Network: 
News - After a three week delay, China's first government backed gay bar finally opened. The bar in Dali, a town in the province of Yunnan was originally supposed to open on the 1st of December but the huge amount of media attention at the time put off volunteers involved with the venue.
Zhang Jianbo, founder of the organisation behind the initiative, the Dali HIV/AIDS prevention and health association, told AFP that the bar finally opened in a low-key fashion on Saturday.
The Dali gay bar was set up with support from the local government which invested 120.000 yuan in Zhang's charity. The venue aims to be a relaxed meetingplace for gay men and a place where they can find information about HIV/AIDS.
Homosexuality is still a sensitive issue in China and was considered a mental illness until 2001. Part of this sensitivity is caused by the one-child policy in the country which makes parents rely on their only child to marry and produce offspring.
An estimate by the official China Daily newspaper in 2005 said that around 30 million Chinese are homosexual but only a very small group of them are out.
