three letters, rhymes with rex

Last weekend, to relax, I decided to buy all 6 seasons of Sex and the City. You can get pretty much any American TV show on pirated DVD here. Ming is officially addicted to 24 because of it. He's thinking of changing his English name from Jack to Jack Bauer. Anyways, the great thing is, thanks to virtually no copyright laws, I got my Sex for a mere 20RMB ($2.50). The only downfall is that half of the second disc didn't work, but for that price I'm not complaining.

This leads me into the topic of sex, specifically sex in China. I'm not attempting to be Carrie Bradshaw here. I'm just amazed at how different China and America are when it comes to sex. Sometimes I wonder if anyone actually does it here. Besides the humping I endured on the bus that one morning, I was beginning to think that most Chinese don't have a sex drive. But the thing is, it's just repressed. The culture here is extremely conservative-Ming was a bit taken aback just watching Friends. He couldn't believe that TV shows could be allowed to talk about sex so openly. Here, there are no ads with half naked women, no sex scenes on TV, nobody trying to sneek a peak at my boobs. Nothing.

Ming and I went out for lunch today and the restaurant had a stack of magazines. One of them was Men's Health (the Chinese version). I saw the words "Sex Survey" written across the front and had to check out the results. Of course I haven't yet learned the vocabulary needed to attempt to read such an article (does "menage a trois" translate?), but Ming helped me out. I'll just share a couple of the results I found interesting. According to the only 2.3% of the Beijing men and 5.6% of the Beijing women surveyed had sex before the age of 20. It's a bit hard for me to believe, but I guess since high schoolers are busy studying 20 hours a day it's somewhat plausible. The survery also found that 57.3% of men and 77.6% of women have had sex with 5 or less people. Does that seem pretty wholesome to you?

I guess, for me, it's kind of a relief to not have to have sex thrown in my face all the time. But it also seems a bit foolish to pretend it doesn't exist. There is virtually no sex ed in China. I am still trying to convince Ming that you cannot get AIDS from kissing. He is so insistent that people can that I'm starting to question it myself. There are plenty of other examples I could cite, but I'll spare you.

So, that brings me to my final conclusion which is this: There must be an awful lot of frustration here, perhaps that explains the humping on the bus incident.