The world’s biggest country is going through the world’s largest sexual revolution. From the Internet to corner sex shops, China is changing. But lost in the mix, millions of single men can’t find a date much less a mate.
As China goes through what the West experienced in the 1960s, Mao’s Little Red Book has been replaced with a black book filled with phone numbers and date information.
Mao’s taboos against capitalism and sex have been gone for decades. With these changes comes the dark side—drugs, prostitution, HIV and STDs. Under Mao, sexuality was crushed. Everyone wore the same baggy colored clothes. Everyone had the same haircut. Young couples who fell in love and were caught were punished. But tday, cosmetics, perfume and stylish clothes have replaced Mao uniforms.
Millions are learning about romance and love. However, millions of others have been left with sexual, psychological problems and are very ignorant about sex. They were victims of Mao’s Cultural Revolution’s sexual repression.
Continued on December 17, 2014 in Part 2
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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I suspect “the sexual revolution” bypassed a great many western men and women too. I know a fair number of them. Culture notwithstanding, there are always those who cannot keep up with change … or don’t want to.
Thanks to mostly fundamentalist Muslims and Christians, we will always have Puritans amongst us and most of them would be more than willing to pass similar laws to what the Puritans devised and/or Sharia Law.
Most crimes committed in New England were sex crimes. Laws were made in accordance with Puritan religious and moral
beliefs—sex crimes were looked upon as a threat to the social order. Sex crimes were usually defined as those that took place
outside of marriage. Some examples of sex crimes are: fornication, bastardy, adultery, and rape.
Men’s and women’s sexual transgressions were usually equally punished, but the Puritans emphasized
the woman’s offense more than the man’s offense. A man’s offense was just considered a violation of his
marriage, while a woman’s offense was considered a violation of her marriage and an offense against the
community. Women were blamed more for illegal sexual activity because they were considered to be
ruled by their emotions, while men were considered to be governed by reason.
http://public.gettysburg.edu/~tshannon/341/sites/Gender%20and%20Sexuality/Gender%20and%20Law.htm
Most of the people I know who “missed the party” were those who are and were socially challenged. Shy. Tongue-tied. Not attractive. Fat. Not party animals. None of them had religious issues. It was entirely personal and social … and still is. Regardless of history, a lot of this is just personal. Not everything is cultural or religious. At least in my world, very little is cultural or religious, but a lot of people are very screwed up anyway.
Using that definition, I’d have to include myself. As a child, I was extremely shy and had a poor self image, so I know that I “missed the party” for the first 21 years of my life—actually longer. Joining the Marines sort of changed that in wild ways, but I didn’t experience “the party” that I think you are talking about until I was age 36. Then I went all out—with that I lifted both eyebrows.
:o)
Garry was shy too. I think the Marines did it for him, too. Once he got the hang of it, though … 🙂 But he’s still basically shy. He has just learned to deal with it.
Same here. I prefer being an introvert to being an extrovert.
I’m much more at home online than I ever was in person. Writing is more “me” than “I” am 🙂
With writing, we can think about it, revise and edit. What comes out of our mouth is gone, and there’s no luxury called revising or editing.
Mao was strange. He was a sexual predator, yet denied the same pleasure to others
While it is true that Mao had multiple sexual partners and most of them were young girls, especially during his last 15 years or so, the question we must ask is: Was he a sexual predator (by Western definition) or a Chinese man who thought there might be truth in the old Taoist thinking that a man increased his longevity if he slept with and has sex with more than one young virgin—this thinking might also explain why wealthy Chinese men for thousands of years had more than one wife and/or concubine.
I found this passage about Sexual Techniques of the Taoists from this book: “Sex in China: Studies in Sexology in Chinese Culture” by Fang Fu Ruan.
“Now, men who wish to obtain great benefits do well in obtaining women who don’t know the Way. They also should initiate virgins (into sex), and their facial color will come to be like (the facial color of) virgins. However, (man) is only distressed by (a woman) who is not young. If he gets one above 14 or 15 but below 18 or 19, it is most beneficial….”
The passage goes on to discuss “The Desirability of Multiple Female Partners”.
“A number of texts cite the supposed longevity of culture heroes as proof of the value of multiple sex partners.” But according to Taoist thinking, the man had to have sex with multiple young virgins without losing his semen—he had to avoid having an orgasm.
https://books.google.com/books?id=eJfXg7zRSe0C&pg=PA57&lpg=PA57&dq=chinese+longevity+myths+virgins&source=bl&ots=QuMIEz5WxU&sig=YDMVkv29B1LzXpz5a136KFNxuDw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ImGQVKeTGorWoAT94YLgBA&ved=0CDgQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=chinese%20longevity%20myths%20virgins&f=false
In addition, we have this post: Yin and Yang: The Influence of Taoism in Communist China. Taoism is one of Asia’s foremost religions. Even 57 years of communist rule failed to loosen the grip that this blend of alchemy, philosophy and superstition holds of many Chinese.
Some 1,900 years ago, he founded the religious group that would become a central pillar of Chinese life and culture. The roots of this community have embedded themselves deeply into the Chinese mindset, shaping the thoughts and actions of hundreds of millions; even China’s 57 years of communist rule could not curb its popularity.
These strange teachings exerted an even greater influence on the Chinese than Buddhism, another religion from southern Asia. “Taoism has spread its tentacles everywhere,” says Professor Li Yuanguo, an expert on religion at the Academy of Social Sciences in Chengdu. “It defines the relationships between individual humans, and between humankind and nature. That’s still very relevant.”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/yin-and-yang-the-influence-of-taoism-in-communist-china-a-465055.html
This Taoist thinking might also explain why many wealthy men in China are bringing back the concubine culture but not as women owned like a slave by the men, but as kept women. A wealthy man, to get the woman, now has to buy her her a home and give her a stipend to live off of. For instance, my wife and I ate at a noodle shop in Hacienda Heights in Southern California. The owner was the kept woman, or concubine of a wealthy factory owner back in China and when he replaced her with a newer, younger concubine, he funded her trip to the United States and provided the money that helped her start her business.
There have been some films and books on this subject in China. I’ve seen at least two films on the topic.