LI Chen vividly remembers the surreal phone call that brought his little angel to his doorstep in October 2008.

“There’s a newborn girl abandoned at the hospital. Do you want her?” asked Li’s mother from his hometown in southwestern China.

Li, 30 at the time and gay, was at a Halloween party in downtown Beijing, but said “yes” without hesitation.

Li and his partner, Jack, are among the lucky few same-sex couples who have fulfilled their dream of parenthood in China, where neither marriage nor adoptions is allowed for gays.

Li completed the adoption process in the name of his parents. He registered himself as the girl’s father on her permanent residence permit.

“We reached a deal with the local civil affairs bureau,” Li says, without detailing how it was done. He runs a design company and lives in Beijing with Jack from the UK, his partner for 11 years.

There are always problems as children grow up, and an unconventional family like his is sure to face more, Li says. “However, we’ll give her enough love to make her feel safe and confident.”

Despite rising tolerance toward the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community, the issue remains off the public agenda. In June, the worldwide “Pride Month,” the rainbow flag is rarely seen even in Beijing and Shanghai.

After the earthquake in Li’s home province of Sichuan in May 2008, he told his mother he wanted to adopt an orphan. His mother consulted the local civil affairs bureau and was told that “1,000 candidates are vying for each orphan.”

Months later, the bureau told her about an unwanted girl, allegedly the fifth daughter of biological parents who yearned for a boy, a common gender prejudice in China.

“If I hadn’t adopted her, she would have been left at the local welfare center, already crammed with unwanted baby girls,” says Li. The baby girl was taken to Beijing when she was 6 months old.

Li recalls his first meeting with her at Beijing airport: “I saw the little girl, very thin, with dark skin and short hair. She was looking around curiously ... Everything about her seemed terrific to me. At that moment, I knew that I’d love her with all my heart, forever.”

Li says Jack, 13 years older than him, is a meticulous dad who has invested more time and energy in the child.

“Becky is on his mind wherever he goes,” says Li of Jack. “I’m proud to say he has done a better job than many mothers. He enjoys providing day-to-day care and is really good at it.”

Nevertheless, Jack insists on being called “uncle,” rather than “dad,” to shield her from prejudice and hostility in a society where gay parenting is virtually unheard of.

The couple have identified themselves as gay to family, friends and some work mates, but are more cautious about coming out as parents.

Even if she goes to an international school, Jack believes such caution is still essential. On Becky’s first day at kindergarten, Li wrote a letter to her teacher, talking about the unusual family structure and asked for the teacher’s help in case Becky got any trouble from other kids or their parents. “I did that because I really care about what’s on her mind and how she feels,” Li says.

Yang Xiaobian, roughly the same age as Becky, has lesbian parents — Yu Peiheng and Nan Fan — who reside in a small city in Shandong Province.

“The girl has brought us unparalleled happiness, and thanks to her, we’ve become stronger and feel closer to each other,” says Yu, a government employee.

Yang calls Yu mommy and Nan mom. The couple met and fell in love in high school 20 years ago and have been together ever since. Nan became pregnant through artificial insemination and ended her sham marriage to a gay man months after Yang was born. Then, the pair moved out of the apartment they shared with Nan’s ex-husband and bought their own in a nearby city.

Some Chinese LGBT marry to appease their conservative parents, but such marriages are often mere camouflage and they still live with their partners.

Although Nan’s ex-husband did not provide his sperm, he agreed to be listed as Yang’s father on her birth certificate and therefore helped her secure a hukou (residence permit).

In the beginning, like many novice parents, Yu and Nan dedicated themselves entirely to their new home. Yu pushed herself very hard to pay off the large loan and save for Yang’s future, while Nan got stuck in household chores and child care.

Stress led to conflict. They began yelling at each other, emphasizing their own sacrifice for the family and criticizing the other’s indifference.

It was their daughter who stopped the squabbling and prodded the couple to introspect, Yu says. “Once I was crying after a fight with Nan. She came to hug me and said, ‘Mommy, don’t be sad. I love you, and mom loves you too’.”

No matter how much love they get from their same-sex parents, the children pose a big question: “Why don’t I have mom/dad?” or “Why do I have two moms/dads?”

The questions can be thornier for Chinese homosexual couples, as many remain in the closet or have revealed their sexuality only to their parents. Yu and Nan belong to the latter category.

Yu believes there is no hurry to broach the subject with Yang, who is told her dad and mom have divorced. A false alarm came once, however. “At a restaurant, she suddenly asked ‘Why are we all women?’ probably after noticing our difference from other tables,” Yu recalls.

Caught off guard, the couple were speechless. More surprisingly, the girl did not ask for an answer but went right back to concentrating on her food.

“When and how to tell her the truth will depend on when she becomes old enough to understand the situation,” Yu says, adding that a family with two mothers does not really feel out of place at Yang’s kindergarten, which features Western education ideas and stresses equality and freedom.

Although they have not come out as lesbian parents to the teachers and other parents, “they may have figured it all out” in an Internet era, Yu says.

However, Yu fears the family’s difference may eventually hurt Yang as she grows, as it is difficult for most Chinese schools to accept different values — let alone homosexuality — or provide sex education for children. “So parents must fill the void. We’ll teach her to live with dignity and accept whatever she has, and as parents, we should set good examples for her,” she says.

For another lesbian couple, Mo Zhu and Xin Lan, justifying their family structure to their son requires careful planning and heavy spending.

Living in southern China’s Guangdong Province, Mo works at a bank and Xin teaches at a university. They both married gay men. Mo is divorced and Xin is separated. Through artificial insemination Xin gave birth to a boy, but her husband is not the child’s biological father.

Mo and Xin have worked out a plan. When the boy, now 14 months old, learns to speak, he is to call Xin mom, Mo auntie, and Xin’s husband dad. In the future, they will tell the boy about the breakup of his mom and dad, and probably send him abroad for a more open-minded education.

For these unconventional families, it’s hard to dodge the pressure of being different, but how parents handle it has a huge impact on their children, says Yanhong Wheeler, a parenting specialist and best-selling author in China.

They should teach their children about diverse family patterns, including those with two dads or moms, and encourage them to be proud of being unique, she says.

She says it is tolerable for Chinese gay parents to tell white lies to their children since discrimination and stigma still prevail.

“I believe children will understand their parents when they grow up. They will realize that they were protected by the untold truth, but they will feel resentment and pain for a period of time,” she says.

Li dreads that total honesty may entail lifelong pain. “We haven’t come up with a plan, but we really don’t want to say she was abandoned; it’ll ruin her self-esteem,” he says.

The couple named their daughter in Chinese after a legendary heroine in ancient China. “We hope Becky can be strong, brave and confident,” he says.

Xiao Bo and his partner of six years prepared well before they decided to have twins with a surrogate mother in Thailand — commercial surrogacy is banned in China.

“We want desperately to have babies simply because we love children,” says Xiao, who runs his own business in Guangdong.

The process, if everything goes smoothly, will cost them US$40,000-50,000, he says. “The surrogacy agency doesn’t guarantee success.”

Now the 3-month-old embryos are in the uterus of a Thai woman. The eggs were donated by a UK woman and fertilized in vitro with sperm from both men.

The nationality of the twins will be Thai, but the couple will take them back to China and use guanxi (connections) with authorities to obtain their legal papers.

They also plan to come out to their parents two months before the babies are born. “We need their help to care for the children,” Xiao says.

There is a great demand for babies among Chinese gay couples, especially those in their 30s who want to settle down, says A Qiang, executive director of PFLAG China, an organization dedicated to eliminating the stigma attached to sexual minorities.

For obvious reasons, lesbians are much more likely to have children than gay men in China. Due to stringent limits at home, some affluent gay couples have turned to overseas surrogacy services, with the US as the most popular destination, says A Qiang.

A customer service worker with US-Sino Infertility Bridge Co Ltd says the company has helped 16 Chinese gay couples become parents and seven others had signed contracts.

With a total package costing 960,000 yuan (US$153,000), the agency helps connect customers with egg donors, host mothers, a fertility clinic and a lawyer in the US. It also pays for three attempts at in vitro fertilization.

“If you’re not picky about egg donors and surrogate mothers, you need only about a year to see your baby,” says the worker.

The solution is no panacea, since the babies are denied hukou when they get to China, A Qiang says.

As an alternative to costly overseas surrogacy, some gay men choose to marry an unwitting heterosexual woman for a child, he says. To prevent such tragedies, he said the ban on gay adoption should be lifted and policy-makers should hear the needs of sexual minorities.

Although little attention has been paid to same-sex parenting in China, people in some countries have long jousted in and out of courtrooms about whether children growing up with same-sex parents would face problems.

There is no recognized evidence that children raised by gay or lesbian parents have any “defects” or are more likely to be homosexual themselves compared with those brought up by traditional couples, said Yanhong Wheeler, the parenting specialist.

Her view was underpinned by a 2013 statement supporting gay parenting, released by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The organization, which represents more than 60,000 pediatricians, says it supports civil marriage for same-gender couples, as well as full adoption and foster care rights for all parents, regardless of sexual orientation.

In a 2006 article, AAP concluded that more than 25 years of research have found no link between parents’ sexual orientation and their children’s emotional well being.

However, vocal opponents remain, accusing gays and lesbians of breaking the “natural law” or going against “God’s will.”

Sexologist Zhang Beichuan has always encouraged lesbian couples to have a child if they want to, but suggests gay men think twice before making the decision. “Relationships between gay men are markedly less stable than lesbian couples,” Zhang says.

In addition, a common concern in academia is the impact of not having a male or female role model at home, he says. “Some same-sex parents I know are working to fill the void.”

Yu and Nan are trying to make Nan’s ex-husband part of the family. They invite him to most events at Yang’s kindergarten and he visits her during holidays.

“We feel very grateful that he’s willing to spend time with her,” Yu says.

Li has made similar efforts, but suffered a little setback recently. He encouraged Becky to make a list of females she liked and choose one of them to attend a tea party organized by her school for Mother’s Day last month. Her top choice, one of Li’s friends, couldn’t make it. “It was just a little wish she had, and we couldn’t help,” he laments.

His consolation came a month later when he received a “Happy Father’s Day” card from Becky. He posted a photo of the card online to share with friends.

“It takes a lifetime to learn to be a father and daughter,” he wrote as the caption.

 (Names of same-sex parents and their children have been changed for privacy.)