Thai boys’ love pilgrimages and experiential tourism: Chinese female fandom in a queer utopia

Abstract

This study examines the rise of Thai Boys’ Love (BL) fandom and its role in transnational fan tourism, particularly among Chinese female fans. Since the legalization of same-sex marriage in Thailand in 2024, BL fandom has fueled a surge in queer experiential tourism–fan meetings, filming site pilgrimages, and live events–that blur fiction and reality while reinforcing parasocial bonds. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Bangkok and interviews with urban Chinese fans, this study identifies three interrelated themes: (1) fan-organized public events as queer ‘coming-out’ moments; (2) affective pilgrimage and temporal–spatial mapping; and (3) the politics of ‘facial value’ and mediated intimacy. These practices illustrate how fans engage with BL not just through consumption, but via embodied, collective rituals that reconfigure identity, space, and desire. Thai BL offers a space of queer longing and self-reinvention, contrasting with the overly curated image of Chinese ‘little fresh meat’ (小鮮肉) idols. The linguistic distance from Thai enables a safe space for emotional projection, while the actors’ perceived sincerity and cosmopolitan yet non-Western appeal encourage a subtle Orientalizing gaze–one that paradoxically helps fans imagine alternate futures and reinvent the Chinese self through queer, transnational affect.