Let's talk about sex
A new documentary
about a sex clinic in Shanghai provides a frank
insight into modern-day China. And, as Jeremy
Atiyah explains, it demonstrates just how far-reaching the Cultural Revolution
was
Jeremy Atiyah
The Guardian, Thursday 18 May 2000 15.35 BST
"Doctor,
my penis is a bit short," says the caller, live on air, "and I'm
wondering if you can help." "Certainly we can," comes the
friendly reply, "but don't forget that your size only matters in relation
to the size of your partner's vagina."
What's this? A late-night educational chat-show
from some corner of Denmark or Holland
perhaps? Actually it's prime-time in the Chinese city of Shanghai, and
listeners are putting their questions to sex therapist Dr Chen Kai - the man
who has taken upon himself the job of teaching 1.2 billion people about orgasms
and foreplay.
You have to admire the nerve of the man. China is a
country where, until 15 years ago, sex for hundreds of millions of people
occurred solely for the purpose of producing babies, or (at best) for
satisfying a biological appetite akin to defecation.
But here is Dr Chen running a sex clinic,
chatting about sex on the radio, giving sex lessons to school children and even
keeping a collection of suggestively shaped rocks. He's definitely not opting
for the quiet life.
Are people like Dr Chen leading the latest
cultural revolution in China? You
might protest that our interest in sex is nothing to do with culture - but
Chairman Mao, for one, knew better. By boiling culture down to revolutionary
slogans, and by fitting men and women into identical straight jackets and
trousers and haircuts, he succeeded in defining sexual feelings as
unrevolutionary and therefore undesirable (apart from where it involved
attractive young girls overcoming their bourgeois scruples to sleep with ageing
revolutionaries, of course).
Sex was a terrifying loose cannon as far as the
party was concerned, to be repressed at all costs. For 10 years, revolutionary
loudspeakers worked to control its power, by waking you up collectively in the
morning, conducting you collectively through your day; even specifying the
number of times per week that you should have intercourse with your spouse. Ai
(love) and xing (sex) were eliminated from the vocabulary of a generation.
Chinese men and women in their 40s, to this day, still complain that far too
much of their lives was devoted to "politics". They mean two things:
first, that nobody earned enough money, and second, that nobody had enough sex.
How things are changing in the cities of modern
China.
"In Shanghai
today, young people walk hand in hand!" gasps the simple country girl
working as a cleaner in Dr Chen's clinic. "They even cuddle in the
street!" She hasn't seen anything yet. Given the background of repression
against which Dr Chen carries out his work, it's hard to blame him for
decorating his name-card with an erect penis.
As a matter of fact, the sex that Dr Chen is
teaching doesn't look exactly like "liberal" or
"democratic" sex - in fact it strikes me very much as sex with
Chinese characteristics. In his clinic we see a male patient being attached to
the "genitalia apparatus", designed to stimulate erectile tissue,
while at least five other patients look on, with interest. In another shot, a
man sits before a forbidding committee of doctors in white coats, and declares:
"If I squeeze my willy I feel really good." Privacy, that sinister
western concept - regarded as highly suspect in China at
the best of times - is notable by its absence.
But this is beside the point. What is
interesting is that, these days, urban China can
get away with almost anything, as long as it doesn't challenge the party.
Explicit pornographic novels written by 20somethings periodically sweep the
cities, before the censors have time to notice. People chatter on the internet.
Prostitution thrives. Adultery among the urban young is almost mandatory. Now
some of the rich ones even go to sex clinics. Who needs to talk about
overthrowing the government when they are free to talk about their own sexual
feelings, without any ideological or moral strings attached?
"In the old days you had to stay in
sexless relationships with your partner whether you wanted to or not, because
the party said so," says Carrie Gracie, the former Beijing
bureau chief for the BBC. "There was no morality, only restrictions. Now
the restrictions have been lifted there is nothing left to contain people. And
the criteria people use to decide who they want to be with have been turned
completely upside down."
Putting aside the impact of this in terms of
broken marriages, another way to see China's
urban sex explosion is as an essential ingredient for civil life - alongside
things like a broad educational base, respect for law and tolerance of
minorities. It's simple: the state becomes less centralised, provincial
governors withhold taxes, hooligans set up businesses, rock stars sing of
disillusionment, city entrepreneurs watch Taiwanese TV, nutters subscribe to
mystical religions, Qi gong masters set themselves up as virtual messiahs -
and, yes, people with erectile problems start talking about it on the radio.
In China, it
seems, the pluralist society has finally arrived.
• Dr Chen's Sex Revolution, tonight, 9.30pm,
BBC2. Jeremy Atiyah is co-author of The Rough Guide to China