Top gay dating site 2016
His mother was stricken with cancer and Mr. Ma’s relationship with his wife soon dissolved.
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“Both of his parents were very traditional, and they thought their kid had a really good job,” said Wu Guoxin, 38, a friend from the police academy. But when his supervisors confronted him about his website in 2012, he offered his resignation. He married, under pressure from friends and family. Ma kept up the routine for more than a decade. In his spare time, he raced to the keyboard, writing essays for Danlan and chatting with friends under the pseudonym Geng Le. Ma chased burglars, filed incident reports and recorded public service announcements. Danlan soon became a popular way for gay men in China to connect in an age when many had been resorting to scrawling meeting dates and places on bathroom stalls, worried about the stigma of coming out.Īt work, Mr. The site offered chat forums and advice on reducing the risk of H.I.V.
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Ma was inspired in 2000 to start his own website,, Chinese for “light blue,” evoking the clear coastal skies of his childhood. On health websites, he was bombarded with recommendations to seek medication and electroshock treatment.Īfter becoming a police officer, Mr. But instead of finding a supportive community, he found rants describing gay people as lunatics and perverts. “When I realized I was different from other people,” he recalled, “I thought I was ill.” Ma took courses on criminal psychology where cadets were told that gay people should be viewed suspiciously because they were more likely to commit crimes. It was there, he said, in a macho culture that revolved around talking about women, that he realized he was gay.Īt the time, in the mid-1990s, gay sex was considered a crime in China and homosexuality was classified as a psychological disorder. But his parents thought his dreams were too costly, and he was sent to the local police academy instead. Ma hoped to go to college and become a teacher. Growing up in northern China as the son of a factory worker and a housewife, Mr. Attracting advertising remains difficult, with some companies reluctant to be associated with a business that caters to gay people. Like many popular technology start-ups in China, Blued is only beginning to make a profit most of its services, including chat, live-streaming and a news feed, are free. Ma’s instincts into an enduring business model has proved challenging. The spending power of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in China is estimated at $460 billion per year, making them the largest market in Asia, according to LGBT Capital, an investment management firm.īut translating Mr. Ma also sees a lucrative business opportunity in China’s so-called pink economy, as more people look to spend money on gay-themed social networking sites, entertainment and travel. “The internet can help support gay lifestyles, to make people know they are not alone and that their feelings are genuine.” “In the past people wouldn’t even talk about homosexuality because they thought it was dirty, it was filthy,” he said. Ma, 39, said he saw his mission as working to legitimize same-sex relationships at a time when gay people, especially in China, still face discrimination. He created Blued, now China’s most popular gay dating app with an estimated value of $600 million and more than three million active daily users, about as many as Grindr, a popular gay dating app in the United States. Ma set out to turn his passion for connecting gay people into an empire.
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His job lost, his family struggling to accept his sexuality, Mr. Then in 2012, his superiors at a police department in Qinhuangdao, a coastal city in Hebei Province, uncovered his website and he resigned.
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Ma kept his secret, worried that coming out would mean expulsion from the police force and estrangement from his family. By night, he led a life as a gay man, furtively running a website for gay people across China at a time when many were viewed as criminals and deviants.įor 16 years, Mr. BEIJING - Ma Baoli was accustomed to secrets.īy day, he was a police officer in northern China with a wife and a knack for street chases.