Chen's mother's reaction is not uncommon in China, which only decriminalised homosexuality in 1997 and where the prospect of disappointed parents, discrimination at work and police harassment keeps most gays and lesbians firmly in the closet.

The 22-year-old Chen runs the Shanghai branch of China's first nationwide hotline for the country's estimated 40 to 50 million gays and lesbians. Since opening earlier this month, the hotline has received an average of 200 calls a week from across the country. Staffed by volunteers in Shanghai and Guangzhou for two hours a day and funded by the Hong Kong-based NGO the Chi Heng Foundation, the free service offers counselling, as well as health and legal advice.

"We talk about Aids prevention and teach people about safe sex, but mainly we receive calls from people who can't talk to their parents or friends about their problems, " says Chen. "In China so many gay people are married, or feel the need to get married, because of pressure from their parents, so they ask, 'Should I get married?' or, 'How can I get a divorce?'" With Confucianism stressing the importance of filial duty, few Chinese homosexuals are willing to come out to their parents. "Chinese tradition says you should have children. If you don't, then you're disappointing your parents by not carrying on the family line, " says Chen.

So most of China's homosexuals lead a secret second life, where gays are known as tongzhi, literally 'comrade'.

But it was only after the 1949 communist revolution that homosexuality was forced underground. Ancient Chinese history is full of tales of same-sex love and of arcane euphemisms such as the "passion of the cut sleeve", a reference to the way Emperor Ai of the Han dynasty would cut the sleeve of the robe on which his favourite male concubine was sleeping, so as not to wake him.

Most of the Han dynasty emperors took male lovers;

during the Song, Ming and Qing dynasties that followed, there was little persecution of homosexuals.

That tolerance ended during the puritanical Mao era.

Gays and lesbians were rounded up and imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution, and some were executed.

Homosexuals were routinely arrested for "hooliganism" until 1997, when the criminal code was amended, and as late as October 1999, a Beijing court ruled that homosexuality was "abnormal and unacceptable to the Chinese public". It wasn't until April 2001 that the Chinese Psychiatric Foundation removed homosexuality from China's official list of mental illnesses.

Despite that, there are still periodic crackdowns on gays and lesbians. Last December, Beijing police prevented China's first gay and lesbian festival from going ahead at its original venue. When the participants attempted to reconvene at Beijing's most popular gay bar, the On/Off Bar, the police ordered the bar to shut. "It's safe to be gay in your home, but not so much when you're outside, " says Chen.

There are signs of the beginning of a more liberal attitude towards homosexuality. So far the authorities have ignored the new hotline.

Shanghai's Fudan University launched a gay and lesbian studies course last September, the first of its kind in China, which has proved popular with students.

But a proposal to legalise homosexual marriages was rejected by the government in March. "We have a long way to go before that happens, " says Chen.