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Cozy Nest is quickly forced to “[close] its doors for good” to prevent anybody associated with
the tavern – and by extension, homosexuality – being exposed by name (313).
The fate of the Cozy Nest in Crystal Boys presents an interesting anecdote about the
variable impacts of private homosexual experiences that become publicly available. The
circulation of texts about homoerotic liaisons reveals the miscommunication between a
marginalized homosexual subculture and the dominant heterosexist society. Crystal Boys offers
its own publicly distributed “report” to shed light on the private experiences of a shadowy gay
community, forging a discursive space for homosexuality to emerge. Other queer Chinese fiction
from Taiwan and Hong Kong such as Chen Ruoxi’s Paper Marriage 《 纸 婚 》 (1986) and Zhu
Tianwen’s Notes of a Desolate Man 《 荒 人 手 记 》(1994) similarly sparked discussion about
tongzhi topics (Chang and Wang 1995; Yeh 1998). These novels take homosexuality as their
subject, increasing awareness of the underground tongzhi experience in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and
diasporic Chinese communities (Chi 2002; Huang 2010).
However, gay-themed literature was not produced in the People’s Republic of China
(PRC) until the advent of the internet in 1994 when writers disseminated tongzhi texts online.
This new media platform made it possible for people on the mainland to gain access to tongzhi
stories (Ho 2010). To date, notable scholarship has been conducted on the homosexual
community and queer literature within Hong Kong and Taiwan (e.g.: Huang 2011; Rofel 2007).
In contrast, Comrade fiction from the PRC has not yet received critical attention, despite the
nation’s rich history and rapidly changing sociopolitical environment for homosexuals. There are
now hundreds and thousands of stories designated as “Comrade Novels” ( 同 志 小 说 tongzhi
xiaoshuo) archived on various Chinese websites. A quick search of “tongzhi wenxue” on
Baidu.com will reveal that it is not unusual for popular tongzhi websites to have millions of
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