China and sex

It’s not uncommon to wake up in China and see racy matter in the newspaper or on a government-run website that you’d never see in a U.S. newspaper.

One of the ways China may be changing the fastest is in its usage of sexual content in advertising and in media. One local wag refers to Xinhua, the state-run news agency, as Skin-hua because of its habit of putting cheesecake photos on its website, obviously to draw traffic.

Another tactic is to run a fairly tame story on changing sexual norms and slap a photo on there with other aims. A headline in today’s China Daily website drew my attention to a convention in Guangzhou on a three-day “sex culture expo.” Curious, I clicked. (Don’t click yourself if you aren’t willing to see what Chinese newspaper readers see all the time. The content on the site may be what appears in a British tabloid but not a family-run U.S. newspaper.)

On the face of it, China still seems rather prudish. After all, it’s only a couple of decades since everyone, men and women, covered up in woolens or cotton suits.

But prostitution is everywhere. I can’t count the times I’ve received late-night phone calls in a hotel room in the provinces and hear the following simple sentence barked in my ear: “Wanna massage?” Often, the hotels that offer such services are actually owned and run by government entities. The rake-off seems to be a particular perk of certain cadres.

In-your-face sexual advertising is also getting more common. Even big multinationals, like McDonald’s and Haagen Dazs, have Chinese-language advertising now with suggestive content. McDonald’s ads indicate eating beef is good for virility. Haagen Dazs also came under criticism. Click here to see one story.

Comments

[American sour grapes]

This is a Amrican White Trush blogg

[PJ]

q.v. the magazine cover, plastered all over Beijing, of Li Bingbing and Wu Jun Mei posing nude, ostensibly to promote breast cancer awareness month. This was one of the first things I saw returning to China after 10 years' absence. The times, as Dylan notes, are a-changing...