Slack-jawed and perspiring, Chen Weizhou gazed at a pair of life-size female dolls clad, just barely, in lingerie and lace stockings. Above these silicone vixens, an instructional video graphically depicted just how realistic they felt once undressed.
The one-child rule is a factor in China’s gender imbalance.
A 46-year-old tour bus driver, Mr. Chen had come earlier this month to the Guangzhou National Sex Culture Festival “for fun,” which was not how he described intimacy with his wife, who did not attend. “When you’re young sex is so mysterious, but once you’re married it gets really bland,” he said, barely taking his eyes off the screen.
With an official theme of “healthy sex, happy families,” the 11th annual exposition sought to remedy the plight of Chinese men like Mr. Chen — and their wives, if they are married.
The overwhelming presence of men at the festival mirrored a demographic imbalance in China, where decades of the one-child rule and a cultural preference for sons combined with illegal sex-selective abortions have distorted the country’s gender ratio to 118 newborn boys for every 100 girls in 2012, rather than the normal 103 boys. In Guangdong Province, home to a migrant worker population of 30 million — China’s largest — the scarcity of women leaves bachelors with limited options.
Filling an exhibition center here in the capital of Guangdong in southern China, the festival was a three-day mating ritual between capitalism and hedonism, all diligently observed by that most prudish of chaperones: the Chinese government. Erotic possibilities abounded, including a transgender fashion show, sliced deer antler marketed as an aphrodisiac, naughty nurse costumes and some flesh-color objects disconcertingly called “Captain Stabbing.”
via With Glut of Lonely Men, China Has an Approved Outlet for Unrequited Lust – NYTimes.com.
Leave a Reply