Video: We followed this Chinese gay KOL to Gay Pride in Taiwan

Xiaohun, a gay KOL (key opinion leader) from China, runs a successful WeChat official account dedicated to the LGBT community in China. Starting in June 2015, he now has over 20,000 followers on WeChat. He mostly writes about same-sex marriage, equality, and sometimes he shares his life in a rural island in Fujian Province, where he lives together with his boyfriend.

If you can’t see anything, try iQiyi instead.

Once Xiaohun learned that  Gay Pride would take place at the end of October, he knew that he had to go—with his boyfriend.

“We’ve never been to a gay pride parade before, so I asked around on my WeChat official account,” Xiaohun told TechNode. “I received lots of comments. Some said we could meet up here at the parade, so I created a group and chatted on and off.”

For Xiaohun, the WeChat official account isn’t just a place to post personal photos and diaries but serves as a platform for the underserved LGBT community in China.

“In the past, gay people didn’t have their own platform,” he said. “Now that we have WeChat official accounts, we can report on our own stories by ourselves. I’m the reporter who reports on myself.”

As a KOL, Xiaohun has to put himself in the spotlight and often times shares his personal stories as a gay man. “I’ve come out to my colleagues and parents when I started to write,” he said. “I had no concerns, and could just write whatever I want.”

“I got thousands of followers in the first month—way faster than I expected,” said Xiaohun, adding that WeChat, as a platform, is a good place for the LGBT community to exchange information.