Children watch in embarrassment as a couple kiss at a shopping mall for a kissing competition in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, on Valentine’s Day, 2006.

By Zhang Yuchen

No students appear on the footage, but their titters can be heard. Holding a pink stocking in one hand and an empty mineral water bottle in the other, the vice director of the Moral Education Office of Dongguan Experimental Middle School in Guangdong Province has racked up several million hits online with his vivid video, spoken in colorful Dongguan dialect.

But the middle school teacher’s three-minute correct condom-use video has been derided by some bloggers as “disgraceful and misleading,” while others applauded Xie Runhua’s innovative teaching method as “direct,” “vivid” and “effective.”

Xie told the Shanghai Morning Post he had found students ignorant of sexual basics and contraception and decided to organize a special class in response. He asked one of his students to shoot the lecture and upload the video to educate more students.

Not just Xie, but many teachers have met with opposition from parents fearing frank discussions will make their children more curious about sex.

“Kids may be horrified if they know all the secrets of the human body at the age of 9 or 10,” a 26-year-old teacher told the Beijing News.

“But sex education at an earlier age is absolutely necessary.”

Girls fall easy victims

Many young girls believe abortions are a simple, quick and painless procedure, claimed the Beijing News reporter Tao Chun. It is younger women who tend to be most uninformed about the risks of abortions or catching sexually-transmitted diseases, she wrote.

After decades of taboo, China’s parents often feel out of their depth in handling these long-buried issues: In most cases, parents struggle to communicate with their fast-growing children, said Deng Jun, a doctor specializing in sex education at Beijing Second Hospital and one of China’s leading authorities on these issues. Most of the 19 parents interviewed needed to first educate themselves before being able to talk to teenagers about pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

Panicked parents have been dragging their primary school-age children to health clinics after hearing of relationships with members of the opposite sex, wrote Tao Chun: 84 percent of 600 Beijing 13-16 year-olds admitted having no knowledge of sex in a 2005 survey by Deng.

One student reportedly told the Beijing Times, “Teachers always turned over the sex education page in the biology textbook and asked us to read it at home.”

Deng’s survey of junior high school students discovered something else their parents and teachers might not enjoy knowing: 31.7 percent of respondents agreed with premarital sex.

If adults are uncomfortable talking to their precious “bao bao” or “baby” about sex, then they need to get over it, and fast: China’s education bosses are working to improve sex education, promoting condom use amongst teenagers and discussing the dangers of unsafe sex in schools.

The Ministry of Education on December 26 issued primary and secondary health education guidelines that said primary schools across China should teach pupils about the human body, including information about sexual characteristics. Previously, such education only began in high school.

According to the new regulations, the curriculum for senior high school should include premarital sex. Junior high school students should be introduced to AIDS and how to prevent it.

AIDS has been a driving force behind changes in sex education. Ministry of Health figures show China has at least 264,000 confirmed HIV cases and about 78,000 have already developed full-blown AIDS by the end of September, 2008.

A recent program to promote condom use and safe-sex practices among 12-15-year-olds was attacked by China Daily columnist Liu Shinan, arguing such programs “go too far in the name of sex education.”

Young people felt hopeless seeking help on sexual issues at school or home, wrote Tao Chun. Young people tended to turn instead to the cyber world, said Lin Peng, a Beijing-based psychologist.

But practical sex ed information remains surprisingly scarce on the Chinese Internet. And Chinese children searching online for a few simple facts about the birds and the bees are extremely likely to stumble across more graphic surprises, according to Lin.

Deng said teenage sexual activity had risen since 2005 and would be published in her survey coming out later this year.

Between 6-10 percent of teenage students have had sexual intercourse, according to the Beijing News. And in some provinces, such as Guangdong, up to 18 percent of high school students have had “sexual experiences”, according to birth control officials at the fourth Sexual Culture Festival held last November in Guangzhou.

“Sexual experiences” – included kissing, hugging, fondling and masturbation – were found to begin as early as 12.

Of 1,863 college students, about 32 percent were sexually active, according to a 2006 survey by sexology professor Pan Suiming at the Renmin University of China in Beijing. For Pan’s 2001 survey, the number was 16.9 percent.

“It is not too late to mend the fold even after some of the sheep have been lost,” Deng Jun told the Global Times.

“Promoting condom use and safe sex will help mend that fold. However, some of us do even not want to mend the fold and are content to just continue letting the sheep be lost, which is one of the biggest problems with sex education in China.”

Song Shengxia contributed to the story