Happy International Women's day folks! This year, we're honouring the queer women's community by profiling 13 of Shanghai's movers and shakers, ranging from community activists and self-made entrepreneurs to arts and nightlife pioneers.
Each woman has been nominated and recommended by members of the queer community; while the list is by no means exhaustive, it's just a snapshot of the many inspiring and motivational activities, businesses, projects and initiatives organised by queer women across the city.
Lilian Shen
Social butterflies don’t come as dedicated as this, especially with such an inventory of organisations under their work belt. Third culture kid and LGBTQ activist Lilian Shen is currently on the leadership board of both ShanghaiPRIDE and bilingual discussion group Queer Talks, offering both organisations her professional expertise in operations, events and organisation.
In 2015 Shen founded Women Up!, the first professional network for queer women and annual resource-sharing platform that hosts events in the run-up to Pride week, offering completely free professional networking and social awareness events to get women connected while pushing the visibility of topics that affect women the most. Juggling her time with Women Up! and industry-related organisation Ladies Who Tech, Lilian is also a member of the leadership board of Zmack, Shanghai’s first improv troupe that offers weekly comedy shows at Jalapeno! and various other locations.
Cristine Asuncion
Of the many the bagels available in the city, none of them hit the spot quite like a bagelwich from Shanghai institution Spread the Bagel. The mastermind behind Shanghai’s best bagels? Christine Asuncion. A bagel-mad San Diego native, Asuncion made the move to China after a short stint in New York, and quickly established Spread the Bagel on Nanchang Lu and the rest, as they say, is history.
Asuncion now spends much of her time managing two outlets in the Former French Concession and wholesale operations in Jiading. In her spare time, Asuncion mentors young and emerging entrepreneurs, particularly those who want to make it big in F&B. While Asuncion usually shares her queer identity on a need-to-know basis, this International Women’s Day she’s flinging open the shutters and letting the world know she’s a self-made business woman who just so happens to be queer. All hail Christine, Queen of the Bagel!
Ting Ting Liang
Netherlands-native Ting Ting is one of the pioneers of Shanghai's queer community and alternative nightlife spaces. After moving to China after graduation in 2010, Ting Ting transformed the women’s queer scene overnight with the founding of Roxie, Shanghai’s one and only lesbian bar, after joining management at veteran metal bar Inferno.
After a few years partying on Shanghai's queer circuit, Ting Ting decided it was time to create a queer space first and foremost for queer women with a serious focus on good drinks. Roxie is a safe, versatile space for the LBT community, established to give women a place to hang out in comfort everyday of the week. Best of all, aside from regular weekly event offerings, Ting Ting offers up the bar as an event space to host a range of community events, including drag king parties, film screenings, discussion groups and more.
Charlene Liu
Shanghai veteran and community power-queer Charlene Liu is one of the scene’s enduring figures. Since her arrival in Shanghai, Liu has pumped countless hours of hard work into building an LGBT scene from the ground up.
In 2009, Charlene co-founded ShanghaiPRIDE with seven friends, not expecting the festival to rocket to popularity as quickly as it did. It was the first international-style Pride festival of its kind in China, and offered 2,000 attendees the chance to celebrate their identities with parties, socials, talks, and events. Since its establishment, ShanghaiPRIDE has grown exponentially, forging links with international queer communities and serving an increasingly visible queer community in Shanghai and further afield.
While holding down her nine-to-five as an operations manager and organising ShanghaiPRIDE, Charlene also organises community events for ShanghaiLGBT and Lesinshanghai, as well as tech industry-focused Ladies Who Tech and the annual Red Ribbon Gala Dinner in honour of World Aids Day. Starry-eyed? Yeah, so are we.
Ting Ting Shi
News broke recently about a brand new queer film festival, Shanghai Queer Film Festival (WeChat ID: SHQFF), which will hit the city this September. The brains and brawn behind the initiative? Ting Ting Shi. Recognising a huge gap in the market in Shanghai’s film festival circuit, Shi and a troupe of dedicated volunteers decided to create a new festival with a focus on Chinese and Asian cinematic representation.
The festival is carefully curated in order to ‘help people see more and help film-makers make more’ with a focus on increasing the visibility of queer issues to ultimately change otherwise steadfast mindsets – an awesome mission in a place where queer visibility is far from crystal clear. This self-starting, party-throwing, event-planning wonder-woman is neither a feminist nor an activist, but believes in empowering others with her passion for giving back to the community and exceptional attention to detail.
Wing Shen
Combining her passion for openness and diversity with outstanding professional business development skills, Wing Shen offers a great deal of time to queer and feminist organisations that she believes in. Shen co-organises the ShanghaiPRIDE Film Festival, an important event on the annual PRIDE calendar that supports new Chinese film-makers and brings to Shanghai the cutting edge of international queer cinema, and is a team leader for Pride Talk, a platform for the LGBTQ community to 'step up and speak out'.
Dedicated to revealing voices for themes she values the most, Shen is also a key member on the committee of TedxShanghaiWomen (WeChat ID: tedxshanghaiwomen), the first licensed event dedicated to women in Mainland China. When she isn't working on these valuable platforms, Shen is a full-time Senior Associate of Business Development for Octave, a wellness platform that harmonises Eastern and Western notions of wellbeing that helps others achieve peace and clarity.
Gabby Gabriel
With a finger in a fair few pies across the city’s ever-diversifying queer scene, the wonderfully charismatic Gabby Gabriel is a great role-model for those who dream of building communities from the ground up. With a clear-cut entrepreneurial spirit, Gabriel is the founder of Les Queers Shanghai (WeChat ID: lesqueers), one of the city’s leading LBTQ communities, as well as co-organiser of a monthly series of queer open mic nights at Lucca, a collaborative initiative between Les Queers and OpenDoors.
The ‘lesbian godfather’ – as she has been dubbed by the fellow members of her community – divides much of her time across multiple communities, all while holding down full time commitments to her education and property management companies, and running her side project Shanghai Love Notes – a creative medium that shares notes, poems and photographs about Shanghai.
Shanel Leonard
Shanghai-based entrepreneur Shanel Leonard is another fantastic example of how a little get-up-and-go can lead to great things. Leonard established e-commerce website and WeChat store TITZ Intimate Boutique (WeChat ID: sleepingtopless) in 2016, providing products that cater for women of colour, curves and queer identities. Ranging from awesome tees with feminist- and black power-inflected slogans and sexy undies to kaleidoscopic eye shadow and seriously high quality sex toys, TITZ has it covered.
Leonard is no stranger to giving back to the community, offering over ten percent of monthly profits to NGOs of her choice or gifting charities seasonal clothing during the harsher winter months. In addition to her day job, Leonard keeps a blog of her many musings, mostly focusing on empowering sex-ed and her real-life experiences as a woman of colour, born from a ‘personal sexual revolution’ and a yearning for sharing and learning. Click here to take a look at her blog, sleepingtopless.
Evie Wu
Evie Wu has a stunningly jam-packed background working with local queer organisations, working tirelessly to promote both gender and sexual equality. At just 28, Wu has combined her passions for activism and creativity to work with Shanghai Nvai, one of the only local organisations for LBT women in the city, as well as ShanghaiPRIDE Theatre Festival and ShanghaiPRIDE.
This year, while balancing her passions and her full time job in PR, Wu will focus on the organisation and brand image of ShanghaiPRIDE in the run up to Pride week this June. Like us, you’re probably wondering where Evie finds the time to get shit done. But for her, it’s a walk in the park when the push for equal rights is on the agenda.
Alice Yixin
Shanghai-based professional photographer Alice Yixin dedicates most of her time building her studio from the ground up and growing her professional and creative aesthetic. Having worked with brands such as Royal Daulton, Shanghai Fashion Week, Standard Chartered Bank, UnionPay and Time Out Shanghai, Yixin has established a solid foundation for a fruitful career.
Yixin gives back to the community in the best way she knows how – by getting behind the camera. Armed with her DSLR and tripod, Alice photographs for charities, activist causes and queer projects she cares about. Check out her most recent collaboration with Time Out Shanghai here.
Katy Roseland
Co-founder of Shanghai art collective Basement6 and self-defined cyber-labourer and artist, Katy Roseland is a passionate believer in queer, non-binary, gender-fluid communities, offering a alternative space in which normative identities can be left at the front door. Basement6 organises events, interactive and immersive art shows and installations, all of which nurture a sense of real inclusivity that Roseland believes to be the ‘nature of queer culture’.
Identifying as queer, Roseland rejects monolithic societal parameters and conventional forms of categorisation, choosing instead to focus on ‘providing a platform for people who need to voice their identity’. Aside from devoting much of her time to volunteering, bartending, curating and writing for Basement6, Roseland pumps even more energy into her FUPA performance art collective that offers monthly bilingual salons that broach social identity topics through action art, and contributes to Arthubasia, an organisation that highlights the work of digital and video artists from all over the world.
Sachi Qin
Behind every great queer app is an even greater team of people striving to offer the best services and the most relevant information for consumers. Sachi Qin is project coordinator for TATA, a social network and community app for the lesbian community in China. Leading and contributing to a range of initiatives behind the scenes, Qin is primarily responsible for building LBT services and advocacy.
Most importantly, Sachi leads the Safe Space Map project, which aims to catalogue LGBTQ+ friendly places throughout China. As of this month, safe spaces certified by TATA have been mapped in over 15 cities nationwide, providing an invaluable and up-to-date resource for lala’s across the country. Since her heady student days at Ningbo Nottingham University, where her studies were shared with the co-founding of the Diversity LGBT student group, Qin has devoted much of her energy to the building of visibility, awareness and inclusivity for the queer community and beyond.
Sammy Wu
Hundreds of social networking apps exist out there in the ether, designed to forge relationships and to bring communities together, but far too few cater exclusively to the needs of lesbian and bisexual women. Cue Rela, co-founded in 2012 by ever-enterprising Sammy Wu, to build a social network in China and beyond that would connect women in safe virtual space.
Once an expert in luxury branding and a one-time organiser of ShanghaiPRIDE, Sammy moved into queer-tech after discovering a clear gap in the market. After three rounds of venture capital funding and with five million users on the books worldwide, Rela is a multi-faceted app that features social profiles, live streaming and location-based dating and messaging. The best part? It’s all happening right here in Shanghai.