Cup of Cha
This is China

One of the amazing theories many Chinese hold about foreigners is that we are somehow promiscuous and sex-obsessed. The not-that-subtle phrase that people use is ‘open,’ or kaifang (开放), literally meaning ‘open door.’ You might think that this would not have a negative meaning, especially since the Open Door Policy (改革开放) uses the same two characters. However, you quickly realize that when Chinese say it about foreigners, it’s really code word for ‘loose.’ As in”foreign women are so ‘open.’” The recent Playboy magazine Olympics-policy is the most ludicrous example of this, but we’ll get back to this in a minute.

It always cracks me up that the perception here is that foreigners are so promiscuous, when it seems to this humble observer, that more married Chinese cheat on their spouses than, say, Americans. Years ago I taught an MBA class where a few students divulged to me that the class monitor should lose her position because she was cheating on her husband with another student. As it turned out, no one actually wanted the duties the job entailed, but nonetheless it was an embarrassment to have someone in this position of authority acting so inappropriately. Later it leaked out that about 80% of the students were cheating on their spouses (with one another!).

The ubiquitousness of cheating in this group may have been a reflection of the fact that they were all living away from their spouses. But China has a lot of people working in different cities than their partners. It is much more common to have a job thousands of miles away from your spouse here than it is in other countries. So it seems like my class would have been a relatively decent sample. Then if you throw in the popularity among Chinese of the sleazier KTV spots throughout the country, and you get a sense that maybe the foreigners aren’t the kaifang ones.

(I should mention that there are lots of great KTV places that are a lot of clean fun, and while I’ve only gone once in the last year, I nonetheless long to sing Michael Jackson and WHAM! into the wee hours of the morning. So please don’t take this as a universal condemnation of all KTV. But as usual, I digress.)

This all brings me to the truly bizarre rumblings that China may allow Playboy to be available in select locations during the Olympics. What makes this so ridiculous is that it is ostensibly part of an effort to make more foreign reading material available in China, at least during the Games. It shows that the authorities have come to the laughable conclusion that when foreigners complain about the lack of freedom of the press in China they are referring to pornography. Note to Authorities: we’re talking about the BBC being constantly blocked.

Even better than the fact that China appears to think that allowing porn equals free press, there seems to be an implication that the foreign athletes will go crazy without a Playboy for a few weeks. The impression seems to be that after years of training, during the most two important weeks of their young lives these athletes will be hunting the city’s news stands for girlie mags:

Visitors to the Beijing Games may be able to buy Playboy and a raft of other limited publications as China mulls relaxing its controls for the Summer Olympics in line with international practice.

All pornographic material is prohibited on the mainland but a temporary exception could be made for the Games, according to the biggest importer of foreign publications in the country.

“Our law forbids Playboy and we should obey this, but we can’t rule out the possibility that it might make its debut. There might be a demand for it (from athletes or visitors) during the Games,” said Liang Jianrui, vice-president of China National Publications Import and Export Corporation, which will manage the nine magazine-selling kiosks sanctioned by Olympic organizers BOCOG during the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

So, if I understand it correctly, the foreign athletes will be so heavily focused on finding soft-core porn, that China will need to stock Playboy in the Olympic Village. Does anyone else find this stunningly bizarre? It almost makes me wonder why they don’t have the magazine available in the embassy area of town all the time. I mean, the athletes are only here two weeks, some of these kaifang diplomats are here for years!!

Tags: censorship, pornography
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