There’s a funny piece over at Danwei on how a new Chinese condom is being marketed. The article also points to a new survey by condom maker Durex that indicates the Chinese are very busy when it comes to personal pleasure.
Durex 2004 Global Sex Survey showed the Chinese have the most per capita sexual partners as 19.3, while with the most gloomy sex ardour.
Each Chinese has on average 19.3 partners toping the sex league table where an worldwide average number is just 10.5, according to the world’s biggest condom maker, Durex.
Paradoxically, the survey says the Chinese rank quite low compared to other countries when it comes to sex drive (7th lowest in the world!). Go figure….
1
By jing
Methinks some Chinese were fibbers. Either that or Durex only bothered surveying some harhoppers in Shanghai.
November 12, 2004 @ 12:00 pm | Comment
2
By jing
whoops, that should be barhoppers.
November 12, 2004 @ 12:00 pm | Comment
3
By jacky
Maybe the “partners” have been responsible for the low sex drives?
November 12, 2004 @ 2:10 pm | Comment
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By Kevin #1
Both those studies sound like bullshit to me. I only know one person who’s had more than 10 partners in his life and he’s a sleazy bastard. Methinks the actual average (or perhaps median) would be somewhere around six or seven.
November 12, 2004 @ 3:55 pm | Comment
5
By richard
God, I know people who’ve had that many partners in a single weekend. Some of them even read this blog!
The survey was done by Durex, so I wouldn’t put too much stock in it.
November 12, 2004 @ 4:23 pm | Comment
6
By Kevin #1
Well, that’s why I think that the average may be a little bit screwy. Too many orgy loving folks will tip it high, even though there are a large amount of people who never have more than two or three (or even one) partner(s). 19.3 seems absolutely absurd.
November 12, 2004 @ 7:16 pm | Comment
7
By Langee
Richard,
have you read the book, “the good women of China” by XinRen, who also writes for the Guardian newspaper in the UK? Talk about sex in China, I can never forget the horrid stories in the book.
November 13, 2004 @ 12:32 am | Comment
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By Langee
Correction: Her name is spelled ” Xinran” not “Xinren”.
November 13, 2004 @ 12:36 am | Comment
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By richard
I haven’t read the book, but am now very interested. I will look it up.
November 13, 2004 @ 9:02 am | Comment
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By ACB
13 partners, not unless your a whore.
Who’s having all this sex, it certainly isn’t the teenagers and it isn’t the housewhives either. There must be a few VERY active guys out there.
When you ask any man about the number of partners that he’s had you shoul divide the number by 4 as most men tend to raise their personal tally to compete with all of the other men raising their tally.
There is no way that Chinese people are this frisky given that they start a few years latter than in America and there is less infidelity.
November 13, 2004 @ 10:14 pm | Comment
11
By Fiona Pollard
I definitely second the proposal that you should read ‘The Good Women of China’ – it’s fantastic. Apparently Xinran has written another book that I’m planning to pick up next time I’m out of China.
I’d say that here in Jiangxi the attitude to sex is: none until you’re married, but after that multiple partners (especially if you’re a guy).
Middle-class and upper-class guys are expected to have a mistress, as well as to sleep around with call-girls / prostitutes provided by business contacts / workmates. It’s a normal, accepted part of guanxi. A friend of mine was told by her husband’s colleagues, ‘wow, you’ve got a great guy there – he never spends the night with any girls we find for him’. Thus admitting to her that they did regularly try to get him to sleep outside of his marriage bed.
This attitude obviously leads to hypocrasy – it’s ok for the men to sleep around, but not the women, so quite who are the men sleeping with? etc.
Anyway, that figure doesn’t surprise me, and I’ve found that most married, middle-class guys here are deeply sleezy. (Doen’t help that three Chinese guys have approached me and asked me to be their mistress.)
November 14, 2004 @ 3:40 am | Comment
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By statistician
Both Durex and the population at large need some education about how to conduct scientific surveys.
If you need a 10 second training in conducting surveys, let me tell you that an internet survey, which i believe is the way that Durex did it, is subject to enormous self selection bias, among other serious problems. that’s why no serious survey is ever conducted in the internet. hope this helps.
November 14, 2004 @ 2:42 pm | Comment
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By richard
I agree, Internet surveys are worthless. But how do you know this was an Internet survey? Durex has a reputation to maintain, and they would look pretty bad releasing Internet survey numbers as though they actually reflected any reality.
November 14, 2004 @ 4:21 pm | Comment
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By Filthy Stinking No.9
While I agree with what everyone said about this survery, I always remember what that hilarious little book “The Xenophobe’s Guide to the Chinese” says: Chinese people don’t talk about sex, but there’s 1.3 billion of them, so obviously there’s been rather a lot of sex going on! (If you haven’t encountered this series have a look … there’s a Xenophobe’s Guide to many different peoples, and most of them are pretty funny … they’re not racist tomes by any means … I bought a copy of their guide to the Danes while I was staying with a Danish family, and it was hilariously accurate.)
I think Fiona’s comments are on the mark … men in that position could well be accomplishing this … but personally I think that any time it’s a “professional service” it shouldn’t be allowed to count to your “score”. I have come across a few Chinese girls down in Australia who I’d bet are probably having that many partners, but they all seem to have been the types who had “thrown off their shackles” (so to speak) once they got here, and were making full use of their new found freedom away from home. At the same time, they were generally careful to remain outwardly “prudish” amongst the Chinese, and tended to engage in their new found sexual liberation outside the circle of Chinese friends. These girls would also talk about how they couldn’t act like that in China …
(Please note that I’m not making any claims to more than intellectual contact with said young ladies. 😛 )
November 16, 2004 @ 4:48 pm | Comment
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By joe
I was dating a Chinese woman in San Francisco of reputedly good background, family, education, profession, etc., who told me matter-of-factly that she had a life time tally of 15-20 partners (men). She was 38 years old, from Beijing and had a demurr appearance and claimed to be traditional. Thoughts?
Seemed high to me.
joe
December 9, 2005 @ 9:02 pm | Comment