Skip to main content

Sexless in the City 無慾都市

The notion that Asian folks take a backseat in the sex department has been debunked time and again. The Japanese, for instance, make no secret of their bent for dominatrices and cosplayers. Korean men, on the other hand, can’t seem to find their way home without a stop at the neighborhood hostess bar. The Thai and the Filipino are equally comfortable with expressing their God-given sexuality. In Anything-goes Bangkok and No-tell Manila, the sex trade has gone mainstream and become a main draw for tourists.

What about Hong Kong, a place where skyscrapers rise like phallic symbols and animal genitals are eaten with gusto?

It turns out that Asia’s World City is also one of the world’s most sex-deprived. In a recent poll by the city’s Family Planning Association, 20% of the female respondents said they had no sexual desire, while 24% said they did not achieve orgasm during sex. Another local study found that one in five adult males had not gotten off in the last six months. As if that’s not miserable enough, an online survey conducted by condom-maker Durex ranks Hong Kong the third lowest in sexual satisfaction out of 26 territories. Despite our reputation as pleasure seekers — of luxury goods and world class cuisine – the joy of sex continues to elude us like Moby Dick.

So what went wrong?

Only in movies

The obvious answer is stress. By the time we get home after a 12-hour day in the office and 45 gruelling minutes on a crowded bus, few are in the mood for bedroom romance. Even a quickie doesn’t seem quick enough for time-pressed Hong Kongers. Another major turn-off is the lack of space and privacy. There isn’t much fun in making out on a tiny mattress covered with stuffed animals, while nosy parents may be eavesdropping next door. As a result, the only thing that gets fingered between the sheets is the iPhone screen, and all we get is a lousy peck on the cheek, before we, as Neil Diamond famously put it, “roll over and turn out the light.”

Stress and off-putting living conditions, however, only tell half the story. A closer look at Hong Kong society reveals two cultural forces that conspire to suck the fun out of our bedroom: conservatism and materialism.

Not conducive to romance

We may be a decade and a half into the new millennium, but the city’s attitude towards sex remains largely medieval. Chinese parents avoid the subject at home like a plague, and children growing up in single-gender schools — which account for most primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong — don’t get much exposure besides hearsay and myths. The knowledge gap is filled by social conservatism, a hotchpotch of traditional Confucius beliefs mixed with Christian values from the West, with a bunch of clichés and conventional wisdom tossed in. The resulting Frankenstein of moral ideology is inconsistent at best and traumatizing at worst. For instance, because sex is supposed to be dirty and dangerous, young adults are taught to practice strict abstinence until they graduate from university. But because sex is also special and sacred, grown-ups are advised to defer the pleasure to their wedding night. This arbitrary code of conduct has seeped into our subconscious and turned a basic biological behavior into a thing we don’t speak of – and keep deferring.

Materialism is the other cultural factor that explains our flaccid sex life. Rampant consumerism and in-your-face peer rivalry mean that our happiness is often measured by what we possess that others don’t. As economic creatures, we prefer making money to making love; we calculate, not fornicate. To the hard-driving man, sex is as much a distraction for the weak-minded as it is a social anesthesia for the poor. Whereas men in the West aspire to be fictional womanizers like James Bond and Tony Stark, being a playboy in practical Hong Kong confers very little bragging right. Instead, he is either branded a pervert or written off as a loser who wastes his time chasing girls rather than a job promotion.

Sex education means avoidance and deferral

The picture of the Hong Kong bedroom is grim. Our low libido is now a forgone conclusion and a cause for concern for both policy-makers and condom-makers. But just as I was finishing up my obituary for the city’s sex life, I spotted a glimmer of hope on Facebook. A few days ago, my friend Elaine shared a picture of her birthday gift from her husband CJ. It was a book titled Position of the Day: Sex Everyday in Every Way. I was impressed by how this thirty-something Chinese couple openly celebrate their sexuality on social media, and it prompted me to sit them down for a chat.

Like me, Elaine is miffed by the demonization of sex in Hong Kong. “I remember asking my mom about a kissing scene on television when I was five,” she recounted. “She told me the actors had to put scotch tapes on their lips for hygiene purposes. It was baloney of course, but she made me believe that sex was dirty, like politics.”

“I went to an all-girls secondary school and I wasn’t allowed to date anybody in my entire teens,” Elaine continued. “Other than my cousins, I had zero interaction with boys. The irony is that as soon as I graduated from university and found a job, my parents changed their tune: ‘When are you going to find a husband and have kids?’ It was surreal.”

By our standard, Li Ka Shing is the sexiest man alive

For a guy, CJ is surprisingly comfortable discussing sex in the presence of his wife. He believes open communication is the key to a happy sex life. “Men have to check our egos at the bedroom door, especially if we aren’t satisfied with the amount of sex we get.” He gave an example. “After Elaine had our first child, we pretty much stopped doing it. I decided to tell her how I felt instead of keeping it to myself. It turned out she was worried that I wasn’t attracted to her after she gave birth to a baby. It was a big misunderstanding.”

CJ said many sexually frustrated men in Hong Kong simply turn to the Internet for quick relief. “It’s much more efficient that way,” he admitted. “Hong Kong people value efficiency and ambition. Most of my guy friends are so career-minded that sex gets pushed way down their priority list.”

The couple was quick to point out that the sex-averse culture is slowly changing. “Young people these days are more adventurous and resourceful than we were,” said Elaine. CJ chimed in with a tidbit of his own: “Love hotels like Victoria and Park Excellent are popular venues for a ‘test drive.’ A short trip to Macau or Taipei will do the trick too.” He gave Elaine a wink, recalling their first sexcapade in Bangkok. The two had only just started dating at the time and told family members they were spending the weekend with “a group of friends from work.”

“Looking back, it seems really silly that we had to lie about sleeping together,” said CJ. “How else would we know we were right for each other?” He made a good point, but it was Elaine who had the last word: “Sex is just sex and there’s nothing holy or evil about it. It’s just like food: we have to eat when we are hungry and we eat more if the food is good. It’s as simple as that.”

Finally, there is a couple with a healthy attitude toward sex. So forget about sex books and Viagra. To save Hong Kong’s flagging sex life, we need more people who think like them.

The most popular hourly hotel
__________________________

This article was published in the October 2014 issue of MANIFESTO magazine under Jason Y. Ng's column “The Urban Confessional.”

As published in MANIFESTO

Popular Posts

“As I See It” has moved to www.jasonyng.com/as-i-see-it

As I See It has a new look and a new home!! Please bookmark www.jasonyng.com/as-i-see-it for the latest articles and a better reading experience. Legacy articles will continue to be available on this page. Thank you for your support since 2008. www.jasonyng.com/as-i-see-it

Tokyo Impressions 東京印象

Twice a year, I make a pilgrimage to Tokyo, one of my favorite cities. Like many in Hong Kong, I take guilty pleasure in all things Japanese. Saddled by the burden of history, all ethnic Chinese in my generation are taught to loathe the Japanese or at least keep them at bay. How we are to separate our sworn enemies’ heinous past from their admirable qualities continues to elude every Japanophile among us. Moral dilemmas aside, I find the Japanese aesthetics irresistible. The marriage of Shintoism and Zen Buddhism has produced such core values as wabi (侘; simlicity and transience) and sabi (寂; beauty of age and time). They are the underpinnings of every aspect of the Japanese culture from theater and architecture to food preparation and social etiquette. A perfect storm was formed when these values collided with bushido (武士道), the strict code of conduct of the samurai warrior, resulting in an idiosyncrasy that is exacting, nuanced and immensely graceful. At once a philosophy and

About the Author 關於作者

Born in Hong Kong, Jason Y. Ng is a globetrotter who spent his entire adult life in Italy, the United States and Canada before returning to his birthplace to rediscover his roots. He is a lawyer, published author, and contributor to The Guardian , The South China Morning Post , Hong Kong Free Press and EJInsight . His social commentary blog As I See It and restaurant/movie review site The Real Deal have attracted a cult following in Asia and beyond. Between 2014 and 2016, he was a music critic for Time Out (HK) . Jason is the bestselling author of Umbrellas in Bloom (2016), No City for Slow Men (2013) and HONG KONG State of Mind (2010). Together, the three books form a Hong Kong trilogy that charts the city's post-colonial development. His short stories have appeared in various anthologies. Jason also co-edited and contributed to Hong Kong 20/20   (2017) and Hong Kong Noir   (2019). Jason is also a social activist. He is an ambassador for Shark Savers and an outspo

From Street to Chic, Hong Kong’s many-colored food scene 由大排檔到高檔: 香港的多元飲食文化

Known around the world as a foodie’s paradise, Hong Kong has a bounty of restaurants to satisfy every craving. Whether you are hungry for a lobster roll, Tandoori chicken or Spanish tapas, the Fragrant Harbour is certain to spoil you for choice. The numbers are staggering. Openrice, the city’s leading food directory, has more than 25,000 listings—that’s one eatery for every 300 people and one of the highest restaurants-per-capita in the world. The number of Michelin -starred restaurants reached a high of 64 in 2015, a remarkable feat for a city that’s only a little over half the size of London. Amber and Otto e Mezzo occupied two of the five top spots in Asia according to The World’s Best Restaurants , serving up exquisite French and Italian fares that tantalise even the pickiest of taste buds. Dai pai dong is ever wallet-friendly While world class international cuisine is there for the taking, it is the local food scene in Hong Kong that steals the hearts of residents a

The Beam in Our Eye 眼中的梁木

With 59 confirmed deaths and over 500 wounded, the Las Vegas mass shooting is the deadliest one in modern American history. Places like Columbine, Aurora, Newtown, Sandy Hook, Orlando—and now Sin City—are forever associated with carnage and death tolls.  They don't get it Not a week goes by in America without a horrific gun attack in a shopping mall, a school or a movie theatre.People outside the U.S. can’t fathom why the world’s wealthiest country can be in such denial over a simple fact: more guns means more gun-related deaths. But they don’t get it, don’t now? Instead, they tell us foreigners to stay out of the debate because we don’t understand what the Second Amendment means to the Land of the Free. So the anomaly continues: each time a shooting rampage shocks the nation, citizens respond with prayers and tributes for a while, but their lawmakers do nothing to change gun laws. And we—the foreigners—shake our heads in disbelief and wonder how many more innocen

Maid in Hong Kong - Part 1 女傭在港-上卷

Few symbols of colonialism are more universally recognized than the live-in maid. From the British trading post in Bombay to the cotton plantation in Mississippi, images abound of the olive-skinned domestic worker buzzing around the house, cooking, cleaning, ironing and bringing ice cold lemonade to her masters who keep grumbling about the summer heat. It is ironic that, for a city that cowered under colonial rule for a century and a half, Hong Kong should have the highest number of maids per capita in Asia. In our city of contradictions, neither a modest income nor a shoebox apartment is an obstacle for local families to hire a domestic helper and to free themselves from chores and errands. "Yes, mistress?" On any given Sunday or public holiday, migrant domestic workers carpet every inch of open space in Central and Causeway Bay. They turn parks and footbridges into camping sites with cardboard boxes as their walls and opened umbrellas as their roofs. They play

Brexit Lessons for Hong Kong 脫歐的教訓

It was an otherwise beautiful, balmy Friday in Hong Kong, if it weren’t for the cross-Channel divorce that put the world under a dark cloud of fright and disbelief. Asia was the first to be hit by the Brexit shock wave. BBC News declared victory for the Leave vote at roughly 11:45am Hong Kong time – hours before London opened – and sent regional stock markets into a tailspin. The shares of HSBC and Standard Chartered Bank, both listed on the Hong Kong Exchange, plunged 6.5 and 9.5 per cent, respectively... It ended in divorce ________________________ This article appeared in the 29 June 2016 print edition of the South China Morning Post . Read the rest of it on SCMP.com as " After Brexit, Hong Kong voters should take a careful look at what our own localist parties are really selling localist politics ." As published in the print edition of the South China Morning Post

The City that Doesn’t Read 不看書的城市

The Hong Kong Book Fair is the city’s biggest literary event, drawing millions of visitors every July. The operative word in the preceding sentence is “visitors,” for many of them aren’t exactly readers. A good number show up to tsau yit lau (湊熱鬧) or literally, to go where the noise is. In recent years, the week-long event has taken on a theme park atmosphere. It is where bargain hunters fill up empty suitcases with discounted books, where young entrepreneurs wait all night for autographed copies only to resell them on eBay, and where barely legal – and barely dressed – teenage models promote their latest photo albums. And why not? Hong Kongers love a carnival. How many people visit a Chinese New Year flower market to actually buy flowers? Hong Kong Book Fair 2015 If books are nourishment for the soul, then the soul of our city must have gone on a diet. In Hong Kong, not enough of us read and we don’t read enough. That makes us an “aliterate” people: able to read bu

10 Years in Hong Kong 香港十年

This past Saturday marked my 10th anniversary in Hong Kong .  To be precise, it was the 10th anniversary of my repatriation to Hong Kong. I left the city in my teens as part of the diaspora which saw hundreds of thousands others fleeing from Communist rule ahead of the 1997 Handover. For nearly two decades, I moved from city to city in Europe and North America, never once returning to my birthplace in the interim. Until 2005. That summer, I turned in the keys to my Manhattan apartment, packed a suitcase, and headed east. A personal milestone My law firm agreed to transfer me from New York to their Hong Kong outpost half a world away. On my last day of work, Jon, one of the partners I worked for, called me into his office for a few words of wisdom. He told me that there was no such thing as a right or wrong decision, and that people could only make life choices based on what they knew at the time. “I assume you’ve done your due diligence,” Jon gave me wink, “in that ca

The Moonscape of Sexual Equality - Part 1 走在崎嶇的路上-上卷

There are things about America that boggle the mind: gun violence , healthcare costs and Donald Trump. But once in a while – not often, just once in a while – the country gets something so right and displays such courage that it reminds the rest of the world what an amazing place it truly is. What happened three days ago at the nation’s capital is shaping up to be one of those instances. From White to Rainbow Last Friday, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down a 5-to-4 decision on same-sex marriage, the most important gay rights ruling in the country’s history. In Obergefell v. Hodges , Justice Kennedy wrote, “It would misunderstand [gay and lesbian couples] to say that they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find fulfillment for themselves… They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”  With those simple words, Justice Kennedy made ma