The other day, we had our ‘Listen and Talk’ class. For each class, after doing the Listening exercises on the book, one of the students has to go in front of the whole class to talk. We are allowed to talk about any topic that we want.
It was one of my Bulgarian friends’ turn the other day and she choose to talk about ‘Relationships between people of different countries’ . It was a very interesting topic. When we were nearing the end of the class, she mentioned the word ‘性交’ . Whatever she wanted to say about it, we never got to hear. Our teacher said “No, no” and told us that we shouldn’t say that. She explained further and told us that Chinese people use phrases like ‘发生关系’ or ‘肉体关系’ but that they don’t say ‘性交’. She also explained that Chinese people born before the 1980’s don’t talk about sex. They feel embarrassed. It’s kind of a taboo subject for them. That reminds me of another teacher with whom we had Oral Chinese Language class last year. During one of our discussion classes, one of the students had said that in a relationship, sex is important too. (I guess we were having a discussion about what was important in a relationship. ) The teacher had looked very embarrassed and we were amused by that. Still, we understood why she reacted like that. We all know very well that many Chinese people are not very open when it comes to talking about sex. However, I know some Chinese people (the younger generation ) who like to exchange point of views about sex, especially with foreigners. They like to know what people from other countries think.
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Definition of ‘ 性交’:
According to my pocket Chinese- English dictionary : ’sexual intercourse’.
According to my big Chinese dictionary 现代汉语词典 : ‘两性之间发生性行为’
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I’m late for class already and won’t have time to read this :
Sex and the Contemporary Chinese Woman. I’ll do it when I finish class. I’ve skimmed over the article and it seems quite interesting.