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