'Scored yet?' That was the first question posed by several young Chinese crowded around a bar table in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. Between sips of yak butter tea, they traded jokes and swapped tales about their latest sexual encounters. Hailing from different parts of the mainland, the group of holidaymakers had come looking for spiritual enlightenment or romantic encounters, or both.
'Why not?' says Sandy Li, a 28-year-old fashion designer from Beijing. 'Just for a bit of harmless fun. We don't have to behave ourselves here - we don't know anyone.'
She confesses she took the trip to Lhasa with the idea of making a liaison with no strings attached.
'Finding a proper boyfriend is just a lot harder than finding a man you can go to bed with. And if nothing happens, I'll have a good time in Lhasa anyway,' she says.
Li's attitude is typical of many middle-class youth, whose slogan could well be carpe diem or rather carpe noctem.
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