By WEI CHUGUI
Technology Correspondent
BEIJING (China Daily Show) – It’s the news anxious mothers have been waiting for: a foreign website luring innocent, single men into same-sex relations has finally been blocked on the mainland, ensuring their “little emperors” can finally settle down with the nice girl they introduced them to last New Year.
“My sole reason for living has been taken away from me,” said Hu Jun, 28. “So I guess I’ll just have to succumb to constant parental nagging, screw that hot 27-year-old from accounts who keeps giving me looks, then marry her.”
For years, campaigners have pointed to Dutch website Heavenly Mandate as the chief reason for the country’s soaring homosexual statistics.
Homosexuality was effectively decriminalized in China in 1997 with the abolition of an archaic law that branded it as a form of “hooliganism.” However, it wasn’t until 2001 that the Chinese Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental diseases. Official estimates currently put the number of homosexuals in China at around 30 million, though this is considered by many a conservative guess.
“Nothing else explains it,” said pollster Liu Bao. “Ever since we began compiling numbers in 2004, the amount of men admitting to having sexual relations with other men has risen. And this website came out at roughly the same time.”
Lin says that Heavenly Mandate’s own statistics – which it uses to support the case that it’s providing a legal service for consenting adults – literally don’t add up.
“Heavenly Mandate only supplies figures for users who say they are gay. But it doesn’t give any data for heterosexual clicks. So it’s completely skewed. Furthermore, the website doesn’t offer heterosexual male users any alternatives for dating except with other men. So straight visitors have no choice but to sleep with them. It’s shameless.”
Lin says that the site has seduced many unwary males into unwitting same-sex practices. One traumatized user said he had no idea that fellatio, rimming and ‘tea-bagging’ weren’t normal, red-blooded activities until Chengdu police caught him in a five-man conga at a bathhouse.
“He told police that he’d never had time for a wife, so went looking on the Internet. His search brought him to this website, and then various hotel rooms across Sichuan,” said Lin. “This tragedy would never have happened were it not for this site.” A spokesman for Heavenly Mandate refused to comment.
A Confucian tradition of filial piety in China means children are primarily expected to look after their parents in old age and provide offspring. Many parents cannot understand why their children haven’t married and produced heirs by the time they’ve reached puberty, experts say.
Government officials say the website has been interfering with that process, which has seen huge numbers of bachelors unable to find wives in a materialistic society highly critical of individual choice.
White-collar worker Huang, 25, says he stumbled across Heavenly Mandate while searching for Yellow Emperor, a classic 1978 Hong Kong film. “It’s not a gay film, although it does contain lesbian scenes,” Huang admitted.
Nevertheless, when a horny Huang signed up for a Mandate account, he found himself bombarded with messages from other Chinese men – many seemingly in the same predicament.
“A lot of them said they were also straight; some even said they were married. But when we met up for tea at their place, they fucked me instead,” Huang recalled. “This kept happening. No matter how many times I went back.”
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