Normally when says something like that, the underlying implications is that the society itself has old-fashioned values about sex - but when I say that about China, that’s not what I mean; instead, I’m pointing out that there is literally no room whatsoever for the topic in the Chinese education system. Not that sex is taboo, but there’s simply no time to talk about it or do something about it. The students I teach are in class from 10 in the morning to 6:45 in the evening - and if they are unfortunate enough to be boarding students, they have an additional two “self-study” (i.e. do your homework damnit) periods after 7:30. There’s no room for a social life, whatsoever - and so I feel most students go into college (if they do go to college) not only with a underdeveloped understanding of sex, but of romantic relationships in general - poignantly, my students are 16 and 17 years old, but jokes about how good looking a certain person is or silly questions like “do you have a girlfriend” elicit uproarious laughter you’d expect from Americans in 5th grade.

So I think it’s a combination - not only has Chinese society relaxed their mores, but the education system is a pressure cooker that produces a situation where newly graduated 22 year olds - we’re talking people who are 8 - 10 years past puberty now - are extremely eager to explore an experience that they never had an opportunity to explore - not because they weren’t allowed, but because they simply didn’t have the time.

Hmm, interesting! And I would imagine the situation has been more or less the same for some time. I wonder if this has something to do with radical changes in sexual norms since the early 20th century? Do we see similar numbers in other places where there was an active, sustained effort to break down religious sexual mores?

What is the PRC doing that makes people have so much more sex than in “same party, different systems” Hong Kong?

I’ll give you the clearest example, one I overlooked because, for years, my eyes just glossed over the euphemism: 保健用品. Folks, these stores don’t sell items you use to protect your health. Look in the windows. What’s more, these stores are all over the place, from downtown Shanghai to downtown Kashgar. I’ll admit, they seem to have gotten very slightly more plentiful over the years. Perhaps the problem is that they’re not especially noticeable. Sex shops in the US and Europe often have curtains up, pink lights, a swinging door in the back leading to God-knows-what, and a horribly euphemistic name like “College Books.” A 保健用品 store in China, however, is a hole-in-the-wall little establishment, the kind that used to sell groceries and bottles of yogurt before the supermarket got big: concrete floor, guy at a desk watching TV, one lightbulb dangling from the ceiling. I think the way that they’re so common as to be unobtrusive points to maturity and confidence, an acknowledgement of the naturalness of sex that would be taboo in most of the US.

Returning to Xinjiang specifically, though I’m sure this covers much of China, I would note a general awareness, at least at universities, of a student sexual culture that evolves on university campuses. Up to ten young men or women, crammed and locked into narrow rooms at night, do indeed sometimes develop homosexual relationships. Uyghurs and Han alike (at least those of my acquaintance) are mostly dismissive of the practice, seeing it as neither entirely wrong nor right (with some exceptions), but almost a fact of dorm life.

Certainly, China appears to be “opening up” about sex, at least in ways a reporter — the kind who would write a headline like “Chinese whispers turn hot and heavy” — can easily perceive, ways that are very much in the public sphere and “readable” from a “Western” perspective. That doesn’t mean that sex has suddenly appeared in China.