On a recent Friday, there were questions about masturbation, sexual harassment and feelings for those of the same sex, as well as a question about whether a virgin bleeds when she has sex. A high school student pining for a boy she slept with two years ago was told to forget him and move on. A girl who had gone swimming with her boyfriend was told that sperm could not swim into her body and make her pregnant.

"Sex education in China does exist, but it's useless," said Zhang Yinmo, author of a best-selling book about high school sex and adolescent yearning. "They stand there and tell the students to read it themselves, or they tell them to study it at home."

The most common form of sex education today is a 45-minute class offered just once, in the middle of a physical hygiene course, in the second year of middle school. Most teachers are too embarrassed to discuss this chapter in the course textbook, which identifies body functions, periods and wet dreams, experts said.

"If you want to date in middle school, you have to act like a guerrilla," said Su Ran, a 17-year-old student who said she kissed her first boyfriend at 13. "You talk secretly, you kiss in a small alley. The teacher is always like a ghost, she will appear at any time."

Liu Xiaoqing, a recent graduate of an elite Beijing high school, said her girlfriends were too embarrassed to ask questions about sex. She rates her own sex ed -- the screening of one film that explained how the egg meets the sperm and another that showed animals having sex -- as woefully inadequate.

"Twenty years ago, if you looked at a guy or a girl for more than 20 seconds, you would be judged as sick," said Liu, 18. "Now, more and more kids hold hands and kiss in public."

In some schools, sex education is taught several times a year.

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