GROWING up as a queer Asian person in Australia can be a unique and tiring ordeal.

Trying to figure out which culture you belong to as well as dealing with potential racism is a commonly shared experience.


Edison Chen aims to flesh out the intricacies and influences that exist within this cultural mesh.

“Kiss more Asians,” Ray Yeung joked at the Mardi Gras Film Festival Q&A for his movie Front Cover – a Chinese love drama.

In attendance was an audience compromised of mostly gay Asian men and we all silently acknowledged each other’s collective experiences as some chuckled at this comment.

The underlying sentiments behind these words were all understood like a piece of ironic fashion though.

We all knew because of our shared cultural background that we all took part on a similar journey of sexual racism.

When asked about his reasons for making the movie, Ray answered that he noticed a lack of gay Asian men who were interested in other gay Asian men in western countries.

In one scene in the movie, a young Caucasian man eyes and approaches the main character Ryan as he and his love interest Ning dance in a nightclub.

Suddenly, the stranger starts to kiss Ryan’s neck and in that particular moment you enter the same space as we imagine ourselves in Ryan’s place of who to pursue. Does Ryan reciprocate the young handsome white man’s affection or keep his attention on his new friend whose cultural similarities helped bring them together?

In a bigger sense, I think this imaginary situation touches something deeper and real in a lot of us. Ryan is a character who embodies the first-generation story of an Asian person born into Western society. Reflected in the fragments of his personality are echoes of Asian gay men who live in Western countries. People whose everyday lives becomes a negotiated and cultural amalgamation of Asian, Western and queer identities.