Xinjiang, Sex, and CNN
CNN published its obligatory “sexual revolution in China” article today, reveling like many other media outlets have in the delightful fusion of two hot topics that are both good sells in today’s media world. And just like all the other articles that have covered the topic, CNN highlights the contrast between the unleashed Chinese libido (perhaps the fact that China attained the worlds highest population far before Deng Xiaoping ever existed was caused by reasons other than sex) and a relatively adolescent cultural mindset on the topic of sex. I find it interesting that in this article that obliquely celebrates the triumph of capitalism and consumerism (vibrator vending machines get an effusive mention) through a cultural “opening up,” the editors have included an actual picture of a couple checking into a sleazy sex motel. Way to encourage the sexual revolution you’re celebrating by letting the Chinese know the Western world is plastering their pre-sex ritual on their major news outlets, guys.
Anyways, by covering the “paradox” of sexual opening and sexual taboo in China, CNN couldn’t avoid mentioning a special case in Xinjiang that caught peoples’ attention a while back.
A vocational high school in Xinjiang, a region about 1,500 miles west of Beijing, briefly enacted a rule last year requiring female students to take pregnancy tests as part of their annual school physical. An outcry about privacy forced the school to retreat.
Detailed coverage of the incident can be found in Mandarin here at Xinhua; less detailed information has been posted in English on ABC. The school in question is the XPCC 12th Agricultural Division Vocational and Technical School located about 10 kilometers from Urumqi’s city center. What’s interesting about that is the fact that the school is meant to prepare its students for military service (准军化的管理), and has strict time management policies which allow students only 40 minutes of free time during school days (usually used for eating; though I’m sure creative teenagers certainly can do a lot with 40 minutes) and weekend visits to family members and relatives only when a detailed itinerary and list of contact information is provided to the proper faculty members. Still, administrators at the school note that despite these policies they cannot prevent “that action which shall not be acknowledged” from happening (I’m not kidding; article quotes a sociologist’s euphemism “不愿看到的事情” for “sex”). Which makes me wonder how much sex occurs among high school students in far more liberalized cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Which makes me wonder, should that be the case, why, of all the hundreds of thousands of school in China, a military prep vocational school was the first to try mandatory pregnancy tests. Basically, what I’m thinking here is that this pregnancy incident test does more to highlight the contrast between the puritan, Manifest Destiny mindset of the Han Chinese in the West and the more Westernized, relatively laissez-faire mindset of the Han in the East than it does to point out the contrast between sexual opening and sexual taboo in China in general.
But anyway, cheers to Xinjiang getting some limelight on a CNN front story!
The perception of China as a “sexually immature” land bothers me. Certainly, STDs are a rampant problem here, and that points to a broad problem of sexual awareness. However, just because your Chinese friends don’t feel close enough to you to share “the details” or are mature enough to keep quiet doesn’t mean that sex doesn’t happen. Perceptions of maturity are normative and, anyway, how would CNN even know?
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.
According to the World Sex Survey of 2004, the Chinese have the most sexual partners in the world - an average of 19.3 sexual partners. Interestingly, in Hong Kong they average 3.5 sexual partners, the second lowest average in the world (only the Vietnamese have fewer parters - 2.5).
What is the PRC doing that makes people have so much more sex than in “same party, different systems” Hong Kong?
Caitlin,
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?
I’ve never been a fan of over-reliance on personal experience and anecdotes, but I have to say my personal stance towards higher than standard sexual activity referenced in the study of Caitlin’s post is colored by my position as a high school teacher here. On one hand, sexual mores have been greatly relaxed in the past few decades, yet on the other hand, when Chinese kids are experiencing their sexual blossoming, that is, in their teens and their early 20s, there’s simply no way to express, learn about, or ask about that sexuality.
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.
[...] website, this time in a small blurb covering the airline incident. Six days ago, CNN ran a report on sexuality in China that gave Xinjiang a passing [...]