I’ve experienced it myself quite often. I heard the “I’m traditional” line , but once I established a good connection to a woman, after I told her my own thoughts and made her clear that I won’t judge her in any way, the conversation became much more open.

The problem in a group is, not only You have to make a good connection to the woman, but the woman should also have an open minded, unjudgemental connection to EVERYONE who is also present. Until this is not given (even one person can destroy the openness), You will keep hearing the “I’m so traditional” line.

I find sometimes I joke about having had a few girlfriends and such and my students laugh about it, but I would guess that sometimes they are thinking it that maybe I am not a good person.

If I had 1 fen for all the times I have heard, “We are Chinese, we are traditional” I would be a very rich man.

So I think Ryan’s got it, say one thing, maybe do another.

And that makes me a little worried, especially living in Henan where HIV/AIDS is heavily prevalent. If young people are embarrassed to talk about sex with their friends (which calls into question the validity of the label ‘revolution’), it makes me wonder about sex education, STI prevention and protection against unwanted pregnancies. To me, one of the benefits of a sexually open society is information dissemination about these things. And that should be a big deal, especially in a province like Henan – the most populated province in China and a province with one of the highest rates of HIV prevalence.

I don’t really know what to do about it, but it’ll be interesting to see how things develop here in the next couple of years.

@Flotsam: 100% agree that if you want your students to talk about “romance” in any form a detatched method is best.

There was a time before I settled down and married the most amazing woman I have ever met (points) that I was in the dating pool in this country, and I would like to firmly state for the record that what Chinese girls “say” and what they “do” are two ENTIRELY different things.

From the point of view of being a foreign guy in this country, you tend to find yourself in situations where you are surrounded by a lot of laowai-lovers and the one common thing they all seem to say is that they feel they can cut loose and be themselves around foreigners – they don’t feel the pressures of cultural taboos.

Couple with that the fact that (A) many people are exected to marry their first boyfriend/girlfriend in this country, and (B) everyone loves a little hanky panky, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for saying one thing and living another (in the dark – as Emily’s AXE commercial clearly illustrates).

I don’t know how long you’ve been in China or how much of the fabric of society and family life you have grasped, but some knowledge of these things helps. Try winding the clock back 50 years for the UK and you are probably on the similar level – but only similar. The two societies have not started out from the same position

Unmarried couples sometimes do have sexual relationships but do not discuss them openly. I knew a couple of young teachers who had to marry in a hurry due to unplanned circumstances; I’ve known students who have been in trouble with the college after being caught in flagrante, so it happens sometimes but no one speaks openly and freely about that part of their lives. In my early days I would see girls wandering around the campus together holding hands, I would see boys walking around often entwined, but boys with girls always kept their distance, as if one or both had the plague. During the dark hours behaviour changed a little . . . . Things are a little different now.

I’ve used personal relationships as a topic for debate on several occasions, from several angles and had no problems. However, I never attempted anything like that during my first terms in China and it was not until I had been there for quite some time that I felt brave enough or knew enough of what I was doing to try out several taboo topics. You definitely need to know your students – how bright are they, how mature, how well do they cope with new material, how comfortable would they feel about tackling topics that are normally out of bounds. One thing I should point out is that I am about the same age as the grandparents of most of my students and that gives me a considerable advantage. If you are too close their age that could put you at a disadvantage.

One last point to make [this comment is going on too long . . . ], present the topic in such a way that they are giving their views on the matter in a detached manner, not talking about their private lives. If they relax, they might do that later but it may be as well to start shutting them up when that happens.