As Shanghai’s second ever Pride festival came to an end, pink voices came out of the shadows. As a local partygoer told me: “I’m not scared anymore–we are not doing anything illegal or wrong.” It is evident that the community is no longer hiding or concerned about their anonymity, and all but one Pride event went off without a hitch.

The first ever Pride Awards were also held during the Pride Family Day, honoring individuals and organizations that have made a difference in China’s LGBT community. Giving out the awards were consuls from various nations, including Eric Verwaal (Netherlands), Robert McCubbing (Canada), Troy Reid (the US) and Kristin Augsburg (Germany). Congratulations to the following winners: Ray Mahoney won the Model Volunteer Award; Wei Jiangang and the Queer Comrades team won the Media Project Award; Eddy Zheng (the owner of Eddy’s Bar) won an award for Special Contribution to Gay Nightlife; and Cui Zi’en won for Special Contribution to Gay Culture.

I was curious as to what actually went down with the Halloween Pub Crawl, which was canceled last minute (coincidentally on the last day of the Expo) and so I tracked down Pride spokesman Kenneth Tan.

“We have no idea what happened with the pub crawl,” he told me. “The media should be sending questions to the PSB, not to us. On our part, we’re happy to note that there was only one cancellation out of 30 events on our calendar. That’s a huge improvement from last year.”

Tan said this year the biggest problem was how much work it takes to run such a large event. “Running this festival is a full-time job,” he said. “We are all volunteers. Time was the biggest obstacle.”

For Tan, the biggest success was how Pride managed to cut across different groups in the community–gay and straight.

“We’re very happy to see the straight supporters come on board to help us make this festival happen. Then there was Wu Youjian, founder of PFLAG China, who was our very first speaker. Then there were the wonderful guys from Hello Comrade, and we also had lots of straight volunteers among the crew.”

For me, the hero of the festival was whoever decided to have an open bar for Pride’s lala night. The evening began–as usual lala nights begin–with nervous ladies, hiding among their own groups of friends. But come 3am it was girls gone absolutely bat-sh*t wild. Genius. The Shanghai winter is upon us and it is that time of the year to settle on a winter girlfriend.

Have any Pride tales you’re longing to spill? Offload your dirt below.