Seven Same-Sex Couples From China Won A Contest And Got Married In West Hollywood

They beat more than 2,000 competitors in a contest sponsored by tech giant Alibaba. Some of them have waited for this moment for 13 years.













Seven Chinese same-sex couples got married on Tuesday at a city library in West Hollywood, California. The wedding trip was sponsored by Alibaba, China's online retail giant.



Another three couples who won the contest were unable to travel to the U.S. because of visa issues.


Lucy Nicholson / Reuters

















"I've been having a lot of dreams about the wedding these days; each time I woke up crying," Hu Zhidong, one-half of a couple from Beijing, told News. He and his new husband, Liu Xing, have been together for eight years.



Alibaba worked with LGBT rights organizations and the gay social networking app Blued to run this contest in February. Alibaba is the largest of several Chinese companies that have mounted PR efforts targeting gay and lesbian consumers in recent years. The unusually long detention this spring of five feminist activists — one of whom worked for an LGBT rights organization — appears to signal that the Chinese government is watching this kind of work even more closely.


Lucy Nicholson / Reuters

















Same-sex marriage is still unrecognized in China. The country removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses in 2001.



For more than a decade, LGBT rights activists in China have been running advocacy campaigns for marriage equality — especially around Valentine's Day — because it is a way to talk about LGBT rights without getting into more explicitly political terrain that could get them in trouble with the authorities.


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