Sex in Mao’s China: how a foreign barbarian blushed

In 1974, when Englishman Richard Kirkby was invited to teach at Nanjing University, he entered a country that, as far as foreigners were concerned, was closed and mysterious. And he witnessed the tumult of the Cultural Revolution, despite official efforts to isolate the tiny group of foreigners in China.

Following an interlude in Hong Kong, in 1978 the academic was persuaded to return to China, and a posting at Shandong University. By then, the nation was regaining its balance and for the first time it was possible to forge almost normal relationships with acquaintances and colleagues.

What follows is an excerpt from Kirkby’s new book, Intruder in Mao’s Realm (Earnshaw Books).

SEX WAS A MINEFIELD in Cultural Revolution China. Youthful urges were brutally repressed, and in at least one case, willing lovers condemned to death. This kind of thing was confirmed to me more than once by friends who had shared the Red Guard life. Happily, as an alien on the fringe of the great Chinese masses my own experience of vital bodily functions was rather less harrowing.

The cultural offerings of Mao’s China had no room for any human relationship other than revolutionary camaraderie. There was one glaring exception – “foreign culture” in the form of North Korean movies readily permitted to the weary Chinese. Pyongyang and Beijing were close at the time, and it was not unusual to spot North Koreans in China on some obscure official business. Long after the Chinese had been allowed to dispense with their Chairman Mao badges, the giveaway was the Great Leader Kim Il-sung’s porky face on every lapel.

In an unguarded moment, a colleague joked that amongst all the world’s peoples, only the Koreans found Mao’s China a good place for a relaxing holiday. Yet in the realm of the silver screen lay a paradox. Like their Chinese counterparts, the North Korean film studios were expected to churn out patriotic epics of revolutionary bravado. But in contrast to the Chinese fare, Korean movies were laced with tear-jerking story lines which not infrequently turned upon the love between a man and a woman.