El Chino Latino serves as a half restaurant-half night club, providing patrons with hybrid Chinese Latin American food and drag shows, dancing, and drinks. Open since before the early 2000’s, El Chino Latino represents a unique intersection of the Chinese, Latinex, and LGBT+ communities. Historically, the queer community has been a crossroads of people of all races, religions, and socioeconomic backgrounds, from transgender women of color to homosexual Jewish men. Therefore, the significance of El Chino Latino’s intersectionality cannot be understated; many individuals, particularly within the LGBTQ+ community struggle to find spaces which cater to multiple aspects of their identity. El Chino Latino serves as both a safe space and a meeting place for a community which faces prejudice based on both race and sexuality. Establishments like this can be very validating to the individual.

On April 17, 2015 El Chino Latino hosted the First Annual Miss Gay Durham- RTP America Pageant, a preliminary for Miss Gay America North Carolina and the first official pageant of its kind to take place in Durham. Miss Gay America, or MGA, is the oldest, largest, and most well respected pageant system for female impersonators in the world. Beginning in Tennessee in 1972, the MGA pageants continue today with regional qualifiers across the country. Today, El Chino Latino remains open, catering to a wide variety of audiences: primarily transgender women of color and other queer Latinx individuals.

EDIT: Unfortunately, El Chino Latino is no longer in operation.

For more information:

El Chino Latino Facebook Page

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