Globalisation - Making China More Westernised

Lijia Zhang

'Scored yet?' That was the first question from several young adventurers crowded around a table at a bar in Lhasa, Tibet's colourful capital city. Between sips of yak butter tea, they trade jokes and swap tales about their latest sexual encounters. These twentysomethings on leave from city jobs could have been from anywhere in the world looking for spiritual enlightenment, romantic encounters, or both. But they were all from China, where such conversations and attitudes would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

'Why not?' said Sandy Li, a 28-year-old fashion designer from Beijing, lighting a cigarette from a candle and confessing that she took the trip to meet someone with no strings attached. 'Just for a bit of harmless fun. We don't have to behave ourselves here; we don't know anyone. Finding a proper boyfriend is a lot harder than finding a man you can go to bed with.'

Li's attitude is typical of many of the young urban middle class, whose slogan could well be carpe diem or rather carpe noctem. Apart from Lhasa, another popular pick-up place is Lijiang, in Yunnan province.

Of course, people don't have to travel to far-flung places for casual sex. Your own flat would do. Less than 20 years ago, singles had little choice but to stay with their parents. Now cohabitation, like sex before marriage, is commonplace.

Before a split six months ago, Li lived with her photographer boyfriend for three years but had never introduced him to her family. 'For my parents, bringing a boyfriend home means impending marriage. I am still young. I'd like to make a splash in my career first, and explore what life can offer.'

'The singles are not talking about marriages, and lovers aren't talking about the future,' goes one popular saying among colleague students. And a joke describes the pattern of 'one-week' relationships: 'On Monday, you send out vibes. Tuesday, you express true desire. Wednesday, you hold hands. Thursday, you sleep together. Friday, a feeling of distance sets in. Saturday, you want out. On Sunday, you start searching again.'

Youngsters' unwillingness to settle down is causing great anxiety to the older generation. In Zhongshan Park, a stone's throw from the Forbidden City in Beijing, dozens of parents, armed with photographs and information about their children, gather and search for potential partners. Some even go 'eight-minute speed dating' on behalf of children who themselves will be chatting and flirting on the internet.

'Today's young people are probably more sexually charged than their parents' generation,' said Susie Huang, author of All About Susie, a collection of essays about the love and sex lives of today's burgeoning bourgeois. It's China's literary version of Sex and the City. 'To start with, it's now safe to be naughty,' she said. 'Before you might have landed in a labour camp for conducting an extramarital affair.'

But is it safe? A more tolerant social environment has led many to experiment in uncharted waters, with mixed results. Divorce rates are climbing steadily in major cities like Beijing and Shanghai, where one in three marriages ends in failure. Syphilis has skyrocketed, with a 25-fold increase since the early 1990s. And extra-marital affairs are now common.

Maybe Muzi Mei, a former sex blogger, is an extreme example of today's restless and hedonistic crowds. Her site used to attract 10 million visitors a day before it was shut down by the government in 2003. Officials objected to her online diary, which explicitly detailed her exploits. She was forced to resign from her Guangzhou-based magazine as a sex columnist and now works for a website, but still continues her man-hopping ways.

'My sex life is very interesting. Some may find it educational as well as entertaining,' said the 29-year-old journalist over a bowl of steaming soup in a Beijing restaurant. 'I sleep with lots of men because I don't want to be imprisoned in one relationship,' she declared to the giggles of eavesdropping waitresses. 'I am a free spirit.'

She is also a romantic. In her magazine she offered tips on creating the right environment on a date and suggested playing your favourite music while making love. There are books available too, offering step-by-step guides to dating, from basic advice such as not spitting to sending flowers on Valentine's Day. Kissing, something the Chinese people once saw only in foreign films, is now part of the landscape.

A recent cover story in the national News Weekly concluded that 'China's love life is in a stage of revelry, featuring the emphasis on sex rather than love; on physical pleasure rather than spiritual fulfilment'.

Susie Huang thinks she knows why: 'It is a globalisation of some sort: China is becoming more westernised. And, in some ways, more human.'

Sphere: Related Content

Sex A Taboo To A Muslim Girl

Rosie Millard
There is no way that Selin Tamtekin could be described as even remotely low-life. Immaculate, groomed to perfection, she walks towards me on perfectly unscuffed heels, without a gleaming hair out of place or a single microfibre of dust on her pristine white shirt.

At 33 she looks after the private clients of a Mayfair contemporary art gallery, organising dinner parties for collectors and inhabiting a glittering world that thinks nothing of dropping £40,000 on a painting. Her father is Yuksel Tamtekin, one of Turkey's most revered consular-generals.

Yet she has caused outrage in Turkey after the British publication of her debut novel. The Turkish Diplomat's Daughter is a racy roman à clef, chronicling sexual affairs with a Bangladeshi landlord, a sailor and a Freddie Mercury-obsessed fantasist.

When Turkish newspapers got hold of the book, Tamtekin admitted her identity (it is written under the pseudonym Deniz Goran) and was so roundly pilloried that worried friends dubbed her "the female Salman Rushdie". Splashed on the front pages of at least four national newspapers, she was derided as a "high-class Mayfair prostitute" who was writing about her own thinly veiled sexual experiences. The media were astonished that not only a Turkish woman but one from the highest echelons of society had written so frankly about her sexuality.

A public witch-hunt went on to name and shame members of the Turkish elite whose sexual peccadil-loes were supposedly outlined by the novel. Tamtekin went into hiding for three weeks, horrified by the uproar.

Despite the title, she insists that the novel is not about her experiences.

"It's not an autobiography, although there are people and situations in it that have inspired me. In society, women are expected to play the game according to the rules. Well, I wanted to create a character who does as she pleases. It's not common for women in Turkey to be so overtly sexual," admits Tamtekin.

Although she concedes she has not received death threats, the examples of not only Rushdie, but also Theo van Gogh, the Dutch film-maker murdered for Submission, his transgressive film about women and sex in Islamic society, are a reminder that artistic expression as social critique is not easily accepted in some Muslim countries, even the secular ones.

Tamtekin is unbowed and is furious about the hypocrisy. "It's not as if no one has sex in Turkey. Of course women have sexually active lives, but they always make sure that no one hears about them. Women aren't able to stand out as individuals and talk openly about sex or fancying men," she says.

Turkey might pride itself on its secularity, but it seems as if the notion of a sexually active woman is as utterly taboo there as it is in far more fundamentalist Muslim countries. Tamtekin, who has a BA in history of art from University College London, is the first Turkish Muslim woman to publish a sexually explicit book. The reaction to what would seem pretty mainstream in Britain and the rest of Europe, where even such salacious series as Sex and the City have become accepted, shows how wide the gulf in attitudes still is between Turkey and its neighbours.

The process of Turkish accession to the European Union may well require a wholesale modernisation of the country's attitudes to women and freedom of expression. "There are no tele-vision programmes where people just chat about sex, for example," says Tamtekin. "Where I am from in Istan-bul, it's not that restrictive. I come from a secular, liberal background. But a high number of people living in Turkey regard virginity as crucial and would not contemplate the idea that their daughter might have sex before marriage."

As her book roundly attests, this morality is often utter hypocrisy; Tamtekin vividly describes a society where young women may well be sexually active but who are encouraged to visit a back-street doctor for a bit of "corrective" surgery before marriage.

She writes of a society where in remote rural areas incest is an unspoken but present horror and where, even among the middle classes, "sex, especially female sexuality and homo-sexuality, is still regarded as taboo - it's always done in a highly intricate manner behind closed doors".

From the subsequent furore, one can only surmise that many of her observations on Turkish society are spot on; even her father, the worldly wise diplomat, has stopped speaking to her since her book came out. "When a female Turkish author writes about sex in such a big way, that's a big issue," says Tamtekin sadly.

Given all the fuss, why did she go on with the publication of her novel in Turkish, which is now imminent? "Before signing the Turkish agreement I did have my doubts," she admits. "But if you have an idea and have created something, you have to take a stand and go all the way. I'm not insisting on imposing my own ideas, but everyone has a right to an opinion. I believe I have a right to publish this book in Turkey. And I will stand by my book."

She says that when writing it she just let her imagination wander. "I mean, why do people make such a big deal of it," she says. "We all have sex, everyone does. Sex is part of life and we should come to terms with it. From an early age, my father always taught me there was no taboo in art. And so I took him at his word."

Somehow I suspect that did not go down too well with the former consular-general. "Well, I sent him a letter reminding him that he always told me I was an artist with a great imagination. Of course, my mother asked me why I didn't write a novel all about flowers and birds."

Her novel is a lively gauntlet thrown down by a single woman championing casual sex. It encourages women to indulge in sex openly and freely and even dares to cast a sceptical look at marital fidelity. And it's not just about Turkey.

As she writes: "I never seem to understand why society considers sexually liberated women as such a big threat. Even in London, as a woman you need to play down your sexuality, otherwise people see you as some sort of a nuisance. I find it insane that there is still a majority out there who actually believe men . . . have a much higher sexual drive than women."

While The Turkish Diplomat's Daughter (Burning House, £10.99) may not be perfect literary fiction, the ideas that it suggests are quietly revolutionary. "I would like to be able to change opinion a bit," says Tamtekin. "I am not saying every woman should be leaping around, but they should have more freedom to do so if they wish to. And be open about it."

Sphere: Related Content

Sexual Revolution Gaining Grounds In China

Laura Robertson

Only 60 years ago, arranged marriage was still the norm in many parts of China, but today Chinese teenagers have more sexual freedom than ever.

The topic of sex education was once taboo, and still off-limits in some areas, but changing cultural mores have presented a new challenge for Chinese educators. Officials in some of China's major cities hope increased sex education will help prevent some of the alarming sexual trends, like teen pregnancy, abortions, and STDs.

The first week of May, coinciding with China's "May Day" and Spring holidays, hospitals have reported a spike in the number of teens coming in for abortions. Shanghai newspapers reported a 30% rise in abortions for teenage girls, and Beijing hospitals have also noticed similar trends.

Unique, targeted advertising opportunities

Deng Jun, a doctor from Tian-en Hospital in Beijing told The Shenzhen Daily, "Girls who have abortions are considerably younger. Most of them are junior middle school students aged 14 to 15." Before the students who visited him were in late high school.

A 2004 survey from Suzhou University indicated that 4.2 percent of junior high school girls were sexually active, versus 4.6% of senior high students. While these rates remain significantly lower than those of their U.S. counterparts (just under half of unmarried American teenagers between 15-19 have had sex), the attitudes of Chinese teens towards sex have become increasingly liberal.

Only 6 of 1,300 girls polled in a 2007 survey said they would tell their boyfriend "no" if he wanted to have sex. Of the total 2,300 teens polled, a collective 85% said teenage sex was okay if it was either consensual, or the two people really loved each other.

By comparison, only about 30% of American teens approved of unmarried 16-year-olds having sex, though about 60% approved of 18-19 year olds having sexual relationships, according to a 2002 study from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.

These differences in attitude could indicate future social trends. Even though Chinese teenagers aren't nearly as sexually active as their American counterparts, casual sexual attitudes could soon translate into casual sexual behavior.

International and Chinese family planning organizations are hoping that education can provide a solution to this situation. Some Chinese educators are trying provide sex education at an earlier age, but the lack of strong sex education has caused many Chinese youth to look elsewhere for information. According to one study, 75% of Chinese youth get most of their sex education through online pornography.

Considering the Chinese government's crackdown on internet pornography, and the fact that it's illegal in China, a 15-year-old boy caught looking at internet porn probably won't be able to escape the wrath of authorities by telling them that he's only accessing "educational material."

Government officials have expressed concern over the lack of sex education, and say they can do more to stop the rise in teen pregnancy. Ru Xiaomei of the China National Family Planning Committee told The New York Times the government was "on the right path . . . but we don't say we have done very well, or perfectly."

The questions then remain: is there a "perfect" way to educate Chinese youth about sex, and what is the right way to reach students about these delicate topics? And how will this method be carried out?

As we've seen with the U.S. sex education debates, educating the youth about sex is hardly a non-controversial topic. I imagine it will ignite similar fireworks in China, though the two sides might be even more extreme: comprehensive sex education vs. maintaining the status quo of little to no sex education. Implementation will also probably vary throughout the different provinces.

Despite the controversy, given the rising teen abortion rates and teen pregnancy rates, China has to re-evaluate the current system.

Sphere: Related Content