Sam Mercer is Unveil China's lead writer. He is a British gay travel writer who has been based in Chengdu since 2019, and he writes the site's safety, dating-app and city guides from first-hand experience — the hotel check-ins, the club nights, the VPN that died at the worst possible moment.

Sam moved to Chengdu — the city locals half-jokingly call “Gaydu” — in 2019, and it has been his base for exploring queer life across the country ever since. Over the years he has reported from more than a dozen Chinese cities, from the bathhouses of the north to the bar streets of the south, as well as across Hong Kong, Taipei, Bangkok and Tokyo. He has checked into the hotels, queued at the club doors, tested the apps and the VPNs, and had the awkward and the wonderful conversations that no amount of desk research can replace.

What he writes about

Sam's focus is honest, practical orientation for LGBTQ+ travellers — the kind of guidance you would get from a well-travelled friend who actually lives there. He covers the questions queer visitors really ask:

His approach

Sam's rule is the same one that guides Unveil China: honesty over hype. China is neither a gay paradise nor a place to fear, and he refuses to write it as either. He aims to tell travellers how it really is — discretion rather than danger, warmth rather than welcome-parades — so they can travel with awareness instead of anxiety. Where the picture is complicated, he says so; where something has changed, he updates the page and stamps the date.

A note on the name: like a number of writers covering LGBTQ+ life in China, Sam publishes under a pen name. It protects his ability to keep reporting honestly and to protect the people he meets along the way. The experience, the cities and the first-hand reporting are real.

Read Sam's guides

Want Sam to cover your city, or to write for Unveil China? partnership@unveilchina.com