More than a minor worry_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

More than a minor worry

No wonder I feel I've been transported back 100 years, to the pre-May Fourth Movement (1919) era that marked the dawn of enlightenment for the Chinese people. With the ritual of kowtowing being sporadically revived and glowingly described, albeit not yet in officialdom, and now the embrace of chastity, is foot-binding not far on the horizon?

Unlike the United States, China has not had a sexual revolution. While Americans were celebrating flower power, young Chinese did not dare hold hands with the one they loved. In the puritanical years of the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), if one engaged in premarital sex, he - and especially she - would be branded for life as "morally depraved" and humiliated a la Hester Prynne.

The sexual awakening that has been evolving as a corollary of reform and opening-up has brought a gradual change to social mores in China. But one cannot draw parallels between this renewed emphasis on chastity and some conservative Americans' advocacy of celibacy. Chinese youths are not oversexed per se. On the contrary, proper sex education is not yet available because it violates traditional notions of purity and innocence. There are more tales of newly weds not knowing the birds and the bees than of lust-crazed youths and teen pregnancies.

And the demand for virginity does not apply equally to both sexes as one cannot prove its loss with males. The barometer for female virginity remains simple and is poetically called "dropping red". In folk literature, the breaking of the hymen is lovingly portrayed with imagery of peach blossoms. The groom would proudly show off the kerchief smeared with blots of blood to his parents and guests waiting impatiently outside the bridal chamber on the wedding night. If the parents did not literally see "red" on the cloth, they would see red emotionally or at least be embarrassed.