The original article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/10/AR2006091000955.html
Beijing - In the studios of Capital Life Radio's No. 1 rated show, "Tonight's
Whisperings," the co-host leaned in close to the microphone. "Tonight we're
going to talk about love and sex," Sun Yan said in a deep voice, launching into
a text message sent in by a student.
The young listener said that he and his girlfriend had experimented sexually
the month before, but "both of us wore underwear." He wanted to know what to do.
"What if she's pregnant?" he asked. "Will her life be in danger if we have an
abortion? Which hospital can guarantee a successful abortion?"
Sun's co-host, the author and lecturer Wu Ruomei, clasped her hands together.
She explained patiently that the girlfriend was unlikely to be pregnant, but she
also issued a warning. Experimentation should be avoided, she said, because it
could lead to sex, and then "you might be headed for a visit to an abortion
doctor."
The exchange kicked off an hour and a half of discussion on a subject that is
still taboo in much of China, even as magazines, music videos and the Internet
increasingly promote sex to the country's trend-conscious youth. Adults have
struggled to keep up. The result is a growing gap between how teens behave and
what older generations are doing to educate them.
"Tonight's Whisperings" targets college students but enlightens thousands of
younger teenagers who are hard-pressed to find answers to their questions
elsewhere. It also worries anxious, tradition-bound parents who believe too much
information about sex will corrupt their children.
Adults now in their fifties would have been teenagers during the Cultural
Revolution, a time of such puritan attitudes that couples rarely held hands in
public. Openness about sex was already considered bourgeois by the Communist
Party, which came to power in 1949. Under the Communists, the smallest romantic
gestures could lead to a person's being labeled a "bad element," subject to
persecution along with rich peasants, landowners and counterrevolutionaries.
"It was a very cold time. You did your romance in darkness, in secret," said
He Guanghu, a Renmin University professor who was 16 when the Cultural
Revolution began in 1966. By the time it ended a decade later, a generation of
young people had lost not only their chance for an education, but also the
ability to speak openly about love and sex and display the emotions of a loving
marriage.
Even today there are limits. "We cannot say too much in the radio program and
should be careful how we speak, in case some listeners appeal to higher
authorities to cancel the show," said Wu, who has co-hosted "Tonight's
Whisperings" for eight years.
