![\"Sex](\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20121218013456im_\/http:\/\/www.danwei.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/sex-dolls-e1350369851669.jpg\" "\\"Sex")
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As millions returned to work after one of the most stressful holidays in years on Monday October 8, the Tenth Annual Guangzhou National Sex Culture Festival was finishing its last day.\u00a0\u201cLook at the time,\u201d Professor Zhu Jiaming, one of the organisers, said delightedly. \u201cThree hours before closing on the last day, and it\u2019s still packed!\u201d<\/p>\n
The Sexpo\u2019s remit is to \u201cPromote sexual science, advocate sexual civilization, set up sexual ethics, spread sex education and improve sexual health\u201d (\u4ee5\u5f18\u626c\u6027\u79d1\u5b66\u3001\u5021\u5bfc\u6027\u6587\u660e\u3001\u666e\u53ca\u6027\u6559\u80b2\u3001\u6811\u7acb\u6027\u9053\u5fb7\u3001\u4fc3\u8fdb\u6027\u5065\u5eb7\u4e3a\u5b97\u65e8) and features a forum of experts each year tackling a different theme. This year, it was sperm \u2013 or rather, lack of it.<\/p>\n
Bizarre as it is, the case sheds some rare light on one of the odder superstitions in China, the idea that masturbation can be a life-threatening habit for the unwary male. The theory is a very old one \u2013 some Daoist beliefs dictates that all sex should be geared towards gathering energy from heterosexual congress; solo sex is therefore a waste of good\u00a0qi<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 muddled in with some good old-fashioned, down-on-sex Communist moralizing (of which more later). But the belief that onanism can be harmful to a man\u2019s health has certainly taken a hold.<\/p>\n \u2605<\/p>\n Zhu Ming is a Beijing-born student at the Communications University of China, where many of China\u2019s future reporters and news anchors are trained. As background for this story, I spent some time on the campus chatting to students about their attitudes to sperm donations, which can offer a needy undergraduate about three- to five-thousand yuan, enough to pay half their annual tuition fees. But Zhu Ming is not interested: \u201cI would\u00a0not\u00a0<\/em>donate my sperm \u2013 ever! Not even if they pay me loads of money. It\u2019s not just because it\u2019s a deeply private thing,\u201d he goes on to explain, \u201cbut also because I do not want to cause conflict with my family \u2013 as I know exactly how my mom would react to that if I did.\u201d<\/p>\n This kind of attitude (and the fact that they\u2019re not permitted to advertise) has left China\u2019s eleven sperm banks short of product: The average wait for infertile couples to obtain semen from sperm banks is now at least a year. In September 2011, Luo Wenzhi, the head of the Guangdong Family Planning Bureau, was driven to make a\u00a0public plea<\/a>:\u00a0\u201cDonating your sperm is healthy,\u201d he promised. \u201cIt won\u2019t hurt you nor kill you.\u201d Inevitably, an unregulated black market has stepped into the breach with the\u00a0Global Times\u00a0<\/em>reporting last week<\/a>\u00a0on a number of eligible males offering to \u201cdonate\u201d their sperm \u201cdirectly.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2605<\/p>\n Official press conference of the Tenth Annual Guangzhou National Sex Culture Festival.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Into this muddle of ignorance,\u00a0entrepreneurship\u00a0and bureaucrat rhetoric, and courtesy of the Guangdong Family Planning Bureau, comes the Guangzhou National Sex Culture Festival, now a fixed date in the city\u2019s cluttered expo calendar. For those who wished to hear it, the afternoon of the first day featured a panel of eminent professionals discussing \u201cEverything you want to know about sperm donation\u201d\u202c (\u202a\u201c\u6350\u7cbe\uff0c\u4f60\u60f3\u77e5\u9053\u7684\u4e8b\u513f\u201d\u202c). It\u2019s hard to gauge what effect their prepared speeches had on the national deficiency but Professor Peng Xiaohui, a veteran sexpo attendee and vice secretary-general of the World Association of Chinese Sexologists, had nothing but good things to say: \u201cMy general impression is, [the sexpo] gets better every year, whatever its format, content or theme,\u201d he enthused, calling the Guangdong Family Planning Bureau one of the most forward-thinking provincial family-planning organizations in the country.\u00a0Will sperm banks see an appreciable increase in donations as a result? Organizer Professor Zhu Jiaming points to the amount of media coverage as proof that it was \u201cvery successful.\u201d And in terms of\u00a0getting pictures of scantily clad women into newspapers, few could deny that.<\/p>\n \u2605<\/p>\n That\u2019s partly due to the demographic: as Professor Peng says, \u201cAge-wise, usually the audience is at two extremes: the old and middle-aged, and the very young ones, like 20-something, many couples.\u201d Most attendees skewed towards the former. Men (often to be seen craning their necks, standing on seats, and fighting for a good view) far outweighed women. If you were to handpick a crowd of candidates least likely to get laid in Guangzhou, it would look much the gathering assembled at the sexpo.<\/p>\n Which probably explains the need for so many products for what is supposed to be a natural act. To the lucky, sex is one of the few pleasures you shouldn\u2019t have to pay for; to the many less fortunate, a financial outlay is required. The official list of products on offer at the Guangzhou sexpo included \u201csexy lingerie, footwear, S&M products, lubricants, disinfectants, nourishing foods and medicines, sex-function regulating appliances, adult appliances, traditional Chinese medicine products, health tea, health wine\u201d and branched out into spheres such as reproduction (\u201cbirth control, IUD, technologies and products used to prevent reproductive tract infections, fertility treatments, maternal, health care products, massage equipment\u201d) and the beauty industry (\u201cbreast enhancement products, body-sculpting products, slimming products, cosmetics, jewelry\u201d).<\/p>\n Visitors could view a traditional array of Ming and Qing-era jade and stone carnal objects housed under Perspex cases that looked pretty antique themselves, or see a human body-art photography show with 50 pictures. Elsewhere were two centerpiece sculptures, one called\u00a0Unlockable<\/em>\u00a0and one called\u00a0Men\u2019s Pride<\/em>depicting \u201ca massive man\u2019s root,\u201d a sex quiz with the theme \u201cYou Happy? I Happy?,\u201d a gala show entitled\u00a0Happy Family<\/em>, and a \u201chigh-level\u201d show called\u00a0Private Yoga<\/em>, featuring the ageing TV presenter of\u00a0Secret Garden<\/em>, a cowboy-hatted senior consultant on marriage and family, and founder of something called \u201cPrivate Yoga.\u201d Then there was the inevitable\u00a0qipao<\/em>\u00a0show (the\u00a0qipao<\/em>, say the organizers, embodies centuries of Chinese virtue and civilization, thus representing the pinnacle of female fashion), a bikini show and a lingerie show; early arrival at the latter was mandatory for anyone wanting a view.<\/p>\n \u201cThe sex toy industry in China, with more than 1,000 manufacturers, has been worth about $2 billion a year for the past few years,\u201d the\u00a0People\u2019s Daily<\/em>\u00a0told its readers in 2010, adding that the largest market for these goods was South Africa which in that year took \u201calmost twenty percent of the export market\u201d; licentious America only bought two percent.<\/p>\n In Beijing alone, there are around 2,000 sex shops and around 200,000 nationwide. Just last month, \u201cAiLu,\u201d a little-known Chinese site selling sex accessories, aphrodisiacs and clothing raised $47.4 million in funding led by venture capitalist firm Shenzhen Capital and New Margin Ventures, according to finance site Ebrun.<\/p>\n The commercial opportunities are unquestionable, the demand apparently unquenchable. But the trade is completely unregulated: as with the food industry, no one can exactly be sure what they\u2019re putting inside themselves. After visiting to a former primary school, now a dilapidated sex-toy factory in Zhejiang, a\u00a0Global Times<\/em>\u00a0reporter concluded that \u201cthe government remains so embarrassed by the subject, it has failed to create appropriate standards to govern\u201d the plastics and chemicals used in their production. \u201cThere is not a single regulation or standard for the manufacture and development of sex toys in China,\u201d Su Weiguo, chairman of the China Council on the Science of Sex, told the newspaper.<\/p>\n Yet migrant workers should be encouraged to use adult toys, Zhang Feng, director of the Guangdong Family Planning Bureau, in 2009, announced at the seventh such sexpo. \u201cThe problem has never been openly acknowledged by the government or the public,\u201d as the\u00a0Southern Daily<\/em>\u00a0quoted Zhang. \u201cIf we apathetically ignore these sex-starved people, a rise in AIDS and other problems will be seen.\u201d For a migrant worker, spending 30 yuan for a sexpo ticket and a further 120 yuan on a made-in-China vibrating penis-sheath represents a significant stake in his sex life. Should he have to risk some kind of toxic reaction to his investment as well?<\/p>\n Perhaps it\u2019s simply a question of economics: society operates according to \u201cconcepts of \u2018sexuality resource,\u2019 in which the \u2018resource\u2019 is basically defined as \u2018women,\u2019\u201d says Professor Peng. \u201cThe distribution of this resource is in accordance with that of wealth.\u201d The richer customer, even if he has been unable to parlay his wealth into greater sexual opportunity, can literally purchase it in other ways \u2013 and even indulge in more recondite fetishes. A number of stalls, such as the Taizhou Mingqi Health Instrument Factory, sold high-end exotic goods, including life-like sex mannequins that do everything but talk; these drew among the largest crowds, although no one seemed to be actually buying.<\/p>\n Doll Sweet is a Japanese silicone-model company whose factory is in Dalian: they\u00a0offer<\/a>\u00a0a flat-chested, dull-eyed child-doll that weighs nine kilos, with a height of 100 cm \u2013 about the size and shape of a three-year-old girl. Another doll, closely resembling a nine-year-old, is pictured splay-legged next to a teddy bear and costs only 11,800 yuan.<\/p>\n The company website insists the products are \u201cNOT sex dolls\u201d [sic] but rather \u201csimulation dolls\u201d who happen to have artificial vaginas. Still,\u00a0there are certain things in life that are hard ever to explain away and owning an anatomically correct nine-year-old rubber girl must surely count as one.\u00a0Doll Sweet\u2019s Guangzhou salesman, manning the stall at the sexpo, was prepared to give it a go anyway: \u201cShe is short,\u201d he admitted sweatily, \u201cbut you can imagine she is\u00a0any age<\/em>: 100 years old, 200 years old, it\u2019s up to you.\u201d But even he soon dropped the pretence:\u00a0\u201cJapanese like girls of a lower age, OK?\u201d he snapped. \u201cIt\u2019s a completely personal preference, like liking them fat, tall or thin. The Chinese like a doll that is lightweight and easy to operate.\u201d<\/p>\n If the Chinese have any objection to Japan\u2019s kinkier products, they are usually patriotic ones. Ning Kang, president of Wild One (\u201cTokyo, Hong Kong, Guangzhou\u201d), made more than a dozen new wholesale clients last year and around five million yuan in revenue. But nationalistic fervor over the disputed Diaoyu Islands has dampened sales lately: \u201cMy online clients are afraid of being attacked by hackers,\u201d Ning told me. \u201cSo they\u2019ve been laying off our Japanese products.\u201d<\/p>\n But no one at the sexpo seems to cared about any of that. For first-time visitors it was more of an eye-opener, though not necessarily the kind anyone wanted to talk about. Young couples shyly admitted they were \u201ccurious,\u201d \u201chere to browse,\u201d \u201cfind out more\u201d or \u201cjust looking,\u201d before exiting the conversation as fast as possible. Then there was the migrant worker crowd: \u201ctheir lower income means it\u2019s very difficult for them to have relationships in the big cities they work in,\u201d said Peng. \u201cThey jump on the opportunity, even just to have some fun and get a feast for the eyes.\u201d For older visitors, Peng added, this can be a revelation: \u201cI once overheard an old man next to me say, \u2018I\u2019ve just realized I\u2019ve wasted my entire life!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Seasoned visitors were more sanguine, less easily impressed. \u201cIt was busier last time,\u201d grumbled Mr Zhang, as he lunched with friends at a canteen in the exhibition hall. \u201cThey had two floors. Now it\u2019s just one.\u201d His companions, all farmers in their 50s, make the trip into town every year \u201cbecause it\u2019s fun.\u201d<\/p>\n The official emphasis on sex education was really about keeping up appearances. The most popular draw of the day was a tame fashion parade featuring local underwear models. There was nothing on show that you couldn\u2019t find on virtually any beach in China, but that did not deter hundreds of people from jamming the floor to snatch a glimpse. Right by the catwalk was a photography exhibition by the local department of health, with graphic close-up images of male and female genitalia displaying symptoms of sexually transmitted diseases. It was deserted.<\/p>\n \u2605<\/p>\n Professor Peng, vice secretary-general of the World Association of Chinese Sexologists, is a leading progressive in a fast-dying modern discipline. Something of a maverick anyway \u2013 his\u00a0Weibo avatar<\/a>\u00a0shows him grinning broadly under a leather cowboy hat \u2013 his human-sexuality students at Wuhan\u2019s Central China Normal University are forbidden to undertake the course as an independent degree, but must instead study it as a branch of zoology. As a consequence, the professor has only enrolled six \u00a0in the last ten years (for three years from 2004 to 2007, he didn\u2019t enroll any) and their job prospects in the field remain quite bleak. The\u00a0Wuhan Evening News<\/em>\u00a0estimates over half a million sex-ed teachers are needed in China\u2019s primary and middle schools. But no one seems to want to hire them.<\/p>\n The only major Chinese leader to ever give any backing to the concept of sex education was the late premier Zhou Enlai, whose schooling in Tianjin apparently equipped him with valuable knowledge of the subject. Zhou\u2019s liberal views did not prevail at the time and when the Cultural Revolution arrived, \u201cany discussion or activity related to sex was described as \u2018bourgeois,\u2019 \u2018lustful\u2019 and \u2018decadent.\u2019 Proposals for sex education were condemned\u2026 the publishers and authors of\u00a0Knowledge of Sex<\/em>\u00a0[a rather conservative 1957 educational book] were criticized and attacked by the Red Guards and \u2018revolutionary masses\u2019,\u201d wrote Fang Furuan in his book\u00a0Sex in China<\/em>.<\/p>\n This situation relaxed somewhat after 1980; classes finally were introduced to Shanghai in 1981, focusing primarily on family planning. By 1988, they had been deemed so successful that 6,000 schools across China had adopted them, leading the State Council to announce that they would shortly become part of the national curriculum.<\/p>\n But it was not to be. Even before 1989, the tension between \u201cpublic morality\u201d and social order had never relaxed; some posters for the Democracy Wall movement in 1978-9 made explicit calls for a relaxation of sexual attitudes, as did a few demonstrators during the student protests of 1987 and \u201988. When the backlash came, sexual permissiveness was simply another Western pollutant to be stamped out. In 1990, the Supreme People\u2019s Court vice-president, Lin Zun, tightened the law on pornography and prostitution: trafficking became a capital offence. A year prior, as the post-Tiananmen moral crusade swung into action, the government banned any form of prophylactic advertising: thus, the condom fell victim to a 1989 campaign aimed at products deemed \u201cagainst the social norms and moral values of our country.\u201d Despite having among the strictest family planning policies in the world, \u201cthe condom was defined as a \u2018sex tool,\u2019 even though its real purpose was to prevent pregnancy,\u201d Professor Peng explained.<\/p>\n \u201cThe misunderstanding has a lot to do with the long-time restraint and vilification of sex in China\u2026 in the past 30 years since Reform and Opening-up, the wealth gap has widened\u2026\u00a0Laobaixing<\/em>\u00a0[regular folk] have less sexual resources so, of course, they are extremely against sex.\u201d<\/p>\n The attitude is aptly illustrated in Fang Ruruan\u2019s book with the story of Chen Shuhua, a 19-year-old student at Nanjing Art College who posed nude for classes in 1988. When Chen returned home, she immediately drew vilification from her neighbours, who accused her of prostitution and disgracing her village. The campaign eventually led to Chen\u2019s suicide. Apart from the classic schism between provincial and cosmopolitan values,what seems most telling is the secret frustrations of the rural poor \u2013 denied access to perceived licentiousness they must, perforce, flail against it.<\/p>\n At the time, prominent painter Wu Zuoren said he was ashamed that such an event could happen in modern China. According to a September 2012 report from the Institute for Population and Development Studies, rural China still remains a cloistered world of prejudice, where unmarried men are the subject of mockery, while rape, incest, wife-sharing, unsafe illicit sex, human trafficking and \u201cdownlow\u201d gay sex are all secretly practiced. By contrast, not a\u00a0whiff of unwholesomeness is witnessed at the Guangzhou Sex Festival: even the most ribald products remained firmly oriented towards health and heterosexuality and, apart from one popular S&M stall, alternative sexualities were not catered for.<\/p>\n No such shame is attached in China to abortion clinics, which freely promote their wares: the government estimates that 13 million abortions are now carried out a year, often because out of ignorance, Chinese women use abortion as a form of contraception. (See for example, this Danwei summary of a newspaper story \u201cMost Chinese women don\u2019t know how to use contraceptives<\/a>\u201c.)<\/p>\n Hospitals boast of their no-frills terminations, starting from as little as 98 yuan, with many offering exclusive deals \u2013 bring your student ID for a half-price discount (see this\u00a0example of such an ad<\/a>). The official view seems to be that there\u2019s nothing untoward about this: in fact, last year\u00a0Xinhua described<\/a>\u00a0a National People\u2019s Congress proposal to restrict the use of abortion advertising on television, radio and billboard as \u201can eye-popper.\u201d<\/p>\n Prudish attitudes towards sex and continuing official ambivalence are deliberate, Peng believes. \u201cConsidering the increasing sexual deprivation of the greater public, the government has to maintain social security by promoting anti-sex attitudes \u2013 otherwise the fight for resources will intensify.\u201d<\/p>\n Whether this sexual tension can be allowed to remain unresolved is another matter: for one thing, there is a danger of social instability. It is estimated that 24 million men (known as \u201cbare branches\u201d\u00a0guanggun<\/em>\u00a0\u5149\u68cd) in China now face a life of perpetual bachelorhood, due to gender imbalances. These men are mostly unemployed, often suffer from mental health issues and pass their time \u201cdrinking and fishing all day long,\u201d according to \u2018Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia\u2019s Surplus Male Population\u2019, a report based on research carried out in Shanxi and Jilin provinces in 2004 by V. Hudson V. and A.M. den Boer.<\/p>\n For another thing, there\u2019s too much money to be made. Typical of the hundreds of professional buyers at the Guanzhou sexpo was Ms Zhu, a 30-year-old businesswoman paying her second visit to the fair. Last year, she came to learn about how foreign companies\u2019 businesses worked by observing Brazilian models and comparing exhibitors\u2019 wares and strategies. This year, she has come ready to make large lingerie purchases for her fledgling e-commerce business. Despite being a fully qualified roads engineer, she now wanted to be her own boss. \u201cThe economy is uncertain,\u201d she explained. After working at a state-owned highway giant, her future in China seemed much safer in the sex industry.<\/p>\n Update:<\/strong>\u00a0If there\u00a0are<\/em>\u00a0lessons to be learned from the sexpo, perhaps one is to be careful how you use your newly purchased toy. Doctors in Shanghai recently removed a dildo from a 30-year-old man that \u201chad somehow got stuck in his intestines\u201d for five days. \u201cThere have been three similar cases so far this year,\u201d Dr Yao Liqing\u00a0complained to the\u00a0Shanghai Daily<\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/em>in October, warning of the risk posed by dildo misuse. \u201cPeople must use sex toys properly and avoid ones that are too big.\u201d The dildo in question measured 23cm in length and 8cm in diameter.<\/p>\n The author Robert Foyle Hunwick can be reach on foylehunwick -at- gmail.com. His previous stories for Danwei include:\u00a0Serial killers in China<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Utopia website shutdown: interview with Fan Jinggang<\/a>.<\/p>\n Links and sources<\/strong><\/p>\n As millions returned to work after one of the most stressful holidays in years on Monday October 8, the Tenth Annual Guangzhou National Sex Culture Festival was finishing its last day.\u00a0\u201cLook at the time,\u201d Professor Zhu Jiaming, one of the … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20121218013456\/http:\/\/www.danwei.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/artificial-vagina-and-model-and-visitor.jpg\")
<\/a>China\u2019s sperm difficulties are perhaps unique. For example: Last year, Huazhong University of Science and Technology medical student Zheng Gang (35) walked into a university-affiliated sperm bank and opened an account. What happened afterwards is now the subject of a 4 million yuan lawsuit in the Wuhan city. Zheng passed a medical check-up and made four donations; the legal limit is five. But after making the last donation in October, Zheng Gang collapsed and died. The actual cause of his death is in dispute but for Zheng\u2019s family, it was clearly the act of donation; the university, meanwhile, is evoking unspecified \u201cforeign forces\u201d in its defense. Further murky details can be found in this\u00a0Global Times<\/em>\u00a0report<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20121218013456im_\/http:\/\/www.danwei.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Press-conference-300x191.jpeg\")
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<\/a>Wandering the Jinhan Exhibition Hall, which formerly housed the famous biannual Canton Fair, the first thing you notice about this sexpo is the complete absence of any sexiness. There are whips, chains, a lifelike latex German Shepherd mask if that\u2019s your thing, a smorgasbord of unappetizing and surreal orifices for men, many bristling with \u201clifelike\u201d hair (did they not get that memo?), equally larger-than-life phalluses (conversely, hairless) for women but where is the sex? It\u2019s not just the unspoken vacuum crying out to be filled with pornography, but the complete lack of any erotic potential at all \u2013 there\u2019s not even the whiff of a hook-up on offer.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20121218013456im_\/http:\/\/www.danwei.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/sex-doll-sunglasses-300x200.jpg\")
<\/a>Any business seeking to sell or buy \u201csilicone, latex or rubber materials\u201d comes to the Guangzhou Sex Culture Festival for their supply needs \u2013 if it could make you pregnant, potent or popular, you could find it or flog it there. Traditional Chinese Medicine stands offered buy-by-the-weight ginseng, deer antler,\u00a0linghzi<\/em>mushrooms and ox penis while other companies sold well-packaged packets of\u00a0\u201cseadog essence,\u201d (purported) real Viagra, \u201cShark Viagra\u201d (\u201cextraction of natural biological essence\u2026 sustained release of a substantial extension of time fox secretary\u201d\u00a0\u2013 only 10 yuan), African Man, USA Soldier and Chocolate Female Ecstacy powder (flying off the shelves to the over -60s).\u00a0\u00a0For entertainment, there were three cultural exhibitions, four science forums, five theatrical shows and, for reasons never explained, a 12 square-metre LED screen playing highlights from the Bolshoi Ballet\u2019s recent production of\u00a0Swan Lake\u00a0<\/em>at the Guangzhou Opera House.<\/p>\n\n