Meet Our Scholars

Yingyi grew up in a traditional Hakka family in southern China, Guangdong. She came to experience in early childhood the intersections of oppression for being an ethnic minority in China and for her gender identity as a woman in a patriarchal Hakka family. Upon realizing her bisexuality and after coming out, it became even more difficult for her to reconcile between her family and sexuality. These lived experiences have helped Yingyi reflect upon the intersectional inequality for LGBTQ persons and ignite the fire in her to engage in change and organize toward social justice in China. Yingyi started her activism as a young feminist in college in 2011 to campaign for gender equality. She believes that hope lies ultimately in education. In order to effect change, from 2011 to 2014 she became a sex education peer trainer for Marie Stope International China. In 2013, Yingyi co-founded the first national bisexual organization, r&B bisexual group, to raise the awareness of the Chinese queer community and beyond on issues pertaining to bisexuality, intersectionality, non-binary sexualities. In 2016, the group published the first handbook on bisexuality in China. Yingyi also serves on the steering committee in a regional LBT organization from 2015 to 2018. Yingyi received her master’s degree from the University of Hong Kong with her pioneering research on cooperative marriage between gay men and lalas in mainland China. Her doctoral research looks at the precarity of NGO workers, including LGBTQ activists, in neoliberal China. Yingyi is always finding ways to bridge her activism and scholarship so as to help promote a just society.