25-year-old Sun Xiaofang, a math teacher working for a training school in Beijing, clearly remembers her middle school biology class.
Her teacher glossed over the basic anatomical and physiological differences between men and women in a textbook in less than 20 minutes, telling the students to "read it by yourselves after class."
A screenshot of Chinese mum complains about Chinese textbooks are too mature for children. /VCG Photo
"Girls flipped over those pages while blushing, and all the boys kept silent," said Sun. "The atmosphere in the classroom was so embarrassing and hilarious."
The 20-minute lesson was all of the formal sex education she received, and that's an all too familiar experience for young Chinese adults, who also find it difficult to speak directly to their parents about sex.
"It is too late for students to receive sex education after they enter adolescence," said Pan Suiming, director of the Institute of Sexuality and Gender at the Renmin University of China.
Let's talk about sex
Some experts consider the lack of proper sex education, particularly in schools, as one of the factors leading to serious health consequences in China, such as the growing number of HIV infections and staggeringly high abortion rates.
Chinese adolescents now have the fastest-growing numbers of HIV infections, and over 90 percent of infections come through sexual transmission, according to Zhang Yinjun, the director of the AIDS Prevention Education Project for Chinese Youth, who told Xinhua.
Chinese high-school-student couple in town. /VCG Photo
From January to September 2016, there were 96,000 new HIV cases, with 24.4 percent of those cases falling within the 20-29 age group, according to China's National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention.
The way to promoting AIDS prevention for Chinese youth is to implement proper sex education, Zhang said.
Teenage pregnancies and premarital abortions are also on the rise. In 2015, the National Health and Family Planning Commission reported that approximately 13 million abortions are performed annually in China.
Today, an increasing number of Chinese adolescents are engaging in premarital sex, and many of them only have a vague knowledge of safe sex.
"As the result of secretive sex education in China, most unmarried Chinese adolescents know little about the consequences of premarital sex," said Chinese sexologist Li Yinhe.
Changes on the horizon
China is making strides to break the silence on sex education. The Ministry of Education issued a guideline on Monday suggesting higher education institutions set up public courses on health education to teach students about sex and reproductive health.
"Compared to older generations in China, teenagers and their parents have more access to sexual knowledge," said Li, also a fellow with the Institute of Sociology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
"Sex, Reproduction and Health of the Human" has been a popular selective course at the Peking University for 20 years.
It focuses on cultivating healthy altitudes toward sex and respect to life, and is well received by students.
Beijing's first primary school sex education textbook was questioned by parents. /VCG Photo
"Sex education, as a required course in our life, concerns everyone's health and future, and it should be part of compulsory education," said professor Yao Jinxian, who teaches the course.
In recent years, stronger voices have been calling for better sex education in China.
Liu Wenli, a professor from the Beijing Normal University, has been running a WeChat public account called "Love and Life" since 2014, offering a free subscription service on sex education information.
"Sex education is conducive to fostering young people's abilities in making resolutions, communicating and reducing risk in problems related to sex," Liu said.
By reading articles published on the account, subscribers can find answers to questions from "how to explain periods to your children" to "what if your kids touch their reproductive organs frequently?"
Liu and her team have also been popularizing their "Cherish Life" sex education textbooks for Chinese children.
Each month, the team visits kindergartens and primary schools in Beijing to observe the lessons and give instructions to teachers.
"Awareness of sexuality has been heightened to some extent, but it is still not enough," Liu said.
Sun Xiaofang is about to give birth soon. And when she thought about the sex education her child would have, she said, "It will definitely be better than I had."
(Source: Xinhua)
