Those Birds and Bees

I am bored, bo-bo-bo-bored. Clearly, seeing as this is my second post of the day. There are a lot of things I should be doing right now, like eating Chinese babies, but I'm not. I'm just bored. This is pretty rare, for as boring and uneventful a town as Lin'an is I rarely get this bored. I was even on some discussion boards earlier. I can't believe it. I don't even approve of discussion boards.

I'm too lazy to get drunk. I'm too lazy to go somewhere. I'm too lazy to just sit around or read or watch tv or do anything really, so I'm-a bloggin'. Maybe I'll talk about China, I'm personally a little bored of that topic but it's either that or porn. Maybe I'll try to combine the two.

Do you think I talk about porn too much?

Anyway, 性 (xìng) means sex. If you want to get more definitive 性交 means sexual intercourse. A combination of sex and interaction if you will. (I'm sure you all remember 交际 (jiāojì - social intercourse) from a previous lesson.)Anyway, 性 also means nature, character, quality, and gender. Which is similar to English, sex in English means gender, although not nature. Like you wouldn't say, it's her sex to get angry easily.

The word for he, she, and it is the same in Chinese - all three are tā. The characters are different though. 他，她，and 它 respectively. I don't know the exact age when Chinese children begin to learn how to write, but I think it's around three. So for the first couple years of a Chinese person's life, they know no distinction between male and female when talking about someone. The words for man and woman are different, but when referring to someone in conversation, you rarely say 'that man', it's usually he or she or just tā in China. One of the most common mistakes a Chinese person makes when learning English is mixing up he and she, him and her.

There is a student in my class whose English name is Pink, because he likes the color. He is constantly, constantly draped on or touching one of the other guys in my class. In other parts of the world this may suggest something, but not in China. It's very common to see men walking around holding hands or otherwise wrapped into each other. In what looks like an ideal advertisement for men4men is actually just an innocent display of friendship. The concept of homosexuality is foreign. Most people don't even know what it is. There is a gay scene in China but nobody but foreigners and other gay people talk about it. I think more of my girl students have crushes on me than my guy students. I'm always getting text messages and emails telling me I have a nice figure and they think I'm beautiful. I don't think this is anything particular to me. I'm pretty sure you could replace me with another somewhat blond American girl and nobody would notice. Girls are also walking around wrapped around each other all the time, but that's a much more common sight in most places anyway.

A couple weeks ago, much to my horror, some of my girl students came up to me after class to ask me about sex. They had just watched "American Pie" and wanted to understand it better. She said that it seemed to her that sex was very open and widespread in America. I told her it was comparatively but it's not as dramatic as the movies make it seem. As I looked at them grasping their notebooks with pictures of cats and Pooh Bear on them, hearing girls skipping rope outside, and noticing a group of boys with a basketball walking by with identical Yao Ming jerseys on, I realized that there was no way that I could ever convey to them college and youth sex life in the Western world.

Anyway, she went on to say that in the movie all the people wanted to have sex at such a young age, but in China everyone waits until they are married. I stood there a little stunned that it was actually going to be my responsibility to tell a 24 year old girl that people had sex before marriage everywhere, but fortunately one of her friends stepped in and admitted, that (occasionally) some Chinese people have sex before marriage. She then went on to tell me that when she had been studying in Beijing some foreign teachers had asked her if she knew where to find prostitutes.

Now, let me just take a moment to congratulate the visiting scholars and intellectuals of China. The tact and suave manner of approaching a female student for advise on where to get your kicks is brilliant. Did it not occur to you to ask anyone else. A male student, a male teacher, a female teacher, the guy serving you dumplings? I have absolutely nothing against prostitution. As long as it's clean, safe, and both people are of legal age and consent, go right ahead. But Jesus, asking a student where you can find a whore. Classic.

Well I apologized for you and said that men can be inappropriate anywhere in the world. But I'm digressing...

So I guess my point is, how a genderless, homosexual, shamed country managed to become the most populated in the world is anyone's guess. I'm just going to go back to being bored.