5 Sep, 2006 in China, Chinese culture by Fili An Tags: captivating; China; Chinese culture; chinese_women; claiming_compensation; sexual_habits; sex_life; shanghai;

China : The right to have sex

Shanghai Daily brings a new insight into the Chinese sexual habits with a captivating article about a Chinese women claiming compensation for her sex life after her husband was injured and could no longer "perform" to her satisfaction. 

The buzz over the Chinese sex life and sexual habits got a big boost in attention this past week with the eyes of the world, or at least the world blogsphere, fixed on the Chinabounder "Sex and Shanghai" blog. "Sex" and the Chinese habits regarding Sex are very hot topics right now.

"fiLi’s world", mentioned on the English translation on ESWN which sparked the whole scandal on the English-speaking blogsphere, has and still is enjoying a lot of incoming traffic on the "Sex and Shanghai" issue. I keep thinking that after over a week this story would calm down , but having a quick glance at my stats every now and again it’s apparent that the story isn’t going away as the media issues more juicy headline – "the manhunt", "Chinese blogsphere strikes", "is it all a big hoax?". Some blogs were quick and smart to give multi-part updates as the story developed and it was always interesting reading the endless comments, discussions and observations about the Chinese culture in this issue.

Back to the story (from Rueters) :

Wei Suying, 31, whose husband has suffered from erectile dysfunction since a 2003 workplace accident, filed suit in a Shanghai court asking for 220,000 yuan ($27,650) in compensation from the shopping center where the accident occurred, it said.

The compensation included claims for mental anguish and for her purchases of products such as vibrators.

"I was not even 30 years old when my husband had the accident, which deprived me of my right to enjoy sexual life," the newspaper quoted Wei as saying.

A woman coming forward into a public court room, asking for a big sum of money for using products like vibrators and openly discussing her husband sexual problem has got to show some sort of change in the Chinese society.

In pre-communist China, sex was less a taboo than it became under former leader Mao Zedong, when it became a matter of doing one’s reproductive duty for the state.

Since then, the government has embarked upon a stern family planning policy to control a booming population — the world’s largest — but official attitudes toward sex remain puritan, though they are changing slowly.

It’s not only that, but there’s also a strange statement from the Chinese woman :

"I wasn’t even 30 years old when my husband had the accident, which deprived me of my right to enjoy sexual life," Wei told the court. "Besides, our 5-year-old daughter may be slow in her intellectual development since she had encephalitis. Now we can’t have another child."

The Wok, the only Israeli blog in Hebrew discussing Chinese culture that I know of, goes into a depth analysis of the Chinese sex consumer power (loosely translated) :

In the biggest cities in China you can find sex shops in almost every block. Between the family restaurant and the seamstress. Those fancy shops usually have the distinguished name of "adult health products" (成人保健) and store the best of what local manufacturing has to offer. The long reach of the Chinese government can also be seen in those shops with guides about STD, pregnancy prevention etc. [...]

Aside from toys, the urban China offers other ways to satisfy its population. Every street corner has a "barber" and the services offered in those barber shops are comparable to the "health salons" in Israel. A barber shop usually has two to ten girls looking at the bypassers"

The Wok further reviews the sexual solutions the Chinese government has for the poor hard working Chinese construction workers with a quote from Sina/China Daily:

A good example of how to tackle this problem can be found in Nanjing’s Xiaguan District. With large numbers of migrant workers from Anhui and Henan provinces, the district has built dozens of low-rent "love nests" that migrants can rent for 300 (US$37.5) yuan per month when their spouses come to visit.

It’s fascinating seeing the Chinese sexual revolution with a great leap forward, isn’t it?

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  • 呵呵，有意思吗？看来外国的朋友们对中国很感兴趣呢？
    aha,is that interesting?it seems that foreigners are interested in CHINA.
  • Mel
    Joel,

    You are absolutely right. Any country you go to (apart from maybe Muslim countries, but I may be wrong - in fact I have no idea about those cultures) there will be prostitution, escorts, sex shops etc.

    But in terms of regular culture in Taiwan, it is nowhere near as sex-obssessed as the West. Women are brought up with more morals - they have more moralistic ambitions in life, rather than just sleeping around everywhere.

    I'm mixed race (my father is half German half English) and was raised in the UK, but that side of Taiwanese (I don't know if it's Asian culture in general) seems to have been passed on to me. It wasn't really something I was heavily taught, however I have grown to hate the stereotypical part of Western culture where everybody thinks that Hollywood nudity, sleeping with whatever you can get your hands on and sexist media is OK.

    I'm not a total stiff - I mean I didn't wait until marriage to have sex. However, I did have a string of boyfriends, but I refused to engage in any sexual act with them because I was waiting for something long-term.

    I found it, and I feel good about myself. I see friends over here in the UK everyday wishing that they hadn't made so many mistakes in the past, and saved themselves a little bit mroe.
  • arun kumar singh
    what i think about that woman is that she is loyal to his husband. If she want she can be attached with another person and can enjoy her sex life. But she didn't do that. I must say to her that very few woman exist in this world who are loyal to his husband. The compensation for which she is asking is not right in any sense. But she can ask help from the govt. for the treatment of her daughter.
  • Turtle - an Israeli article made it here, because we kind'o focus on China from an Israeli perspective. Where in the US are you guys from?
  • How did an Israeli article make it into this post?

    Check out our blog from more indepth analysis.

    chinaconfessions.blogspot.com
  • China has become more and more liberated. I mean, I use sex toys (Bought here) and they all came from China.
  • Echoing David a bit, I wonder if there's an important angle you've missed to this story.

    Is it all about her losing a lifetime of pleasurable sex with her husband, or is it more about losing the chance to have the child she's always dreamed about? Her one child is a girl, and she has encephalitis. I can't know her motives, of course, but I wonder if knowing that her family will never be more than that is what's really driving her to break these social mores.

    We've lived in Taipei for about a year now. If you just looked at the ads, the Betel nut girls, and the sex/lingerie shops, you'd think Taiwan is a 'post-sexual revolution' kind of society. But it's not. Even among the young people we know, the girls wear granny panties and it's still all about money, security, having a dream child/family. At least that's the impression I get (may not be very accurate, of course). There's always the foreign English teacher bar scene sex playground crowd, but I'd call that an exception.
  • You might be right, ofcourse, and the woman even refers to that, but reading the article about what money compensation she was asking for (vibrators) and her talking about the right to have sex is something I didn't expect.

    About Taipei, having been there for a much shorter time than you're there, I would still have to disagree. I think there's no comparing China and Taiwan in this regard, and although Taiwan remains traditional in many way in comparison to the west, it has definitely gone through a revolution about sex as a right to both genders.
  • Personally I find Shanghai to be now rivaling Bangkok and Manila for the title of Prostitution Capital of the World (from secondhand information, of course (-:). Nevertheless, it's not like it is in the west. Over here, sex is about either marriage or money. There doesn't seem to be much of a concept (among women anyway) of the recreational aspect that is so prevalent in western countries (and Japan)
  • I think any mention of sex seems to drive traffic to a website. I was getting regular hits for my old site from a Google image search for "sex toys".
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