vanguard stereotypically associated with gay lifestyles.

But the only suitable role players Li could find were an outspoken avant-garde painter and her one-time girlfriend.

Shitou, a painter of surrealistic scenes of women frolicking in water and marching topless, plays the seamstress Xiaoling, a libertine estranged from her husband.

The first-time actress said she had turned down similar roles in the past, but decided "Fish and Elephant" was the right vehicle for giving China's lesbians a voice.

"Because we don't have a voice and you cannot see us on TV, there are some who are in truth gay but don't know it themselves," she said. "Their lives are very confused."

Testing the Limits

Xiaoling and zookeeper Xiaoqun, played by Shitou's ex-partner Panyi, begin trading flirtatious glances while feeding apples to Xiaoqun's elephant. Erotic sparks fly when they light each other's cigarettes, tip to tip.

The movie, which includes scenes of masturbation and same-sex love-making, was shot for a privately raised US$60,000.

"Five years ago, you could not imagine shooting this kind of movie in China," said Cui, referring to the support Li received within the industry.

Gay rights activists began testing the limits of their freedom after the Chinese Psychiatric Association's landmark April 2001 decision to drop homosexuality as a mental disorder.

In 1996, when underground filmmaking guru Zhang Yuan shot "East Palace, West Palace", regarded as China's first gay picture, police could still arrest homosexuals for "hooliganism".

A handful of gay films released since then have kept pace with the slow and subtle advance of gay rights in China.

Most gay filmmakers, like their subjects, have been content to duck rather than challenge censors.

And officials, unable to track their swelling numbers, have tolerated scenes that can only be aired overseas.

(Shanghai Star August 21, 2002)