Photo: Beijing Queer Chorus Weibo account

Amid International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia (IDAHOTB), the Beijing Queer Chorus performed a song about a romantic relationship between two male giraffes on Sunday. The goal was to show how sexual diversity is included in nature and to provoke thought: if nature can respect sexual preferences, then why can't humans do the same?

The song "Giraffe, the Sweet" produced by the Beijing Queer Chorus was posted on Weibo along with its music video. The video relies on Chinese shadow puppetry to tell the story of the male giraffes.

"Besides giraffes, there are many gay couples among other animals such as penguins. If you can understand them with a curious and open mind, we hope more people can use this kind of understanding, open and friendly attitude to look upon differences in the human society," said chorus member Yifan to the Global Times on Sunday.

The related hashtag #IDAHOTB has been viewed over 480 million times on Weibo as of press time.

About the song 

In the video, a female giraffe and a male giraffe meet, but they do not communicate. Afterward, the male meets Mr Right and they fall in love.  

The male giraffes rub their long necks against each other. Among giraffes, there is more same-sex than opposite-sex activity. Researchers found that gay sex, rather than mating sex, accounts for over 90 percent of all observed sexual activities in male giraffes," according to the music video. 

Yifan said shadow puppetry was chosen because they wanted a vague method to display and interpret an explicit theme.

The choir also wrote vague and simple lyrics like "so long, so long" and "long necks, bent necks" to avoid telling the story directly. "We hope the lyrics and pictures are a little hazy and fuzzy as the story belongs to giraffes and we are just narrators."

Around 30 people participated in the production and because of the COVID-19 epidemic, they had to record their parts separately.

"The production process was long. We put forward the idea in September and then collected materials for a long time," Yifan said. "We did not start setting it to music until this year's Spring Festival."

The song about giraffes is only one from a series themed on sexual diversity in the nature. 

A gay penguin couple at the Harbin Zoo in Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province also caught the attention of the chorus members. The penguins were caught trying to steal an opposite-sex couples' eggs so they could have babies but were discovered by breeders.

To achieve their parenting dream, breeders picked an abandoned egg for them to raise. "The penguins' story is also interesting and touching. Another song in the series is based on the penguin couple.

China's IDAHOTB

More than 400,000 netizens joined in discussions on IDAHOTB on Sunday. "Love is love. The society should be more tolerant, respectful and understandable to the community of sexual minorities to eliminate people's discriminations to the normal and sweet relations," one of netizens appealed to others on Weibo.

Jia Fujun, director of the Guangdong Mental Health Center, also appealed to others, urging respect for sexual preferences and clarified again that LGBT+ is not a disease or abnormal, while speaking in a video sent to the LGBT rights advocacy China.

"A society has three stages to consider the community of LGBTQ, perverts, sexual minorities and sexual diversities. China is now in the stage of sexual minorities," Jia said. "We should know more about the group and try to step in the stage of sexual diversities earlier."

The Beijing Queer Chorus, founded in 2008, is the first Asian choral group to perform in international LGBT+ chorus festivals. The choir has over 100 members with 60 percent sexual minorities, and 40 percent made up of allies, according to the chorus' introduction sent to the Global Times.