by Roy Stevenson
(04/09/08)
Travelers who spend time in China soon come to realize there's a secret China kept hidden from foreign eyes. Chinese friends become silent when a certain topic is mentioned, or dismiss it with a few words. One part of Chinese culture seldom discussed, even closely veiled, is its sexual customs.
Every year thousands of curious foreign visitors travel to the canal city of Tongli, one of Shanghai's satellite cities, to visit a museum that is completely unexpected in China; The Museum Of Ancient Chinese Sex Culture. Awed tourists wander about amidst a staggering 3,700 exhibits that are as much about cultural and sociological aspects of China's history as they are about the erotic habits of its people. To house this huge array of artifacts, the museum takes up the entire floor of a city office building.
With the Victorian grandma attitude of the Communist Chinese Government this museum has been frowned upon by officials, because of what it may represent to the visitor to Shanghai. The government still retains the death penalty for pornography. Nevertheless, the museum survived relocation from downtown Shanghai, and refusal of city officials to allow the curator of the museum, Liu Dalin, to use the word "sex" in his signs outside the museum. In fact, the museum's popularity may be the reason for its survival.
The museum got my interest by receiving honorable mentions in Lonely Planet and Frommer's Guidebooks for showing a unique side of China that gets no publicity. I decided to visit it to see what all the fuss was about, and was not disappointed. I wondered what I was getting myself into when the taxi driver dropped me off outside the museum, smiling and giggling, as he pointed to the entrance. He was most amused that a westerner would visit this place.
However, I need not have worried. It's a fascinating museum crammed with artwork, sculptures, artifacts, and displays about all manner of sexuality.
I learned more about the rich sexual culture of China in my two hour visit than I could have imagined. The museum moves past portraying sex as sleazy (much to the disappointment of some visitors), to portraying erotica as part of Chinese culture. I wouldn't hesitate to bring a teenager to this museum.
The evolution of sex, sex worship, sexual oppression of Chinese women, religion sexuality, and erotica are amongst the themes illustrated in the museum's ten galleries. I wander about looking in glass cases and shelves packed with artifacts like ancient stone dildos, copulating statues, sex toys, a double-ended penis for lesbian lovers, artwork, paintings, books, photographs, and poetry. Together they provide a graphic introduction to Chinese sexual and erotic behavior.
I read excerpts from two thousand year-old documents describing exotic sex techniques practiced back then with intriguing names like "the nine principles of shallowness and one principle of deepness," "the thirty methods," "eight movements," and "five desires." My mind boggles.
Elaborate teacups that were used in brothels with pictures of naked women in the bottom are displayed. An exhibit of erotic statues called "trunk bottoms" tells how mothers gave them to their daughters to put in the bottom of their dowry chests for when they got married. They pulled these statues out on their wedding night and copied their actions.
A noted academic and retired sociology professor of Shanghai University, Liu Dalin has exhibited his artifacts, spanning 6,000 years of Chinese history, in major cities around the world, including Hong Kong, Taiwan, Rotterdam, Berlin, Melbourne, and Yokohama. They've been well received, causing quite a stir among art critics and cultural sociologists. Dalin's mission in opening the museum and exhibiting the artifacts widely is to "transform the western stereotype of Chinese people who are illiterate about sex" -- he's even been featured on the cover of Time magazine for his efforts.
By displaying the extensive erotic collection, people will better understand the impact that sex traditions have had on modern Chinese. In Liu's words, "these sex culture relics tell people how difficult the history of sex is, and how its attached culture has developed." "The artifacts reflect different conflicts including ignorance, oppression, and resistance in civilization..." "It is also hoped the museum will advance the development of modern 'sexology,' to eliminate the mystery that surrounds sex."
Starting my tour I watch a videotape introduction to sex and ancient Chinese culture. It covers the museum's 10 different galleries. They're also outlined in the 8-page booklet I receive when I buy my ticket. The videotape narration is serious about the displays. "This piece of earthenware outlines the male genitals -- apart from ceramic pieces there are numerous other types of artifacts of this kind..."
I start at "The Sex Evolution" gallery. It tells how sex is one of the two human instinctual and basic needs, the other being food. Sex should be open (not shackled), and the human sex life "should be scientific, healthy, and unrestrained," an obvious reference to the Chinese government's current attitude of trying to keep this whole topic out of the limelight.
China's sex culture is clearly well established, thousands of years old, I learn in the second gallery "Sex Worship." Primitive people's understanding of sex was attributed to mysterious supernatural forces, giving rise to various forms of sex worship -- including worship of sex organs, reproduction and sexual intercourse. I'm shown how sex worship led to the handing down of these beliefs and rituals through language, customs, etiquette, literature, arts, cultural relics, and even architecture.
"The Marriage System" gallery tells how China developed in the same way as many other foreign nations in this respect. Its origins are traced to group marriage and hybridization in ancient times, leading to the restriction of sexual intercourse of monogamous relationships. Apparently, the establishment of monogamy through marriage helps maintain stability in society. Even after the establishment of monogamy, however, there were times in Chinese history when the husband would have a wife and several concubines, a polygamous system. Marriage was thus used by men to dominate women, who were seen as their property.
The "Sexual Oppression Upon Women" gallery shows how women were basically tools for sex, to give birth, and do all the work at home. The appalling custom of women being forced to bind their feet into a toes-down "claw" is described. This deformity prevented women from going very far, forcing them to stay at home to serve their husband. There are exhibits of the special shoes and foot-binding devices women's feet were forced into. I learn that women were not permitted to remarry after the death of their husband, forcing many widows into prostitution.
"Sensual Pleasure in Human Life" explains human sexual behavior in terms of three basic functions: pleasure, healthy development, and reproduction. The ancient Chinese enjoyed sex as a recreational pleasure. Evidence is provided by displays of sex aid tools, similar to those used today (except without the batteries).
"Sex Education" is an enlightening gallery. Sex Ed. happened in ancient China. Schools, called "Biyong," in the eastern Han Dynasty for children of high station families, taught topics about sex from an early age. Poorer people had sex "explained" to them through the use of statues, usually hidden inside a trunk, or under the base of a more sedate carving, with explicit carvings of a man and woman engaging in sex. There are reproductions of this statue for sale in the gift shop.
The mother's job was to give her daughter a "dowry painting," or scroll before she married, suggesting to her this is what a husband and wife should do. The newlyweds would hang the picture on the bed curtain and imitate the methods depicted, letting nature take its course.
The superb collection of erotic art in the "Literature and the Arts" gallery includes paintings, scrolls, statues, novels, poems, and operas, that were used for sex instruction or for the fine arts. They're of great cultural and artistic value. Copies of these art objects are available for sale in the gift shop.
In particular, the little book The Chinese Erotic Art Paintings, written for the Museum of Ancient Chinese Sex Culture, is a gem. Introductions in English and Chinese explain that sexually explicit paintings were very popular in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The euphemistic name given to these very explicit paintings is "Spring Paintings" or "Spring Palace Paintings." The most prominent painters and artists of that era are named along with their artwork. The 120 erotic paintings, taken from ancient Chinese paintings, tapestries, books, and scrolls were designed to stimulate the viewer to perform sex with his wife -- sort of a Chinese version of the Kama Sutra.
The thorny topic of "Sex and Religions" is broached in the eighth gallery. Statues of the Buddhist Tantrist Sect's figures engaging in sexual intercourse are displayed, although practitioners of all other Buddhist sects are ascetic and refrain from such worldly pleasures. Taoism has a close connection with sex -- it has advocated sexual techniques aimed at acquiring longevity and masculinity for eons. This knowledge was quaintly called "techniques inside room." However, since the Song and Yuan dynasty, Taoist sexual techniques gradually became defunct.
Sex medicines and tools are described in the ninth gallery, "Sex Health."
Display of a 3,000 year-old artificial stone penis, sex toys, and a double-ended penis used by lesbians are amongst the attention grabbers here.
Another gallery that I was surprised to see is "Unusual Sexual Behavior." It tells how people with different sexual proclivities such as homosexuality, fetishism, exhibitionism, voyeurism, sadism, and masochism were treated as criminals, being punished severely. Here the museum slips its national boundaries by using examples of Hitler having homosexuals exterminated in concentration camps and the burning of homosexuals in Europe in the dark ages.
The "Sex Articles from other Countries" gallery has recently been added. You'll see Peruvian statues with phallic symbols, and ceramics with sexual scenes painted on them, from Pompeii. I was drawn to the furniture designed to enhance lovemaking. It reminded me of a cross between modern rowing exercise equipment and a torture device I saw in the London Dungeon recently. Fascinating!
Finally I come to the gift shop. Replicas of the museum's artifacts are sold here, as are some of the artwork, statues, paintings, etc. I see a statue of a monk with a rather bored look on his face. I don't see anything erotic about it until I turn it upside down. Underneath the base is the same monk, now with an ecstatic expression on his face He's about to penetrate a pretty young concubine from behind. This knowledge later helped me impress a vendor at Shanghai's antique row at Dongtai Lu. He was impressed that a westerner knew about the figure and its "alter ego" under its base.
Other gift shop items include small metal statues of a man and woman of the Hindu faith linking up through, as you would expect, insertion of the male part into the female part. This is definitely a museum worth visiting to satisfy your curiosity and learn about a concealed aspect of Chinese culture.
