(no subject)
I think it's ironic that I moved to a country accused by Chinese as full of corrupted morals and sex (true to a very limited extent), when an emerging trend in China is such:
Sex, Please-We're Young and Chinese
A generation after Mao suits, China is coping with an
epidemic of free love
BY HANNAH BEECH
Sunday, Jan. 15, 2006
Li Li has lost exact count of how many men she has bedded,
but she knows the number is far above 100. "I don't keep
statistics," says the former journalist, 27. But she isn't
averse to kissing and telling. For the past couple of years,
Li has kept a blog-written under the pen name Muzi Mei-that
has chronicled everything from her penchant for orgies and
Internet dating to her skepticism toward marriage when it
means staying faithful to one man. This fall the Beijing
resident posted a recording of her own lovemaking sounds that
would make Paris Hilton blush. More than 50,000 people
simultaneously tried to download the 25-minute podcast,
crashing the host server. Despite government attempts to
censor it, the sex diary is so popular that Li's pen name is
intermittently the most searched keyword on China's top
search engine. "I express my freedom through sex," says Li,
unapologetically. "It's my life, and I can do what I want."
Freedom in the bedroom is a novel concept in China, where for
decades communist minders dictated most aspects of people's
private lives. Dressed in baggy Mao suits-hardly outfits to
set the pulse racing-citizens of the People's Republic had to
ask permission from local officials on everything from whom
to marry to what kind of birth control to use. But these days
many Chinese are walking on the wilder side. Sparked by the
easing of government control over individual lifestyle
choices and the spread of more permissive, Western attitudes
toward sex, Chinese are copulating earlier, more often and
with more partners than ever before. Today 70% of Beijing
residents say they have had sexual relations before marriage,
compared with just 15.5% in 1989, according to Li Yinhe, a
sociologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. A
survey taken last January of seven major Chinese cities found
that among those 14 to 20, the average age of first sexual
experience was 17.4, while those 31 to 40 had lost their
virginity much later, at 24.1 years old. Says Fu Zhen, 28, a
teacher in Shanghai: "My parents' only entertainment came
from revolutionary movies, so they were very conservative
about sex. My generation, we see everything from everywhere,
and we are hungry for new experiences." As if to underline
the point, Fu has adopted the nickname Carrie-as in Bradshaw,
of Sex and the City.
All this hanky-panky is spawning new industries. Lingerie
boutiques are proliferating in the big cities, and last
November's Sex Culture Festival in the southern city of
Guangzhou attracted more than 50,000 people eager to procure
the very latest in adult toys-70% of which are now
manufactured in China. One of the most popular? The "erotic
butterfly," specially designed for women.
But China's sexual revolution has also brought unpleasant
side effects. Although sex education is supposedly mandatory
in Chinese middle schools, "many older teachers are too
embarrassed, so they tear out the pages about sex from the
textbooks," says Hu Peicheng, secretary-general of the China
Sexology Association in Beijing. With little knowledge of
birth control, an increasing number of unmarried women are
getting pregnant in a culture in which single motherhood is
still taboo. A survey by Shanghai medical researcher Yan
Fengting found that 65% of urban women undergoing abortions
in 2004 were single, compared with just 25% in 1999. Rates of
sexually transmitted diseases are skyrocketing too, with HIV
infections growing most quickly among Chinese 15 to 24 years
old. Brothels barely disguised as beauty salons crowd the
streets of China's big cities, while certain suburbs are
known as "concubine villages" because of their high
concentration of mistresses.
Those extra temptations-which the communists largely
eradicated after taking power in 1949-have wreaked havoc on
marriages, with 1.6 million Chinese couples divorcing in
2004, a 21% rise from the year before, according to the
Ministry of Civil Affairs. "Before in society, we had a sense
of right and wrong," says the China Sexology Association's
Hu. "Now, we can do whatever we want. But do we have any
moral standards left?"
Younger Chinese aren't too concerned. A poll by a Beijing
magazine found that one-third of Chinese under the age of 26
had no problem with extramarital affairs. In a country where
there's little political autonomy for young people, at least
there's plenty of free love. "Maybe in the past, everyone was
obedient and listened to the old grannies who lectured on who
you could have sex with and in what position," says blogger
Li. "But we don't have time to listen. We're too busy having
sex."
From the Jan. 23, 2006 issue of TIME Asia Magazine
I guess it's up to us Hong Kong-ers to uphold the traditional Confucian way of life, eh? :P
The obvious socio-political reason for this is the communist influence during the latter half of the 20th Century. The Cultural Revolution wiped clean what morality was ("You can be a black cat or white cat, as long as you catch mice you are a good cat!"), and now that the Revolution has ended, there isn't a true sense of what morality is!
On a personal note, I'm also reminded of a curious description of myself:
Asian guy: So you're natural-born Chinese?
Me: Yeah, Hong Kong-
Asian guy: It's hard to tell, even with the perfect accent and all; but yeah, you seem like one of those very conservative types...
Me: *grins* Nah, that's just me.
Sex, Please-We're Young and Chinese
A generation after Mao suits, China is coping with an
epidemic of free love
BY HANNAH BEECH
Sunday, Jan. 15, 2006
Li Li has lost exact count of how many men she has bedded,
but she knows the number is far above 100. "I don't keep
statistics," says the former journalist, 27. But she isn't
averse to kissing and telling. For the past couple of years,
Li has kept a blog-written under the pen name Muzi Mei-that
has chronicled everything from her penchant for orgies and
Internet dating to her skepticism toward marriage when it
means staying faithful to one man. This fall the Beijing
resident posted a recording of her own lovemaking sounds that
would make Paris Hilton blush. More than 50,000 people
simultaneously tried to download the 25-minute podcast,
crashing the host server. Despite government attempts to
censor it, the sex diary is so popular that Li's pen name is
intermittently the most searched keyword on China's top
search engine. "I express my freedom through sex," says Li,
unapologetically. "It's my life, and I can do what I want."
Freedom in the bedroom is a novel concept in China, where for
decades communist minders dictated most aspects of people's
private lives. Dressed in baggy Mao suits-hardly outfits to
set the pulse racing-citizens of the People's Republic had to
ask permission from local officials on everything from whom
to marry to what kind of birth control to use. But these days
many Chinese are walking on the wilder side. Sparked by the
easing of government control over individual lifestyle
choices and the spread of more permissive, Western attitudes
toward sex, Chinese are copulating earlier, more often and
with more partners than ever before. Today 70% of Beijing
residents say they have had sexual relations before marriage,
compared with just 15.5% in 1989, according to Li Yinhe, a
sociologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. A
survey taken last January of seven major Chinese cities found
that among those 14 to 20, the average age of first sexual
experience was 17.4, while those 31 to 40 had lost their
virginity much later, at 24.1 years old. Says Fu Zhen, 28, a
teacher in Shanghai: "My parents' only entertainment came
from revolutionary movies, so they were very conservative
about sex. My generation, we see everything from everywhere,
and we are hungry for new experiences." As if to underline
the point, Fu has adopted the nickname Carrie-as in Bradshaw,
of Sex and the City.
All this hanky-panky is spawning new industries. Lingerie
boutiques are proliferating in the big cities, and last
November's Sex Culture Festival in the southern city of
Guangzhou attracted more than 50,000 people eager to procure
the very latest in adult toys-70% of which are now
manufactured in China. One of the most popular? The "erotic
butterfly," specially designed for women.
But China's sexual revolution has also brought unpleasant
side effects. Although sex education is supposedly mandatory
in Chinese middle schools, "many older teachers are too
embarrassed, so they tear out the pages about sex from the
textbooks," says Hu Peicheng, secretary-general of the China
Sexology Association in Beijing. With little knowledge of
birth control, an increasing number of unmarried women are
getting pregnant in a culture in which single motherhood is
still taboo. A survey by Shanghai medical researcher Yan
Fengting found that 65% of urban women undergoing abortions
in 2004 were single, compared with just 25% in 1999. Rates of
sexually transmitted diseases are skyrocketing too, with HIV
infections growing most quickly among Chinese 15 to 24 years
old. Brothels barely disguised as beauty salons crowd the
streets of China's big cities, while certain suburbs are
known as "concubine villages" because of their high
concentration of mistresses.
Those extra temptations-which the communists largely
eradicated after taking power in 1949-have wreaked havoc on
marriages, with 1.6 million Chinese couples divorcing in
2004, a 21% rise from the year before, according to the
Ministry of Civil Affairs. "Before in society, we had a sense
of right and wrong," says the China Sexology Association's
Hu. "Now, we can do whatever we want. But do we have any
moral standards left?"
Younger Chinese aren't too concerned. A poll by a Beijing
magazine found that one-third of Chinese under the age of 26
had no problem with extramarital affairs. In a country where
there's little political autonomy for young people, at least
there's plenty of free love. "Maybe in the past, everyone was
obedient and listened to the old grannies who lectured on who
you could have sex with and in what position," says blogger
Li. "But we don't have time to listen. We're too busy having
sex."
From the Jan. 23, 2006 issue of TIME Asia Magazine
I guess it's up to us Hong Kong-ers to uphold the traditional Confucian way of life, eh? :P
The obvious socio-political reason for this is the communist influence during the latter half of the 20th Century. The Cultural Revolution wiped clean what morality was ("You can be a black cat or white cat, as long as you catch mice you are a good cat!"), and now that the Revolution has ended, there isn't a true sense of what morality is!
On a personal note, I'm also reminded of a curious description of myself:
Asian guy: So you're natural-born Chinese?
Me: Yeah, Hong Kong-
Asian guy: It's hard to tell, even with the perfect accent and all; but yeah, you seem like one of those very conservative types...
Me: *grins* Nah, that's just me.