Chinese Communists won’t call each other ‘comrade’ anymore because of gay people
The Chinese Communist Party is facing derision after it called for members to refer to each other as ācomradeā.
The term had been common in the country under Maoās leadership, but has grown unpopular as the country has modernised.
Communist leadersā calls for the term to become commonplace once more have fallen flat, as the term has come to mean something quite different.
The Chinese word for ācomradeā is tĆ³ngzhƬ (ååæ), which used to be a common term of address in Communist China, used by everyone whether male, female, young, old, rural, urban, party official or peasant.
A literal translation of the term into English would be āsame intentā.
It also shares the same first syllable as the word for same-sex love, which is tĆ³ngxƬngliĆ n (åę§ę).
It is for this reason that Chinaās LGBT community came to adopt the term, frequently using the term ātĆ³ngzhƬā to refer to a fellow gay person.
The practice started in Hong Kong in the late 1980s as a way to defy the sexually repressive Communists.
Ever since the LGBT community in Mainland China adopted the expression, the bulk of people in the country have started to avoid it.
Beijing Gay rights activist and filmmaker Fan Popo told the New York Times: āEven the ticket-takers on the bus ā the people who you would not really expect to know the modern lingo ā donāt say ācomradeā anymore because they know what it means among young people.ā
Meanwhile President Xi Jinping is still trying to turn the clock back and re-establish ācomradeā as a routine term.
After a meeting last month of the Communist Partyās Central Committee, leaders issued a directive urging party members to forego titles in favor of the revolutionary throwback to ācomradeā.
They also want the Communist partyās more than 90 million members to refer to him as Party Secretary, not as president.
Typical Chinese now use forms of address like āmisterā or āmissā, job titles, or familial terms like āsisterā, ābrotherā or āauntieā.
