BEIJING -- There are two sides to the sexual revolution that is sweeping through China.
At a free afternoon sex education workshop in coastal Ningbo, 24-year-old Zhu Dihui takes diligent notes on condoms and conception, gearing up to partake of sensual pleasures that were mostly off-limits to his parents' generation.
"I plan to get married in a year or two, and this is important training," said Zhu, who describes himself as "conservative" and who took a day off from his job at a department store to go to the workshop. "I need to learn some things When is the best time to get pregnant, what kinds of contraceptives are available. Both men and women should be informed."
But 750 miles away, at a low brick clinic by a highway in Beijing, it is clear that China's sexual revolution has brought more than healthy liberation each day, a parade of nervous young men, most with cell phones and leather jackets, shuffle into Dr. Yang Guanglu's spartan green examination room, each with a story and a sexually transmitted disease.
In China, rates of sexually transmitted diseases are rising more than 20 percent a year, helping to fuel a small but growing HIV problem.
"Life these days is much more open," said a 29-year-old sound engineer with a ponytail who gave only his surname, Wang. Wang recently got his first case of gonorrhea after unprotected sex with a prostitute. "I guess the key is self-protection, using condoms," he said. "You have to learn how to look after yourself now."
It is hard to avoid noticing sex in China these days, with sex shops sprouting up in every city and sex-advice call-in shows on late-night radio.
Walls in urban areas are decorated with fliers for sexual clinics ("One Shot and You're Cured!"). Newspaper columns debate the pros and cons of condom advertising. Viagra -- here called Weige (or "big brother") -- is the most talked about drug in town, even though it is not yet approved for sale.
"For decades sex was totally unmentionable; people who talked about it were persecuted and regarded as hooligans," said Dr. Ma Xiaonian, whose Viagra paperweight and bookshelves scattered with phallic symbols attest to his status as the only board-certified sexologist in China. "But in the 80s the subject freed up in fits and starts. And today, if a magazine doesn't have sex, its sales will certainly fall."
The Chinese have a lot of catching up to do. For three decades the Communist Party branded recreational sex a bourgeois pastime; prostitution and sexually transmitted diseases quickly disappeared. But, with sex taboo and even basic sex education classes abolished, a whole generation was left ignorant and embarrassed. Their children today often arrive at adulthood in the dark.
"Particularly in the small cities and towns, sheer ignorance of sex is a big, big problem," said the doctor, who is a frequent guest on call-in advice shows. "There are so many wrong ideas, even among doctors, that people don't know what to believe."
To emphasize the point he pulled out an article by a People's Liberation Army "expert" on premature ejaculation, warning that masturbation will cause impotence after marriage.
This 30-year vacuum in part explains the proliferation of sex education courses, where young Chinese learn about sex from scratch, often with the same earnestness that they study computers.
At the Shanghai Metallurgical Institute, 25 college students recently watched a middle-aged chemistry professor named Xu Ganhe project anatomical drawings on a screen and discuss the case of a women who had a needle left in her abdomen during surgery. "She couldn't enjoy sex for the next 18 years, so a court gave her $7,000. Was it worth that much?" Xu asked, to a smattering of giggles.
Surveys show that still only about 20 percent of college students in China have premarital sex. In Xu's class, only one student, Wang Yirong, had ever discussed sex with his parents; he initiated the discussion. "The old generation was restricted by the revolutionary way of thinking," Wang explained.
"We talk about sex when we're lying in our dorm room at night," said Cai Ruihua, a pretty 20-year-old. "But our parents are still very conservative." Xu admitted that he had never discussed sex with his own 23-year-old triplet sons.
Indeed, a deep conservative streak still runs through China, especially in some government circles. Local officials and party newspapers regularly criticize sex talk shows as "spiritual pollution" and some cities have banned condom advertisements from public places. Government anti-pornography campaigns are still common -- even though pirated pornographic videos are readily available.
Against this backdrop, sex in China often has an oddly antiseptic bent -- not a lusty pleasure but a science to be mastered for physical and mental health. Sex shop salesmen often wear white coats, and the shops employ doctors for free consultations.
Every morning Qiao Yue, 38, drops his 8-year-old daughter off at school and goes to work at his new sex shop, referred to as an "adult health store." It is a cache of condoms and pink rechargeable vibrators, aphrodisiacs and life-like vaginas, all in the midst of an otherwise nondescript block of restaurants and small electronics stores.
There are now 2,000 such stores across the country, with well over $20 million in sales. "There is a big market for this stuff now," said Qiao, a former factory manager.
"People used to think that once they had their kid, that was it, sex was over," he said. "But people's attitudes toward sex have changed dramatically since opening up. Now people believe that sex is something that is first good for your health and only last for reproduction." His customers range from 70-year-old professors to 20-year-old laid-off workers; about two-thirds are men.
The medicalization of sex perhaps explains why the impending arrival of Viagra has caused such a hubbub, with traditional medical doctors rushing to patent a home-grown version and usurp the name. Black market Weige costs more than $40 a pill.
But there is another effect of more liberal attitudes about sex, one that is most obvious in nightclubs sprinkled with prostitutes and the clinics treating sexually transmitted diseases.
There were 461,510 cases of sexually transmitted disease in China in 1997, almost a hundredfold increase from the 5,838 cases in 1985. Most experts believe this estimate is low, since many of the small private clinics do not report cases.
Doctors who were in medical school in the '50s, '60s and '70s never saw a patient with gonorrhea. But at the Beijing Institute for Sexually Transmitted Diseases Control and Research, Dr. Yang Guanglu and his assistants -- who take swabs and administer shots -- now see 40 or 50 people a day.
In addition to syphilis and gonorrhea, Yang has also diagnosed a few cases of AIDS. Unprotected sex is an increasingly common means of HIV transmission in a country where fewer than 5 percent of adults use condoms, a number of surveys have shown.
"You're fine! That's normal!" Yang said cheerfully to a young man whose pants and long johns still hung around his ankles. The man had recently visited a prostitute and was convinced that he had caught something.
But most customers leave with another diagnosis. "I have to come back for shots for three days?" asked a young traveling salesman named Zheng, with syphilis.
"You don't have to," said the doctor.
"Then how'll I get cured?"
"You won't!" said Yang, an avuncular man in his early 60s. "Go get the shot."
Although Yang does not pass judgment -- and supports the use of condoms -- he does see his booming business as a sign of moral laxity.
"In order to become prosperous, we've needed to engage the outside world, and that has let new ideas and also diseases in," he said. "There are those in China whose moral standards are not up to snuff, and a small number have sex lives that are very chaotic."
China is now beginning to address the epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases. But it is a difficult task, particularly in rural areas, where officialdom is often most squeamish about sex and government family planning offices the sole purveyors of contraceptives. Traditionally, family planning clinics only cater to married couples and rely heavily on IUDs, although some are starting to offer condoms and birth control pills.
In the cities, contraceptives are now widely sold in drugstores and "adult health" shops. Patrons are slowly learning.
"Customers used to throw money on the table and run out embarrassed," said Qiao, the shop owner. "Now it's more like buying clothes. They ask questions. Can they return merchandise? Is there a warranty? That sort of thing."
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