But it was Kuriansky's books, such as Generation Sex: America's Hottest Sex Therapist Answers The Hottest Questions About Sex, that caught the eyes of China's cadres.

In 1999, a prominent publishing house, Liaoning Education Press, translated two of her books (The Complete Idiots' Guide To A Healthy Relationship and The Complete Idiot's Guide To Dating) and, after censoring parts deemed too explicit, invited her to do a book tour.

After meeting thousands of Chinese from around the country, Kuriansky says she formed an understanding of the local culture and sexual attitudes that later helped when a Shanghai think-tank asked her to assist in an ongoing government mandate to improve the nation's reproductive health services. Sexual reform, it seems, makes for strange bedfellows.

But the coupling proved a near perfect match. While in Shanghai, Kuriansky learned about China's first 24-hour phone hotline for reproductive health issues. This began on March 8, 2000 at a Shanghai hospital. Out of 42,000 calls in the first eight months of operation, more than 8,000 were about sexual problems.

Somebody should write a book about that, she thought. Over dinner, she articulated to the health authorities what turned out to be a mutual idea. 'This is how we do business in Hollywood,' she excitedly exclaimed as she scribbled the business plan down on a napkin.

'Who else was going to take the reins?' declares Brooklyn-born Kuriansky. 'What was amazing is that they said OK by the next day.' As it entailed the co-operation of multiple government bodies, this is the latest evidence that China's abuzz about the birds and the bees, she says.

The tome, China Reproductive Health Hotline: Professionals Solve Problems On Sex And Emotions, released on July 10, represents the first time an American has collaborated with Chinese professionals on giving sex advice to the public and has been approved by the Chinese Government.

But it is really a by-product of the first government-funded, toll-free hotline. The hotline, manned by more than a dozen doctors and nurses at the International Peace Maternity and Child Health Hospital, proved insightful after only its first day of operation.

'We received nearly 400 calls,' says Dr Hu Xiaoyu, a gynaecologist and urologist who guided the project since its inception and is one of the book's six co-authors. 'We didn't have time to write down all the questions because as soon as we put the phone down it would ring again. We couldn't sleep.' During the night, questions began pouring in about sex, even though the hotline was established to discuss reproductive health issues such as baby care and pregnancy problems. 'In the past, people couldn't speak up. Many of them had problems for many years but didn't know where to turn,' says Hu.

Bedroom beginners posited many questions: 'We are newlyweds, how do we have better sex?' 'How should you judge the quality of intercourse?'

Many questions also indicated a degree of ignorance: 'Is it normal to have sex many times in one night?' 'When should we have sex, in the evening or morning?' 'Will too much intercourse affect my health?' In a country where men cannot legally marry until the age of 22, 'the level of [sex] education is less [than in the US], so what did you expect?' asks Kuriansky. She says some Americans are equally uninformed; she's heard people ask, 'Do babies come from belly buttons?'

'Overall, I was shocked at how similar the questions were - how to combat bedroom boredom, how to last longer, what sex toys are safe. A recurring word was harmony,' she says. 'They were concerned about having more harmony in the relationship, in the bedroom.'

The questions revealed the Chinese are open in asking questions about sex, and a significantly higher number were asked by men. 'Nearly one-quarter of the calls were about sex,' says Kuriansky. 'That's amazing in itself. My God, does that show a need.'

Though China's not quite experiencing a sexual revolution, its mores are softening. The inaugural Men's Health Day, held in public parks nationwide last November, saw counsellors and men gathering on park benches to discuss issues such as fatherhood and sex. The first nude photo exhibition in China took place in March this year at the Shanghai Workers Cultural Palace; the Government still has a strict policy against pornography but permits stores, often manned by staff in white medical coats, to sell sex information materials and sex toys.

But the process of change has had the occasional hiccup. In 1999, Beijing and Shanghai installed condom-vending machines on university campuses. Though many saw this as the Government's acknowledgement of the need to be proactive rather than staunchly moral, it ignited a controversy with claims it promoted sex before marriage. A year after the debate, many vending machines were removed.

Teenage sex - and the greater implication of birth control - along with Aids, serves as a strong catalyst for such wholesale social change. The Government is relaxing the one-child policy and is moving towards publicising birth-control methods. 'Contraceptive options, the fact that they are using those two words, is totally amazing,' says Kuriansky.

China's health minister, Zhang Wenkang, also outlined a five-year plan last month that included Aids awareness in the school sex-education curriculum for 15-year-olds. More than 600,000 people in China are estimated to be HIV positive and the number is increasing by 30 per cent a year, he told the United Nations.

'Sex education is a very hot topic - on TV, newspapers, in schools,' says Dr Hu Peicheng, chairman of the China Sexology Association and a professor at the Peking University Health and Science Centre. Hu recently established a precedent by penning a column, though first scrutinised by the Government, on 'sexual etiquette and creating ambience and a romantic mood' for a women's fashion magazine.

Still, Kuriansky's area of expertise, sexology, is a 'new field in China', being formally taught in some universities only within the past year, says Hu. 'China is still a very traditional country,' he says. 'What's easy for us [academics and doctors] to talk about is still hard for society to discuss.'

As China learns how to shed its sexual inhibitions, the great irony is that the culture has a fantastically vibrant sexual history. Kuriansky, who touts tantric sex (a Buddhist combination of spiritual and physical intercourse which is also the topic of her forthcoming book) throughout her travels in the Middle Kingdom, says: 'I remind them what they started 5,000 years ago. At a critical and unfortunate point, it was called pornography.'

For example, thousands of years ago when couples were married, one tradition involved love-making pointers such as porcelain figurines in sexual positions and how-to-do-it scrolls, being packed into their dowry trunk, says Kuriansky. 'And concubines, what were they about? Not just wild, orgiastic sex,' she says. 'They were about men preserving and enhancing their chi energy by tapping into women, who possessed the primal Mother Earth energy - Kuan-Yin [the Buddhist deity of mercy and compassion]. It's the whole yin-yang thing.'

The Chinese are proving to be quick learners, according to Kuriansky. 'They're moving at lightning speed, making yearly progressions that took America a decade to achieve,' she says. One reason may be that China isn't bogged down by controversy like America, where the conservative, religious right considers planned parenthood and contraception immoral, she says. 'China can learn from America how to be open without being sensationalistic,' says Kuriansky, who the Chinese have dubbed the 'Golden Bridge' as a result of her collaborative efforts between the two countries.

Nonetheless, China's society, based on family solidity, is in flux. Divorce rates, for example, are on the rise. 'If they keep the family intact and couples can remain harmonious, they won't suffer from the extravagance of America,' she says.

As a method of counselling, the hotline's continued success looks assured, having taken more than 78,000 calls as of June. This is equivalent to the total number of calls taken over the past 10 years by hotlines which were previously only part-time and charged a fee, says Dr Hu Xiaoyu of the Shanghai Centre Reproductive Health Instruction project.

A few weeks ago the hotline heard from the oldest-ever caller, an 80-year-old man who wanted to learn more about Viagra. And now, says Hu, a greater percentage of calls seeking sex advice are coming from women.

Having met its goal to provide basic reproductive health services by 2000, the Government has set a new goal to increase the services by 2010.

Says Hu Peicheng of the Sexology Association: 'One's sex life is very important, otherwise the quality of life is poor. The next step is to promote this more but we have to do it very carefully.'