Forum Trends: Is sex still a taboo in China?

( bbs.chinadaily.com.cn) Updated: 2014-07-22 07:39

oxixoca (UK)

Well, I live in the UK and we are pretty open about it - you can get free contraception and there are very few laws to stop you from having sex, our age of consent is 16 although you can have sex before and some do (a little young!) and we have some abortion laws. We are taught sex at 5 years old - not specifics just simple stuff - then again when we are 11, and then through high school girls get extra talks on menstruation - and as a whole class you will have sex-ed classes of some sort, and the same thing goes for college.

However, when it comes to my boyfriend who is Chinese - it's a little different. He was taught the basic science stuff, but he would never discuss such a thing with his parents. At school during science class he was taught that you should not have sex until after marriage, and his parents never discussed it. He said that in China a girl's virginity is valued, and this was further emphasized when one of my Chinese friends said she would keep her relationship a secret because otherwise there may be rumors about her that would ruin her reputation. Even during our first month of dating, my boyfriend would only come into my dorm if one other friend was with us because he didn't want to ruin my reputation.

I think it's just different ways of thinking, but it confused me... a country with such tough family planning laws doesn't actually teach its students how to use contraception and tells them to wait until marriage. And contraception in China is also easily available - more than in the UK - though you have to pay. It's just different cultures, we are more open about sex and tend to see a lot of it on TV, but it's not like this in China. Plus, we were the same a while back – so views change.