Sex with Chinese Characteristics

Elliott Spitzer in China

This posting is PG 13. If you are too young to read stuff like this, don’t and go do something else.

This is about sex in China………but first some perspective……….

When I was delivering mail at IBM in the middle of the 1960’s the Poughkeepsie Laboratory manager, whose name doesn’t matter now, was fired for banging his secretary on his office desk. She hadn’t objected, but the colleague who came upon them and had the unmitigated gall to enter without knocking apparently thought it was bad form. Everybody quickly learned the story, but IBM only said the fellow had left the company for personal reasons. They said nothing about his paramour.

Nelson Rockefeller, former Governor of New York, Vice President at one time and rich guy who loved art and women is reputed to have died while with a twenty something lover not his wife when he was seventy. His wife, whose name happened to be Happy, was not at the time, but never said much about it publically. Rocky’s son later said he didn’t know for sure about the stories but he hoped if they were true, that the girlfriend made his dad happy…………….lovely thought, obviously from another guy.

For generations, “names” in the news, men almost exclusively, have had lapses of libido. Jefferson with Hemings, Roosevelt with Lucy Mercer (and others), Eisenhower with Sommersby, Patton with Dietrich and others, Kennedy with more than a few; Gary Hart, Jimmy Swaggart, Clinton, Spitzer, now Sanford of South Carolina. Jack Welch, who many rank a genius in business with GE suffered from peccadilloes that barely dented his reputation or speaking fees. The entertainment crowd basks in lascivious living that either enhances their box office, regains lost publicity or gets them on talk shows to laugh off what would otherwise be worthy of scarlet letters sewn onto their shirts- at least in America. The sexism with that is ridiculous. Charlie Sheen is a hero and celebrated flamboyant playboy for paying five figures to spend time with working girls and his Madam went to jail. Deborah Jean Palfrey, the so-called Washington Madam, hung herself when facing prison time for providing paid entertainment to the unnamed Washington elite.

For many of even the most powerful among us, the need for unmitigated adoration from a female or the temporary illusion of it as shoring up for the big game is inescapable. Whatever the conventional feedback or payoff received for a job well done, it doesn’t seem to provide enough reassurance for the next one and can rarely match the kick provided by a lover — real or imagined. Everyone denies it, from Newt Gingrich to Barney Frank, but it seems all too true.

America has weird contradictions…………Elliott Spitzer lost his job and credibility doing the same thing that Richard Gere portrayed with a lot more audacity and arguably better taste in “Pretty Woman,” a box office smash that has become part of our lexicon and a renowned “chick flick.” “Lost-in-Translation” and “The Girl in the Cafe” portray May-close-to-December romance the former with two married people; the latter with a guy in his sixties and a young girl. The “Before Sunset” “Before Sunrise” films of Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke celebrate the same thing that South Carolina’s Governor Sanford is getting clubbed for. “You’ll miss your plane.” She says. “I know.” he replies forgetting his wife and child at home in America as he stays in the apartment with his love interest in Paris.

People have gone to jail for the kinds of things alluded to in films like “Lolita” and “Beautiful Girls.” Timothy Hutton had something for “Marty” played by Natalie Portman and she for him – ok in the movies and for introducing notions like “Old Souls,” for children who seem to “get it,” but in real-life America it’s jail time and censure. What’s up with that?

God and nature make young women (girls at puberty actually), attractive because God and nature want them active when they are young, strong and healthy because it increases the odds of keeping the species going. The parts of us that make us more human and less beasts cause a little hesitation until these kids get minds of their own because it seems less unseemly, but the attraction was put their by forces other than morality and brain chemistry always threatens to win out over logic.

This sounds terrible to say, but nature has no use for old people for whom procreation is only a memory or whose production of new people would be inefficient or defective. That’s what makes the struggle between head and heart so confounding and what terrorizes souls trying to do what’s right despite the siren’s songs of youth and beauty. I’m not sure anyone is immune from this; some just get vaccinated somehow.

America has a weird way with sex and morality. In 2005, the Academy Award for the best original song went to “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” sung live on network television with only the only heed paid to morality was swapping out “bitch” for “witch” in the lyrics. The whole theme of the song — profiting from selling women for sex — was untouched.

When I lived in the northwest part of Virginia, where there were more churches than Seven-Eleven’s and Evangelical Christians and Mennonites vied for souls, it was common for kids to have more step relations than blood relations and not unheard of for a woman to have four or five kids by four or five different guys. I knew of one young woman whose first date with her newest husband was in the maternity ward where she was in false labor with the child of some other guy. The self-righteousness and hypocrisy of people in that part of the country is astounding.   It’s the leaders and spokespeople of this crowd who go around preaching how to live to the rest of us.

Now this may come as a surprise, but in some places, unsullied by descendants of Puritans and other religious zealots who fled their native lands because they weren’t tolerated too well, human nature and human frailty are a little better integrated into society. While the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi felt the need to declare he had never paid a hooker, he had no issue admitting to having girlfriends one of whom was an eighteen-year-old girl whose birthday party he felt obliged to attend. At the time he was seventy-three. When French politician Francois Mitterand died, his wife and their children were joined at his funeral by his mistress and their daughter – very civilized. Nobody seemed to care much, except for the American press.

It’s different in China.

China has 5,000 years of civilization and ingrained in the culture is tacit acceptance of sexual diversions and dalliance in the same way that sports betting is ingrained in America – technically illegal, but something everyone does, with barely any concealment: college brackets and results of March Madness are everywhere; even President Obama alluded to his picks.

It’s like that with sex in China.

Craig’s List for cities in China are replete with ads for nubile nymphs delivered to your door, but aimed mostly at the expat crowd and priced accordingly. There are no cops or attorneys general pressing Craig’s List to police its ads.

The locals live differently.

It is almost impossible to wander the streets of cities in China, large or small and not encounter sex for sale in one form or another. Almost every hotel, even western hotels, have saunas (massage operations) in or adjacent to them and the vast majority offer “special massage” which means just what you think it does — the happy endings which were the topic of several episodes of the HBO series “Mind of the Married Man.”

In the distance of a city block on a street not far from my apartment in Shanghai, there are no less than eight store-front shops in which sit women in negligees beckoning to passersby, especially foreigners, but accepting all comers. The shops are cheek-by-jowl to metal shops, small groceries, bike repair shops and all sorts of commercial enterprises, not tucked away in sleazy alleys or “red-light” districts. The women range in age from their early twenties to pretty old and from drop-dead gorgeous to ridiculous.

At the other end of the spectrum are stand-alone saunas — in a few cases four story stand-alone buildings, with lockers, showers, dozens of male shower attendants and masseurs who will scrub you, front and back for an hour or more; rooms filled with lazy-boy lounge chairs including chair-side food and beverage service by comely, uniformed attendants and then, at one’s leisure, a line-up of twelve to twenty identically uniformed beauties from which to pick for ninety minutes of show and tell in a room that can match the best of a five star hotel (as can the entire decor and service of the best of these places).

After one selects his lovely, she takes him by the hand and leads him to a private room, well appointed, usually mirrored, and often with a shower or bath. What happens then is a ritual that defies description, unsuitable for this narrative certainly, but think “cat bath” and you’ll get an idea of part of the preliminaries. The price for the best of these places, including food and beverages and as long as you like in a lazy-boy watching TV or sleeping or whatever, is less than $100, inclusive.

I asked a Chinese friend about all of this and why so many, so obvious and so elegant. He told me that after the Chinese government changed the laws to curtail corruption and sanctioned cash payments as bribes with jail time or other harsh punishment, nights out at the sauna became a popular substitute for smoothing business transactions and the number of places exploded. There are no “skyboxes” in China and golf outings are rare as are convention suites in Vegas or Atlantic City. So the saunas are influence peddling with Chinese characteristics.

At the other end of the spectrum, simple massage and the touch of one human to another is an art in China, highly honored and as common as a burgher in the States. Foot massage, full body massage, oil massage, every conceivable kind of massage employs thousands if not millions of practitioners all over the country. For some, up-selling to “special” massages is offered, but for many it’s legit through and through. Yes, they do walk on your back, holding onto cloth straps hung over ceiling mounted bars that parallel the massage tables/beds. At a good place, like the one I frequented in Xiamen you can get almost two hours of bliss including hot moist towels on your back and those small feet for about US$25 or less.

There is a curious middle-ground I’ve only seen in Shanghai….. a sensual massage with limits that seems to satisfy some human need in a population where men outnumber women by a bunch. In some places…………storefronts open to the street………..men of all ages can get the touch of a woman, being caressed really while fully clothed, including the woman masseuse reaching up under the guys shirt and caressing his crotch to the point of arousal. No touching of the girl’s sensitive parts is permitted or attempted, other than to hold the girl’s waist or leg while she sits on a small stool next to the massage bed (usually a cot with a bamboo mat on it) and massages the guy’s upper body and legs. It costs about 20 RMB for an hour of this pseudo-affection, which is less than three bucks.

Selling sex is technically illegal in China as is profiting from selling the sex services of others. Nobody seems to care much about that unless some official oversteps or publicity from the western media may make China look bad. There was a case here a few weeks back where a massage girl stabbed and killed an official who pressed her for more services than she was comfortable providing. She was acquitted and the focus was on the corrupt official trying to use his official position for favors rather than on any other aspect of their encounter. From time-to-time local law enforcement will shut down places, but that’s usually because they are negotiating a new agreement with the owners of an establishment or reacting to too much notoriety. Remember, many of these places are as prominent in neighborhoods as McDonalds or KFC.

More importantly, China is very protective of its image and to prevent western media exploiting what it would undoubtedly term “Chinese decadence” officials in China will sanitize the streets from time-to-time, particularly in areas subject to high traffic by foreigners and in advance of major international events like the Beijing Olympics for example. The 2010 World Expo in Shanghai is having the same effect reportedly, but only in the areas where foreigners and especially the foreign press and dignitaries are likely to go. For locals and Chinese businessmen, their favorite haunts are likely to remain untouched.

The whole idea of concubines and second or third wives came out of China and you’ve got to wonder if 5,000 years of experience maybe brought accommodation with reality not yet achieved in the west, or at least not yet achieved in Puritan if hypocritical America. It’s as though the Chinese say “Hey, this is how people are (men anyway), so we’ll adapt, be happy and knock off all the fuss.” Of course jilted lovers are still jilted lovers and betrayed women are still as betrayed even if they idolize Richard Gere or Bill Murray or some other actor doing the same things they’d kill their husbands or boyfriends for.

Joseph Needham, a Cambridge researcher who studied the history of science and medicine in China for half a century died at 94 in 1995. When his wife Dorothy died, Needham married his “second wife” who we would call his mistress, a Chinese researcher who was Needham’s girlfriend for decades. She lived just down the street from the Needhams in Cambridge and according to Needham’s biographer, the three of them seemed to have reached an accommodation that permitted them to dine and travel together as old friends. Needham never lost his prominence in Cambridge over his personal dalliances. The Needham Research Institute at Cambridge, dedicated to the study of Chinese Scientific History was opened in 1985 by Britain’s Prince Philip whose son once wrote he wished to be a feminine healthcare product so as to be closer to his lover and now wife. He’s the one that the late Princess Diana, no shrinking violet herself, had all those problems with.

Joseph Needham, a Cambridge scholar with Chinese characteristics.

It’s a strange world.