Want a dildo? Go to Xiamen!
There were a few reasons I went to Xiamen last week. First, I needed a vacation. Second, it’s warmer than Shanghai. Third, I haven’t been there yet. Fourth, Teya’s husband’s sister said it was her favorite place in China, so Teya wanted to go too. Fifth, I wanted to see if it would be a place I’d want to work in the future.
Once I got there, one of the most striking features of Xiamen was the massive numbers of sex shops. Along Zhongshan Road, a main shopping street near the ferry pier, there was one every fifty feet or so. There were tons of people selling all sort of sex elixers and fake viagra and stuff in little stalls in the streets off of the main road. I went into a two-kuai store looking for a needle and thread, and what did I find, but tons of Chinese translations of Japanese shonen ai comics! (I bought one of course, called “Ningen Club.”) Teya and I were totally astonished, and didn’t know why there was so much sex stuff on sale there. She also wondered what people would tell their children about it, since there were always tons of children playing next to the street stalls, which were selling stuff in boxes that had big pictures of men putting their penises in women’s vaginas (everything was clearly visible) on the front.