Saturday, May 16, 2009

Love Land to open in October in China

China will be opening its first sex theme park in October. Love Land will be offering workshops on sex techniques and information about safe-sex methods, along with displays of naked bodies, genitalia, and "an exhibition on the history of sex".

"Sex is a taboo subject in China but people really need to have more access to information about it," the park's manager, Lu Xiaoqing told the China Daily state newspaper.

I have blogged before about the issues China faces with not being able to discuss sex. Seems like that is still a problem, but I am not sure how I feel about the idea of a sex theme park, especially if the idea for it came from visiting this LoveLand in South Korea.

I have not been to China, and I cannot claim to know what kind of tactics would be effective at getting people to talk about sex in a way that would not only promote pleasurable, but safe sex, but the theme park thing gets to me.

I believe that the intentions behind it are good, especially considering the obstacles that seem to be in the way of talking openly about sex in China. But I wonder if this sort of set up would possibly serve to trivialize sex. The first image I saw of China's Love Land was a dismembered figure of the lower half of a nearly naked woman in the BBC article linked to (top of this post). Coupling things like that with the idea of a theme park, which is supposed to be fun, may make it difficult to have serious discussions on matters like sex. I can see some problems with this design, but it definitely looks like a step in the right direction.

2 comments:

Faith said...

The theme park has been demolished before it even opened:

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/China-Sex-Theme-Park-Demolished-Love-Land-Showed-Explicit-Genitalia-In-Chongqing/Article/200905315284406?lpos=World_News_Second_Home_Page_Feature_Teaser_Region_0&lid=ARTICLE_15284406_China_Sex_Theme_Park_Demolished%3A_Love_Land_Showed_Explicit_Genitalia_In_Chongqing

Amelia said...

Wow. Thanks for the update. I think I think I will write an update post about this.