Eddy's Bar marks 15 years at the forefront of Shanghai LGBT history

As Eddy goes to pour me the whisky coke I ordered on his insistence, I sit back and listen to the techno remix of The Fifth Dimension’s “Let the Sunshine In” pounding through the speakers as red glow spills out of all the light fixtures, illuminating the Westerners and the Shanghainese who congregate at one of the most welcoming locales in Shanghai. 

As I take in the scene, I spot a group of 20-something patrons seated at an adjacent table, a Cultural Revolution-era Coca-Cola advertisement looming above them. Comrades watching over today's "comrades" (the term once used during the Cultural Revolution is now synonymous with "gay" in Chinese). 

Before I can acknowledge the wink and smile I’m being flashed, Eddy -- he only goes by his first name and is seemingly omnipresent in the bar -- has returned with my cocktail and is ready to chat about the role his bar (eponymously named Eddy’s Bar) has played in the development of Shanghai’s LGBT community since it opened its doors 15 years ago. 

Going back to the 1990s

In its early days, Eddy’s restaurant Accordion served primarily as a quiet meeting place for Shanghai’s growing community of gay men. So when food sales dwindled enough that he had to close his doors for good, a friend suggested the young entrepreneur get practical instead of pouty. He did just that and played on the old venue's strengths, opening a bar, Eddy’s Bar, in 1995, which openly served the city’s gay, lesbian and bisexual community in Shanghai as well as those who enjoy their company. 

It was the first of its kind in the city.

The original venue, Shanghai’s first openly LGBT-friendly bar, located on Shanghai’s Weihai Lu in the heart of downtown Shanghai, immediately drew standing room-only crowds. Shanghai’s first gay bar was open and people were talking -- and coming in droves.

But Eddy, now 47, didn’t intend for the watering hole to become a gay establishment -- or at least that’s what he’d tell the police whenever they came to shut him down.

“Seven times,” he tells me without hesitation about the various police raids that have happened since the bar opened. “Not since we moved [to the current location] in 2002. But back in the 1990s, it was not okay to have a gay bar in Shanghai.”

So what, if anything, has changed since 1995?

Although homosexuality is no longer a mental disorder in China -- on April 20, 2001, the Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders formally removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses -- Eddy explains that “There are still no laws that ensure gay businesses the right to operate so officially, we don’t say we’re a ‘gay’ bar."

But along with psychological classifications, things are changing, albeit slowly.

In April of 2002, Eddy’s Bar moved to its new concrete-walled location on Huaihai Lu, but it wasn’t until 2003 that Eddy says he really began to see change in the local community. 

“When SARS happened in 2003, although people started getting so sick and everyone was afraid, at the same time more foreigners were coming to China and things just became more open," he explains. "In big cities you saw an expansion of gay life here at a very unlikely time.” 

The trend has continued in the city up to today, with the opening of a number of LGBT-friendly bars around Shanghai and even the city's first Shanghai Pride event last year. Although there might be new competitors on the field, Eddy's Bar is still a scene stalwart, respected in the community for coming out far before the others made their way onto the radar.

The next generation

By now, my one-on-one conversation with Eddy has expanded into a community discussion -- in line, it seems, with what Eddy was going for when he first set up shop off Weihai Lu. 

A young local sporting a baseball cap and cut-off shorts chimes in about the future of Shanghai's gay community. “I have hope," he says, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "You know, my cousin is 17 years old and has gay friends -- openly gay friends -- at school. Things will be different in the future.”

But in the meantime, when he and his friends want to gather, they still choose Eddy's inclusive environment where comrades can be just that without judgment.

"No judgments," might as well be Eddy's motto as the little bar has carved out an undeniable niche, open to anyone who's open to others, over the past decade and a half, even as the city around it transforms on its own schedule.

“I don’t mean to say anything bad about people in Shanghai,” says another, dropping into our conversation, “but they try so hard to be high class they forget about people like us. Sometimes, it’s nice just to go a place, laugh and love in Shanghai without fear.”

getting there

Eddy’s Bar
1877 Huaihai Zhong Lu, near Tianping Lu
上海市淮海中路1877号, 近天平路
+86 21 6282 0521
Hours: daily 7pm-2am