Wuhou District (Chengdu)

Chengdu’s underground scene unfolds as a fragile, persistent ecology of queer performance and DIY culture, shaped by clubs, closures and informal networks. Through YiHao’s trajectory, interviewed by curator Sara Sassanelli, it appears as a space where myth, memory and experimentation converge, producing temporary communities and practices that drift between exhaustion, care and reinvention.

In Chengdu, queer communities navigate tightening control and fading digital openness, reshaping where and how connection can exist in China. Public celebration recedes, nightlife moderates itself, and intimacy slips into coded networks and overlooked daytime spaces. Through Xinke Lee’s returning gaze, nightlife, public encounters, and cruising grounds reveal a fundamental reckoning: an ongoing meditation on adaptation and loss, and a community that survives through floating identities.