THE Chinese are the heirs to a rich tradition of erotica, but a survey shows they do not, on average, exchange their first kiss until the age of 23.

This chaste reality contrasts with an avalanche of internet pornography in China as old restraints are cast off in the rush to experience everything the new consumerism can offer.

For most young Chinese, the sexual revolution - a highly commercialised affair with massage parlours and even gay bars in most big cities - remains out of reach. In general, ordinary people’s attitudes are still fiercely conservative even though most have become more liberal towards premarital sex.

More than 60% of those surveyed agreed that there was “no moral problem” with sex before marriage - although among students, the most freethinking group, less than 13% had put theory into practice.

“Chinese are still some of the most conservative people in the world, with the average age for people’s first kiss being 23,” Pan Suiming, director of the survey, told China News Service. “Those who are tolerant towards premarital sex might not actually do it themselves.”

The survey, Sex and Sexuality of the Chinese, 2000-2006, was carried out by the People’s University of China, which questioned 6,000 people aged 18-61. Chinese culture values hanyang, or restraint, and media commentators say open discussion of sex remains difficult in most families. No such inhibitions apply on the internet. The survey unleashed accusations between the sexes as online chatrooms filled with comments on its results last week.

One contributor to Netease.com proudly claimed to have deflowered seven virgins before his marriage but warned women to be careful about premarital sex because husbands were sensitive. “You men have no breeding,” replied “Yanguiyu”. “When you marry, you want a virgin. How could there be so many virgins left?”

Sociologists say China is caught up in a confusing clash of western pop culture and puritanism, both Confucian and communist. There is a centuries-old division between public virtue and elaborate private vices celebrated in forbidden literature since the Ming dynasty. And some of China’s modern role models might take traditionalists by surprise.

“Look at Rose in the film Titanic - she has sex with Jack three days after they get to know one another,” commented one internet user, Shandong Jinan. “Is Rose not a good woman? Women seek only pure love and if they believe they’ve found it they will throw caution to the winds.”

However, one Chinese woman who threw caution to the winds found herself at the centre of a recent national scandal. Frank and unapologetic, the online diary of a mistress, A Zhen, set off a fit of moral indignation when it exposed a hard bargain in China’s new money culture.

She is one of a host of women kept as “second wives” in Shenzhen, a boom town near Hong Kong. While Chinese readers are used to raunchy chicklit, the raw reality in A Zhen’s account of the humdrum exchange of sex for a comfortable life created a cult appeal. It led 250,000 people to follow her story on a popular website.

That figure soared after the official media ran a story with the headline “Woman touts mistress life online”, complete with what one writer termed “hot eye-catching photos”. It set off a debate between Chinese who saw her as shameless and those who defended her right to use her principal asset in a marketplace full of harsh choices.

A Zhen has told her readers that she was born after her mother, aged 18, was raped by a married man in the remote mountain village where she lived. At 17 she decided to follow millions of other hopefuls to the coastal cities. She did not understand at first why her dormitory roommates sneaked back very late every night. Then she realised that they were freelancing in prostitution. Soon afterwards she was raped by one of the factory bosses. A Zhen’s description left her readers in no doubt of the pain, and humiliation of the episode.

It hardened her to make the calculation that it was better to be kept as a plaything than abused as a casual worker. “As a mistress, I have my scalding tears. No one can understand me. So the only source of comfort is to write down my experience.”

Many disapproved of her revelations. “China’s younger generation have reached such an extent of depravity that they either cannot or will not tell black from white and scandal from honour,” fulminated a social scientist, Zhong Yaoqi.

But the very existence of such a debate shows the speed at which taboo subjects are vanishing in China. Every night in Shenzhen, an estimated 2m listeners tune in to a no-holds-barred radio show hosted by Hu Xiao Mei, a feisty female who shocks older Chinese with her frankness. And thousands of people have called a sexual education hotline set up by the Ford Foundation, which funded the latest survey, to talk about their own hopes, fears - and first kisses.

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