Introduction

This chapter presents a qualitative study investigating intimacy among nine older Chinese gay men (aged 60 and above) and how experiences of sex and intimacy are manifested in their lives. The categories ‘being single’ and ‘long- term couple/ committed relationship’, with their various subcategories, are employed to illustrate their stories. The findings indicate how older gay men ‘do’ sex and intimacy in a Chinese context. Most of them embrace one- to- one, committed, long- term relationships. Informants involved in a relationship negotiate between romantic and sexual adventures. Together or separately, openly or secretly, and with explicit or implicit agreement, they explore involvement in a variety of relationships, from brief casual sexual encounters to ‘quality’ but secondary relationships. The narratives of these older gay men in relation to sex, love and ageing bodies suggest that their intimate lives are affected by heteronormative culture intersecting with the homonormativity and ageism embedded in a Confucian cultural context.

Hong Kong society: homosexuality, Confucianism and doing intimacy in the Chinese context

The Hong Kong population is predominantly of Chinese lineage, with a significant influx of people from mainland China during the 1940s and 1950s. As a consequence of over a century of British colonial rule, Hong Kong culture has become a hybrid of East and West (Lu, 2009). With a population that is more than 90 per cent ethnically Chinese, however, Chinese culture remains the dominant influence on Hong Kong society. Confucianism has had a profound influence on the idea of filiality, which focuses on family- centredness. The individual and the family are commonly conceived as a ‘unit’ in Chinese culture (Chou, 2000). The predominant influences associated with Hong Kong culture, then, combine colonialism, Confucianism and the latter's emphasis on family- centredness.

Homosexuality in Hong Kong

Until 1991, male homosexual acts were criminalised under the British Offences Against the Persons Act of 1861, which was incorporated into Hong Kong law (Chou, 2000). Beyond the illegal status of homosexuality in Hong Kong, anti- gay sentiment was further exacerbated by the medicalisation of homosexuality and fundamentalist religious condemnation of homosexual acts, resulting in homosexuality being deemed immoral, unnatural and pathological, as well as illegal (Ho, 1995).