The no-tell motels in Beijing's university districts pulsate with sex.
Every weekend, lusty college couples make a beeline past greasy spoon restaurants and bootleg video game shops for the dim hotel lobbies to book three-hour blocks of privacy. Students fill half the simple but tidy rooms at the Cheng Lin Ming Guang Hotel, a 10-minute walk from Beijing Normal University.
China is in the midst of a sexual revolution, a byproduct of rising prosperity and looser government restrictions on private life. The relaxed attitudes about sex mark a historic turnaround from the days when love and sex were denounced as bourgeois decadence, and unisex Mao suits and drab austerity were the norm.
But the revolution is taking place largely behind closed doors, and the word "sex" is spoken only among close friends, and then usually in a whisper.
As a result, sex education has not kept up with sexual activity, with some unwelcome consequences. High-school girls make up 80 percent of the patients at Shanghai abortion clinics during one-week school holidays, state media reported last year.
As recently as the 1980s, a couple holding hands in public would draw stares. Now, a government that once had say over when and whom people could marry is more concerned about regulating interest rates. And rising incomes have allowed urban Chinese to pursue much more than mere survival.
While the countryside remains more traditional, at least outwardly, public benches in cities are filled at night with young couples necking openly. Hipsters pack sleek clubs to flirt, chain-smoke imported cigarettes and sip green tea mixed with whiskey. Vibrators are sold in vending machines and at ubiquitous "adult health product" stores. Even the Web site of Xinhua news agency has a photo slideshow titled "Paris Hilton goes sexy for birthday party."
Studies show that 60 percent to 70 percent of Chinese have had sex before marriage, up from 15 percent in 1989, said Li Yinhe, a sex specialist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
In that time, the average urban marriage age has crept steadily higher, reaching 31 for men in Shanghai last year. There has also been a notable shift in attitudes, particularly among those born in the booming 1980s.
At the Pepper bar in Beijing, a 20-year-old manager who did not give her name said without hesitation that young women's attitudes toward sex is casual. Her friends often show up and pick up men.
Cai Junjie, a strapping 23-year-old golf coach who calls himself Tank, saw no reason for a long mating ritual before sex.
"If two people want to be together, time isn't an issue," he said, still avoiding the word "sex" when talking to a stranger.
Chu Yanyang, an unemployed 21-year-old, said she once went to a bar known as "One-Night Stand," just to see if it lived up to its reputation. It did.
"They'll take a bottle of beer and write their phone number on a little slip of paper. And if you drink a beer with him, then he'll give you the slip of paper," she said. "That way, you can get in touch if you want to hook up another day, or some people might even just leave together then and get a hotel room."
Maintaining a relationship can be too much work, Chu said.
"If when we eat I always put food on your plate for you and one day I don't, then you might get mad and fuss at me. These little fights are really hard," she said. "So you might have a one-night stand. It's just so much easier."
RSS