Sexual Culture in Ancient China

In most people's conception, sexual attitudes in the West are relatively open, while those in China are relatively reserved. Chan Hing-ho, a researcher at France's Centre National de Recherches Scientifiques, who holds a doctorate in literature, says that when people compare China and the West, they generally compare modern China with the modern West. But they are quite unaware that sexual repression in the West in the middle ages was far more severe than in ancient China.

Sexual repression in the West was mainly rooted in religion. From a religious point of view, the main purpose of the human sex act is reproduction. Thus sexual activity outside the institution of marriage is regarded as "sinful."

When medieval Europe was in the grip of this repressive atmosphere, even statues of female figures were flat-chested and without feminine curves. UP to the Victorian era, only the "missionary position" was considered "correct" for sexual intercourse; anything else was seen as wrong.

Licentiousness, the greatest of all evils?

But in ancient China, although there was also a duty to maintain one's family line, at the same time sex was also considered a way of promoting health and vigor. The degree of sexual freedom within marriage was extremely great. For instance, the 7th-century book Dongxuanzi describes 30 different coital postures. The author, physician Li Dongxuan, gave each position an elegant name, such as "Turning Dragon," "Two Fishes Side by Side," "United Kingfishers," "Mandarin Ducks Entwined," "Wheeling Butterflies," "Dance of the Two Egrets," "Flying Seagulls," and so on.

Moreover, Christianity is opposed to homosexuality. The Bible describes homosexual acts as "against nature," "unclean" and "an abomination." But homosexuality was never strongly condemned in ancient China, and even many emperors through the ages had such predilections. In the Han dynasty, almost every emperor had "men of beauty" to accompany him, and in the Wei, the Jin and the Northern and Southern Dynasties, such relationships even spread among the people.

All religions preach controlling the desires to some extent, but the degree of their influence has differed in China and the West. Chan Hing-ho explains that in the West, Christianity was aligned with political power, and so was able to exert great pressure. But although Chinese Buddhism also preached that "licentiousness is the greatest of all evils," Buddhism in China had no ruling status, and so was not able to bring such pressure to bear.

The saying goes that "a real man has three wives and four concubines." I n ancient China, every man from the emperor and his generals and ministers right down to the ordinary people, wanted to be a "real man." （courtesy of the National Palace Museum）

What is sex?

What is sex? For Chinese people, sex is something they are embarrassed and unwilling to talk about in public, but which they discuss in private with great zest.

In his books Sexual Life in Ancient China and Erotic Color Prints of the Ming Period, the Dutch diplomat to China and famous sinologist Robert van Gulik revealed the true face of sexuality in ancient China, and made the Chinese begin to face up to the sexual culture of their own ancestors.

With the rise and fall of China's many dynasties and the emergence of many different philosophies, sexuality in China naturally went through many changes. Professor Liu Dalin of the sociology department at Shanghai University, who is known as the "Chinese Dr. Kinsey," states that politics and economics had a major influence on sexual culture. Looking at the evolution of "sexual affairs" in dynasties down the ages, a regular pattern emerges: the more prosperous and powerful a dynasty was, the less restrictions it placed on people in sexual matters; while the more weak and corrupt a dynasty was, the more tightly it controlled people's lives, and the more severe the constraints it placed on sex.

In ancient Chinese fables and legends, many characters were "born by the grace of heaven." For instance, Fuxi, Huangdi, Shun and Yu were all mysterious figures who "knew only their mothers, not their fathers." In fact, to put it bluntly, they were simply the products of an age of promiscuity and communal marriage. When later generations ascribed various extraordinary feats to them, thus clothing them in an aura of mystery, this was a way of rationalizing their ancestors' unbridled ways.

"Three-inch golden lotuses" were a mysterious and intimate part of ancient Chinese women's sexual attraction. For the man in the picture, fondling the woman's bound foot is highly stimulating. （courtesy of Golden Maple Publishing Co.）

"You crazy little prick"

In fact, our ancient Chinese ancestors had no monopoly on promiscuity, for it is a stage of evolution passed through by all humanity. But as society developed and social systems were established, China and other parts of the world gradually developed different styles of sexual culture.

Liu Dalin points out that vestiges of communal marriage and promiscuity persisted in China until the Han dynasty. There was a great deal of freedom and openness in contacts and love between the sexes. China's first anthology of poems, the Book of Songs, deeply reflects the social customs of that age.

"Water fowl calling on a bar in the river. A beautiful girl, men love to pursue." "In the wilds, a deer carcase wrapped in white rushes. A girl in the flush of spring, a young man seduces her." "Gathering kudzu together, one day I did not see you. It seemed like three months." These and other lines describing love between men and women abound in the book.

The Book of Songs also contains many passages of crude language. For instance:"If you want me and love me, gather up your robes and stride through the water to look on me. If you do not want me, do you think there are no others who want me and love me? What a crazy boy you are!" The last line of this passage ends with the character qie , which many interpret as being an auxiliary word to indicate mood. But Li Ao of Soochow University's history department, in his book A Study of Chinese Sexuality, observes that the original meaning of qie is the virile member. Thus the last line should in fact be translated:"You crazy little prick!"

The art of imperial succession

In the Han dynasty, at the beginning of China's feudal period, all social norms were relatively lax, and in the area of sex some primitive customs still survived. For instance, in some regions there were still such practices as hosts 'lending' their wives to guests or of shared husbands or wives. In the Han dynasty it was also very common for widows to remarry.

It is also worth mentioning that by the Han dynasty, China had developed a comprehensive science of sex: the fangzhongshu or "bedroom arts."

As the name suggests, fangzhongshu comprised techniques for the bedroom. In the narrow sense, this meant sexual techniques; in a broader sense, it referred to the whole of ancient Chinese attitudes to sex.

The earliest known works to refer to fangzhongshu are books on the subject from the Western Han dynasty, written on silk and on bamboo strips, which were unearthed at the Mawangdui tombs at Changsha in Hunan Province. They include Shi Wen ("Ten Questions"), He Yin Yang ("Union of Yin and Yang") and Tianxia Zhi Dao Tan ("On the Greatest Art Under Heaven"). Since their discovery in 1973, these books have sparked off a wave of research into fangzhongshu.

By about the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD), China's bedroom arts were already highly developed. According to Professor Li Feng-mao of the Chinese department at National Chengchi University, the rise of fangzhongshu had much to do with the emperors, for it was an art by which "kings and emperors tried to assure their posterity." He points out that most of the Han emperors died young, creating a crisis for the imperial succession. Because of this, combined with the fact that the emperors had large numbers of concubines, their physicians suggested many methods for bedroom use, intended to help them produce healthier offspring and improve their own vigor.

The content of fangzhongshu ranged from the most suitable age for marriage and the relationship between age and frequency of sexual activity, to sexual techniques and postures, the female sexual response, conception, practices to be avoided, treatments and herbal remedies for sexual dysfunction, and so on. We can say that it amounted to an ancient Chinese science of sex.

Sinologist Robert van Gulik wrote Sexual Life in Ancient China, the first book devoted to research into China's sexual culture. （photo by Cheng Yuan-ching）

Using yin to boost yang

Fangzhongshu was also called the "art of using women." The main idea behind it was to "use yin to strengthen yang." In order to improve their health and prolong their lives, men were taught to do their best to bring women to orgasm, so as to absorb the yin (feminine) energy released by women during orgasm. The Dutch sinologist van Gulik describes this unequal method of obtaining fortification as "sexual vampirism."

Li Feng-mao points out that originally fangzhongshu was a way of improving the health, "to be practiced by men and women alike." And so as well as using yin to boost yang, there were also examples of using yang to boost yin. But it cannot be denied that the power to disseminate this knowledge was in the hands of men, so naturally the idea of using yin to boost yang became the dominant one.

Fangzhongshu stresses that the more often a man copulates with women the better, but the important thing is that he should not ejaculate. Legend has it that "the Yellow Emperor Huangdi lay with a thousand women and became immortal," and that by practicing this method Pengzu lived to the age of 800 years.

For the purpose of bringing women to orgasm, books on fangzhongshu describe the female sexual response in great detail. Author Tseng Yang-ching, who has been researching fangzhongshu for many years, says that for example the art divides the sex act into ten stages, invoking the senses of taste, smell and touch to describe the female response with great accuracy.

With the rise of the Confucianist idealist School of Laws in Chinese philosophy, fangzhongshu began to be suppressed from the Song dynasty onwards. But part of the knowledge was transmitted to Japan, where it was called "Remedies for the Heart."

Van Gulik was intoxicated with Chinese culture. His research into sexuality in ancient China shattered people's stereotyped image of China as traditionally conservative in sexual matters. （rephotographed by Cheng Yuan-ching）

The free and easy Tang

There is a saying which refers to "the filthy Tang and the rotten Han." Liu Dalin believes this saying reflects the degree of sexual freedom prevalent in those eras.

The Tang (618-907 AD) was the dynasty in Chinese history during which sexual attitudes were at their most liberal, and most in keeping with human nature. Liu Dalin points out that in the Tang, women commonly wore clothing which left their breasts partly exposed, and had great freedom to divorce and remarry. For instance, 23 princesses of the Tang dynasty divorced and remarried, some as many as three times. Even the daughter of the Confucianist scholar Han Yu divorced and married again.

The Tang dynasty was also a time when women enjoyed a comparatively high status. Not only were women not placed under the restriction that they could neither "step beyond the gate nor pass the second door"; they could even ride out on horseback.

Examining the reasons for the openness of sexual attitudes in the Tang dynasty, Liu Dalin's The Sex Culture of Ancient China identifies some important factors. Firstly, it was the heyday of feudal society, and a time of great prosperity and strength; its rulers had ample confidence and power and so were quite open-minded. Secondly, "when one is fed and warm, one thinks of fleshly desires": in the Tang dynasty, which enjoyed a long period of peace and prosperity, people had the time and energy to pursue pleasure and enjoyment. Furthermore, the Tang was a period of ethnic mixing, when non-Han peoples influenced the culture of the Han Chinese. Contacts with various "barbarian" allies were sure to lead to some modifications in etiquette, sexual attitudes and the like.

On the literary side, the Tang dynasty had erotic poems describing love between the sexes and sexual feelings, and short stories extolling love or exposing sexual shenanigans, such as The Tale of Huo Xiaoyu, The Tale of Yingying, and The Tale of Li Wa, which all faithfully reflect the social mores of the time.

Physical and spiritual bonds

The Song dynasty was the time when China's feudal system turned from vigor to decline, and also when China turned from sexual openness to sexual repression. From then on, China began seven or eight centuries of sexual inhibition.

The Song dynasty was weak and ineffective, and often beset by foreign invaders, even suffering the indignity of having two of its emperors, Hui and Qin, being taken prisoner. To bolster their authority, the rulers introduced a high degree of centralization of military, political, judicial and other powers.

This was the time when the Cheng-Zhu School of Laws (Lixue, also called the School of Principles) emerged in Chinese philosophy. This set of conservative theories fitted in very well with the desire of rulers in a period of decline to strictly control the people, and so it was seized upon and applied by the feudal rulers, and had a great influence on society from that time on.

The School of Laws advocated "preserving the natural order, and destroying human desires." Its adherents believed that "when humans act evilly, it is because they are seduced by desire." Therefore only by suppressing all human desires could one promote the natural order.

The notion of female chastity began to be reinforced. Previously it had been common for widows to remarry, but from the Song onwards remarriage was seen as "unchaste," and was not tolerated by the society of the time. Stories such as "The widow cutting off her arm" (after it had been accidentally touched by a man) and "An injured breast left untreated" (because exposure to the doctor's gaze would have been worse than death) were taken as models and ideals and widely promoted. The saying that "to starve to death is a trifling matter compared to being unchaste" was seen as the height of wisdom.

Apart from spiritual bonds, the Song dynasty also laid physical bonds on women: the practice of foot binding.

Opinions differ as to whether the Chinese custom of binding women's feet actually began in the Five Dynasties period, the late Tang or the Northern Song. But what is certain is that by the Song dynasty, "three-inch golden lotuses" had become an indispensable criterion of feminine beauty. Women's tiny feet had become the most intimate and attractive part of their anatomies. In his Sexual Life in Ancient China, Robert van Gulik writes that in erotic art from the Song onwards, women are shown completely naked, but he never saw a picture in which their feet were not wrapped in binding cloths. From this we can see that bound feet were something mysterious and taboo, which aroused men's' fantasies.

It used to be claimed that foot binding makes a woman's pubic fat thicker and the flesh of her waist more elastic. This idea has been shown to be nonsense. But foot binding left only the big toe to balance on, so that a woman would walk unsteadily, swinging her hips no less provocatively than with today's high-heeled shoes.

"Spring palace pictures" were one of the tools of sex education used to guide newlyweds in ancient times. （courtesy of Golden Maple Publishing Co.）

A pair of small feet, a vat of tears

There is a proverb which says:"A pair of small feet, a vat of tears." This way of describing the agony caused by foot binding is not exaggerated in the least. Foot binding involved turning the four smaller toes of the foot inwards towards the sole and binding them with cloth. In a process accompanied by bleeding, suppuration, inflammation and swelling, the whole foot was finally reduced to a length of around 10 centimeters, commonly known as a "three inch golden lotus."

In olden days, girls began to suffer the pain of foot binding from the age of two or three years. The suffering grew progressively worse, and the process took three years to complete.

Because foot binding limited women's mobility, making them unable to walk far or even do housework, later "only richer households could afford to raise daughters who could do no productive work." Thus whether a family could afford to raise daughters with bound feet became one of the criteria by which economic status was compared, so that foot binding was no longer simply a matter of sexual attraction.

Most people will agree that the unnatural practice of foot binding not only limited women's mobility, but also shackled their spirits and intellects. But van Gulik also highlights that foot binding put an end to the great and ancient Chinese art of dance.

After the Manchurian rulers of the Qing dynasty conquered China, they began to issue decrees forbidding foot binding, but to no great avail. It was not until the early 1930s, some 20 years after China became a republic, that this cruel practice, which had injured Chinese women for a thousand years, was finally abolished.

From the Song and Ming dynasties on, Chinese women lived eight or nine centuries in the shackles of a moral code which taught that "to starve to death is a trifling matter compared to being unchaste." （photo by Hsueh Chi-kuang）

Where will the spring waters flow to?

In the 800 years since the Song dynasty, the sexual morality established by the Song seems on the surface hardly to have changed, even though China experienced two dynasties of non-Han rule, the Yuan and the Qing, during that time. But in fact, the Song dynasty's redefinition of China's sexual culture simply pushed sex out of the open, forcing it underground.

The Ming dynasty, in the late feudal period, was the historical period when the largest numbers of women were officially lauded as paragons of chastity. In 1368, the Ming dynasty's founding year, the first Ming emperor Hong Wu decreed that women of the common people who were widowed before the age of 30 and who remained chaste beyond the age of 50 should be publicly honored and their families freed from corvee service. With the social pressure created by publicly commending chastity in this way, the number of women honored steadily increased. According to Gu Jin Tu Shu Ji Cheng (an encyclopedic reference work compiled in the Qing dynasty), the number of women commended grew from only 200 in the Song dynasty to 36,000 in the Ming.

Liu Dalin compares sexuality to "a spring river in flood":"If its way is blocked here, it will flow in another direction." Thus the age which produced most paragons of chastity was also the one in which sex novels and erotic art were most widespread.

Rou Pu Tuan (The Prayer Mat of the Flesh) is a representative Ming dynasty "pornographic book." The first chapter sets the book's tone quite clearly with the words:"When all's said and done, the most pleasurable place in the world is still the bedroom." The whole world is a "great erotic painting."

Many so-called pornographic books tried to deflect criticism by claiming to be fighting fire with fire. Rou Pu Tuan was no exception, and justified itself with the words, "To stem the tide of lewdness, one must speak of lewd things; when discussing affairs of the flesh, we must start from fleshly desires."

Jin Ping Mei was another famous Ming dynasty erotic novel. Chan Hing-ho observes that Jin Ping Mei reflects a very interesting concept: if a man wishes to conquer a woman, he must use sex to give her pleasure. Chan says that although the novel's main male character Ximen Qing is an out-and-out lecher, his biggest concern is nevertheless how to satisfy the leading female character Pan Jinlian, and give her pleasure. This is something rarely seen in Western erotic literature.

Daughter spring pictures

"Spring palace pictures," meaning erotic art, refers to drawings and paintings depicting men and women engaged in sexual activity, and all kinds of positions for sexual intercourse. They were usually mounted as horizontal hand scrolls or bound into albums.

"Spring palace pictures" first originated in the palaces of the Han emperors. Later they became an instrument of sex education. When girls married, their parents would not forget to place a few erotic pictures in the bottom of their trousseau chests for reference on the wedding night. Thus erotic pictures also came to be known as "chest-bottom pictures."

Chan Hing-ho observes that according to descriptions in literary works of the Ming and Qing, erotic pictures were sold quite openly during those dynasties. Chan says, "Outside Suzhou's temples they were sold in broad daylight along with New Year pictures."

In his A Back Window on Folk Customs, Yin Teng-kuo, a scholar of folk customs, also mentions that the village of Yangliuqing near Tianjin was famous for producing erotic prints, and these prints were all the work of women and girls of respectable families. Thus they acquired the flowery name of "daughter spring pictures."

The words which people of former times used to rationalize erotic art are very amusing. Salacious sex pictures were reputed to have the magical power to subdue ghosts and spirits and dispel evil. They were ascribed the ability to protect from evil and from fire. When the bashful god of fire saw a place of sexual activity he would turn away in embarrassment, so he would naturally also keep a respectful distance from any place hung with erotic art. Thus scholars could openly display pictures of the "secret game" (also called "fire-repelling pictures") in their studies.

Ceremonial arches to chastity

To go even further in commending chaste girls and virtuous women, the Qing dynasty instituted "ceremonial arches to chastity," and set up "halls of chastity" throughout the land as refuges for women of virtue.

The Qing dynasty was also particularly strict in its censorship of the printed word. Professor Wang Chiu-kui of the history department at National Tsing Hua University observes that at the accession of each Qing emperor, a list of forbidden books would be published. Books to do with love or relations between the sexes were all banned, and not one of the erotic novels of the Ming dynasty was ever allowed. Thus under the Qing, the amusing phenomenon appeared of many such books being published repeatedly under one different name after another.

The lessons of history

Since there has been life, there has been sex. From an age of worshipping sex and reproduction in total ignorance, our ancestors developed through times of promiscuity and communal marriage, and eventually to today's system of monogamous marriage. Throughout this process, human sexual attitudes swung between conflicting biological and social pressures.

Looking at the present in the light of history, we can see clearly that the more closely society controls individuals, the more sexual taboos and the more rigorous sexual prohibitions there are. But in periods of sexual repression, there is a correspondingly strong reaction.

As sexual attitudes have continuously developed, human beings have continuously searched for a point of balance. But what is important is that this point of balance should be arrived at naturally by the forces of supply and demand. It is not something that can be imposed by one person or group of people.

Self-appointed guardians of morality always feel that things are going from bad to worse, but looking back at the sexual culture of ancient China as a whole, we find to our surprise that the "good old days" of their imaginations in fact never existed. Many scholars believe that seen from a historical perspective, society is still advancing and becoming more and more humane. We should have confidence in society!

[Picture Caption]

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The saying goes that "a real man has three wives and four concubines." I n ancient China, every man from the emperor and his generals and ministers right down to the ordinary people, wanted to be a "real man." (courtesy of the National Palace Museum)

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"Three-inch golden lotuses" were a mysterious and intimate part of ancient Chinese women's sexual attraction. For the man in the picture, fondling the woman's bound foot is highly stimulating. (courtesy of Golden Maple Publishing Co.)

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Sinologist Robert van Gulik wrote Sexual Life in Ancient China, the first book devoted to research into China's sexual culture. (photo by Cheng Yuan-ching)

p.78

Van Gulik was intoxicated with Chinese culture. His research into sexuality in ancient China shattered people's stereotyped image of China as traditionally conservative in sexual matters. (rephotographed by Cheng Yuan-ching)

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"Spring palace pictures" were one of the tools of sex education used to guide newlyweds in ancient times. (courtesy of Golden Maple Publishing Co.)

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From the Song and Ming dynasties on, Chinese women lived eight or nine centuries in the shackles of a moral code which taught that "to starve to death is a trifling matter compared to being unchaste." (photo by Hsueh Chi-kuang)