CHINA / Foreign Media on China
The taboo on talking about sex
By Maureen Fan (Washington Post)
Updated: 2006-09-14 11:59
The original article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/10/AR200609100
0955.html
Beijing - In the studios of Capital Life Radio's No. 1 rated show,
"Tonight's Whisperings," the co-host leaned in close to the microphone.
"Tonight we're going to talk about love and sex," Sun Yan said in a deep
voice, launching into a text message sent in by a student.
The young listener said that he and his girlfriend had experimented
sexually the month before, but "both of us wore underwear." He wanted to
know what to do. "What if she's pregnant?" he asked. "Will her life be in
danger if we have an abortion? Which hospital can guarantee a successful
abortion?"
Sun's co-host, the author and lecturer Wu Ruomei, clasped her hands
together. She explained patiently that the girlfriend was unlikely to be
pregnant, but she also issued a warning. Experimentation should be
avoided, she said, because it could lead to sex, and then "you might be
headed for a visit to an abortion doctor."
The exchange kicked off an hour and a half of discussion on a subject
that is still taboo in much of China, even as magazines, music videos and
the Internet increasingly promote sex to the country's trend-conscious
youth. Adults have struggled to keep up. The result is a growing gap
between how teens behave and what older generations are doing to educate
them.
"Tonight's Whisperings" targets college students but enlightens thousands
of younger teenagers who are hard-pressed to find answers to their
questions elsewhere. It also worries anxious, tradition-bound parents who
believe too much information about sex will corrupt their children.
Adults now in their fifties would have been teenagers during the Cultural
Revolution, a time of such puritan attitudes that couples rarely held
hands in public. Openness about sex was already considered bourgeois by
the Communist Party, which came to power in 1949. Under the Communists,
the smallest romantic gestures could lead to a person's being labeled a
"bad element," subject to persecution along with rich peasants,
landowners and counterrevolutionaries.
"It was a very cold time. You did your romance in darkness, in secret,"
said He Guanghu, a Renmin University professor who was 16 when the
Cultural Revolution began in 1966. By the time it ended a decade later, a
generation of young people had lost not only their chance for an
education, but also the ability to speak openly about love and sex and
display the emotions of a loving marriage.
Even today there are limits. "We cannot say too much in the radio program
and should be careful how we speak, in case some listeners appeal to
higher authorities to cancel the show," said Wu, who has co-hosted
"Tonight's Whisperings" for eight years.
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