In the shocking report, the newspaper exposed several quack doctors and their so-called treatments, including electric shock therapies, traditional Chinese medicine treatments and even wizardry.
Chen Wei has been bothered by his affection for the same sex for a long time. Having had no proper guidance from anyone, he decided that it's a disease, and found a Beijing clinic online, which claimed to have cures for homosexuality.
There, a doctor named Wang Kuixing told Chen that his sexual preference is an illness caused by "meridian obstruction," a term often used in traditional Chinese medicine to imply that the flow of qi and blood has been disrupted. He suggested the injection of collagen into blocked acupoints, and promised Chen that it was totally harmless, and would cure him in three days' time.
The treatment cost Chen more than 10,000 yuan (1,573 US dollars). While Chen and his family were considering the treatment, they learned about another clinic which offered an alternate therapy.
That so-called therapy was more like wizardry. The clinic alleged that certain processes to drive away evil spirits, reading of some spells or wearing charms could treat homosexuality.
The man who performed the tricks called himself Director Zhong. After inspecting Chen in his clinic, a room less than 20 square meters, Director Zhong told him that his homosexuality was the result of his dead pet parrot, which had been haunting him.
"I can see this parrot; it has come back for revenge," said Zhong.
In an attempt to "cure" him, Zhong made some rather odd gestures while murmuring unidentifiable spells, and smacked Chen on his head, back and shoulders over 20 times. He then wrote Chen a charm on a yellow paper, and wrapped it in a red paper, and asked him to always carry it with him. Zhong also gave Chen a Chinese medicine prescription, which is made using ginger, jujube, astragali and longan.
Despite all the attempts to "convert" his sexual preference, Chen was never converted. On the contrary, he was left with emotional trauma, the Beijing News reported.
According to an investigative report by the Beijing LGBT Center, nearly one-tenth of the 1,600 people surveyed had sought "conversion" treatment under the pressure of either their family or the society, but none of them has ever been "cured".
In fact, there are a growing number of people in the country calling for a stop to these treatments that see homosexuality as a disease. Other than the fact that the Chinese Psychiatric Association had stopped classifying homosexuality as a mental disease in 2000, a Chinese court also for the first time ruled against a clinic in a "gay conversion" case in December 2014.
Peng Yanhui, the plaintiff in the case, sued a clinic in Chongqing in March 2014, after it promised him that it could cure his homosexuality, via hypnosis and electric shock therapy every time he thought of gay sex.
The court in Beijing ruled in favor of Peng, and ordered the clinic to pay him 3,500 yuan (563 US dollars) in compensation. This was the first time that China had legally indicated that homosexuality is not a disease, according to the Beijing News.
On why there's still a chaotic market for "gay conversion" clinics, some experts say that the key reason is the lack of knowledge about homosexuality.
"If the LGBT group choose to seek cures themselves, it would give those illegal clinics an excuse," said sexologist Fang Gang.
Experts are also calling for morals from the psychological clinics, to guide the LGBT groups to understand themselves, rather than making them to think of themselves as patients and trying to cure them.
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