Il s’agit de l’histoire biographique d’un enquêté gay chinois, Jie, rencontré dans le cadre d’une recherche antérieure de l’auteur sur l’interrelation entre migration et sexualité chez d’(anciens) étudiants gays chinois en France. Cette nouvelle ethnographique retrace la trajectoire migratoire de Jie de la Chine vers la France en passant par l’Afrique de l’Ouest, ainsi que ses illusions et désillusions en tant que gay et migrant.
Jie’s story unfolds in the backdrop of Hainan, China’s southernmost island province. Born in 1996, he became aware of his attraction toward boys during his childhood. However, it was not until junior high school that he realised he belonged to the sexual minority in a society that heavily emphasises heteronormativity, where men are expected to love and marry women, and vice versa. His hometown is one of the major cities in the province and has a long history, but the social atmosphere remains traditional and reserved today, not to mention a decade ago. Cautious, he decided to keep his sexual orientation a secret.
After joining the World Trade Organisation in 2001, China hosted the world for the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and its interactions with the West kept bourgeoning. As a teenager, Jie found himself captivated by the English language course at school and developed a strong passion for exploring the “outside world” and learning foreign languages. His exceptional performance in English exams, including the gaokao (高考, national college entrance exam), reflected his dedication and talent. Jie’s desire to learn a new language led him to consider attending a university specializing in foreign languages.
North China: where the “French dream” was born
Jie, born by the sea, had a strong attachment to it. He also desired to study in a more open and developed city. He chose Tianjin, a coastal city in northern China, located about 2,500 kilometres from his hometown. Despite his parents’ wishes for him to study in nearby provinces, Jie opted to move farther away to gain independence. Focusing solely on majoring in foreign languages, Jie’s destiny led him to pursue French for his bachelor’s studies. Jie was content and excited, and planned then and there to study in France one day. At the time, France was a “gay paradise” for him, as same-sex marriage was legalised there in 2013. Jie asserted: “French society was more open and tolerant, and people would not look at you with coloured glasses.”
Starting his bachelor’s degree in 2014, Jie found himself surrounded by like-minded classmates all studying foreign languages and cultures. He felt his micro-social environment in the larger city of Tianjin was liberal and accepting. He found many “people like [him]”, and others did not discriminate against them simply because of their sexual orientation. However, he primarily connected with the local LGBT+ communities and other gay men through online platforms like forum-based virtual gay communities and digital dating apps, as he grew up in a generation immersed in the Internet and ICT. Since his adolescence, he watched a number of gay-themed film or TV series from the Sinophone world (including Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc.) and especially from the West, which helped him embrace his gay identity and drove him to aspire to the “Western gay life” as depicted in the American series Queer as Folk.

Throughout his university years, Jie only returned to his hometown twice a year for summer and winter vacations. Despite the relatively open environment in Tianjin, he chose not to come out, especially not to his parents. He felt caught in a “double closet”—one formed by the heteronormative society and the other by Confucian familism. He feared that his parents would not accept his homosexuality, let alone the family lineage. This was not only due to traditional marriage and gender norms and sons’ productive duty to carry on the lineage, but also the fear that being gay would bring shame to his parents and the entire lineage. The concept of mianzi (面子, face or prestige) holds significant weight in Chinese society. Although he was not currently pressured by his parents to marry, he shelved the issue of coming out for the time being.
West Africa: a pathway from China to France
In the fall of 2016, during the third year of Jie’s four-year bachelor’s program, a dozen of his classmates was selected for a two-year exchange program in France. Despite his strong desire to participate, Jie decided not to go due to financial concerns—he did not want to burden his family. Instead, he devised a plan to pursue a master’s degree in one of the prestigious universities in Shanghai and secure a government scholarship to study in France as an exchange student. Unfortunately, his plan did not pan out, and he had to resort to a fallback option—working for a Chinese company in Francophone Africa with the hope of earning enough money to eventually fulfil his dream of studying in France. For many French-speaking graduates in China, Africa had become a significant employment destination due to the increasing economic ties between China and African countries.
In 2018, after completing his bachelor’s degree, Jie joined a private telecommunications company and was assigned to work as a commercial manager in Guinea. As an expatriate, he enjoyed a decent salary and had all living expenses covered by the company, including accommodation in a compound shared with other Chinese employees, vehicles with drivers, security guards, a Chinese cook providing three meals a day, and local domestic helpers. His job also allowed him to spend some time in neighbouring countries like Guinea-Bissau and Ivory Coast. Despite the relatively comfortable living conditions, Jie’s life in Guinea was marked by loneliness and boredom. On the one hand, due to strict company regulations and security concerns, he had limited freedom to move around independently. He found it challenging to make friends outside of his age group within the company or other Chinese companies. On the other hand, Jie had to hide his “true self” at work for fear of discrimination from his colleagues and also because Guinea is a country with a very unfriendly attitude toward homosexuality. As a result, he continued to seek connection with the LGBTQ+ community through dating apps, but most of his interactions with them remained confined to online chats.

Paris: where the dream came true and was shattered
In early 2020, Jie took a special trip to Paris before quitting his job. In the romantic city of light, he strolled freely through the gay district of Paris, le Marais, where he was carefree, just being himself, and went to the famous Parisian gay bar Le Raidd to enjoy naked man shower show. The good life was within reach, and that was the life he dreamed of. With two years of savings from working in Africa, Jie arrived in Paris to fulfil his dream of studying abroad. When asked about his motivations, he shared: “Pursuing my master’s degree and potentially a PhD were my primary goals in coming to France. The gay-friendly social environment was just an added benefit rather than the primary motivation behind my decision.” Jie hoped to ultimately achieve a successful academic career in China through the highly valued foreign degree and study abroad experience. Indeed, like his gay peers, Jie embedded the desire for sexual freedom in the normative aspiration for upward social mobility through study abroad.
Unfortunately, Jie’s arrival in France coincided with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected his daily life during his first years in Paris. Jie was eager to make some local friends, but all the classes were online and he could not go out and socialise because of the social distancing and multiple lockdowns. He still had very few foreign friends in 2021 when I met him in Paris for my master’s research on the trajectories of Chinese gay students. From time to time, Jie had contact with some gay people he chatted with on dating apps. Although he embraced his gay identity and became more liberal in both appearance and thought, he was initially very reluctant to adopt the liberal sex lives of his Western counterparts. He was very hopeful to experience his first romantic same-sex relationship in France. Nevertheless, dreams are beautiful, but they break quickly.
Jie thought he might be able to fall in love quickly in France, but that was not the reality. He still had to rely on dating apps to meet new people, and the “paradise” was not as beautiful as he had imagined. Most of the people he met were just looking for “casual fun”, even if they did not say so at first, and some of them labelled themselves as “discreet” or “straight curious”. He always thought that in Europe people could be whoever they wanted to be, and that no one should hide their “true self” or pretend to be someone they were not. Being visibly Asian in the Paris gay scene was sometimes a challenge for Jie. Some people would reject him directly with the excuse: “Sorry, not into Asians.” Meanwhile, many others straightforward put in their first message: “Hey, Asians turn me on.” He felt really uncomfortable and even disgusted in these circumstances because he felt that he was “being treated by these men simply as an exotic sexual object” and no one was even interested in getting to know him as an individual. He usually felt embarrassed, disappointed, and frustrated when people approached him with those sexual stereotypes of gay Asian men: having a small penis, being a submissive bottom, knowing how to give a massage, accepting sex in exchange for money, and so on.
Being gay was just one facet of Jie’s life in France. His lived experiences in France also changed his vision of long-term life plans. He enjoyed the carefree, slow-paced, and stress-free study and life abroad and chose to remain in Europe rather than return to China as originally planned. But he also realised that he had been too naive to think that moving abroad would bring him a bright future, and that a master’s or doctoral degree was neither a guarantee of employment nor a ladder of social ascension. His own savings ran out two years later and he had to rely on his parents’ financial support to continue his studies, although he felt sorry for making his parents work so hard. When we last met in 2023, he confessed that he had suddenly lost his way, did not know what to do, and had lost the motivation to work hard and move forward.

Stepping forward without knowing the destination
When I asked Jie about his next destination, he could not provide a clear answer because he was uncertain about his future. He replied in Mandarin, “zou yibu kan yibu (走一步看一步)”. This expression means to do something without planning and to make a decision according to the new situation. Jie’s life was unfolding without a fixed plan, and he was open to different possibilities. Regarding his academic path, Jie was unsure if he would pursue a PhD due to funding uncertainties. He did not want to rely solely on his family’s financial support and might consider returning to China if he cannot secure funding for further studies in France. He even contemplated the possibility of accepting a job offer in Africa if he faced extreme financial need, as he believed he could easily find opportunities there. Despite the uncertainties in his academic and professional life, Jie still held onto the hope of finding his Mr. Right and experiencing the romantic same-sex relationship he had always dreamed of.
Life, for Jie, is akin to a journey without a fixed destination—even if one set out with one—through which people on the move see all of life, both the sweet and the sour.
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Cai Chen (8 octobre 2024). Dis·illusion in Motion. Jeunes Chercheure·s Asie. Consulté le 19 juillet 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/12foo