Chinese prefer sex over money

What do the Chinese want the more? Money or sex? Being a very capitalistic country where porn is banned from the stores You might come to the conclusion, that they are very money focused. But that is far from the truth. Google Trends is a tool where You can compare how much what keyword is searched for. I made a comparison of sex vs. money:

The result is quite interesting. Seems like the Chinese want sex. While there are a lot more news about money compared to sex (lower graph) the searchers for sex are multiple times higher than for money (upper graph). Adding more words like business, job, success won’t change much. These words are still outperformed by sex.

Does China have a sex problem?

Maybe. In China sex is suppressed very much. Many people in China cannot live their sexuality as they want. I was in Chengdu for 2 months during the summer of 2007. Did I see anyone kissing on the public street during the daytime? No! Very strange, when I compare this to my experiences in the west. Kissing as normal as buying red carrots on the weekly farmers market. Only during the nighttime You could see a few couples following their natural feelings. According to some article I read in some yellow press magazine recently, it is important to have sex regulary to remain healthy – in a physical and mental way. If the Chinese have problem with kissing on the road, how about their private sex life then… here is a dialog I had with a male university student in Kunming:

He: I want to find a new girlfriend. I recently split from my long term girlfriend.

Me: So what’s the problem. Was the sex not good enough?

He: Sex? We didn’t have sex, the most I got was some kisses on the lips.

Me: Dude………… 

Apart from that ridiculous idea of women in this lonely guys head, China has a sex education problem. The result can be seen in the STD statistics that fill our newspaper once in a while, but only outside China, as the government also teaches his children: Sex is Bad!

But the truth is different. During my time in China intimate encounters with the local females were more the norm than the exception. Especially in bars and at the English corner it is easy to hook up with some beautiful ladies. I have the slight feeling, some conservative forces want to tell everyone how traditional everyone is in China, but the reality is, I have the feeling, that those traditional ones are the worst (in a positive sense). But then also the Chinese want to be rich.