Zeng met Pan, 27, a demobilised soldier last November at a bar. One month after their first date, Pan broke up with his girlfriend and moved to Zeng’s apartment. However, they faced pressure and prejudice. “Sometimes, I even had to tell others that Pan was my adopted son. We finally moved back to my hometown of Luodai, a remote town in eastern Chengdu, where nobody knew us.”

The couple finally made their choice – to get married in a bar frequented by male homosexuals, which was unprecedented in the city. More than 200 of the couple’s friends who shared their orientation were invited to the wedding but many guests who saw their wedding photos were surprised to find the bride in the white wedding gown was a man.

Same-sex marriages are not recognised in the country, and it is claimed that the Zeng-Pan wedding ceremony is the first such public event in the country. The country has roughly 30 million homosexuals – 20 million gay men and the remaining, lesbians, according to estimates by Zhang Beichuan, a professor at Qingdao University and an expert on homosexuality and HIV/AIDS prevention. The professor found in a survey of 1,259 homosexuals that 8.7 per cent were fired or forced to resign after revealing their sexual orientation, and 4.7 per cent felt their salary and career advancement were affected. Some 62 per cent keep their sexual orientation a secret in the workplace.