TAIWAN–While the Chu Mei-feng VCD saga has been rattling the bedposts of Taiwan’s citizens for well over a month now, the repercussions of the former Hsinchu City Cultural Affairs Bureau chief’s brazen – and by all accounts admirable – sexual performance in the 40-minute liaison, continues to do what centuries of foreign perversion has failed to accomplish – get the Chinese talking openly, and mostly vividly, about sex.
Within five minutes of any street, business or existential conversation, the inevitable question of “Have you seen it?” graces the air. A newly-appointed partner at Arthur Anderson confided to a friend that he “had to” watch it to be able to converse topically in his client meetings. Female friends in Taipei have no qualms of dreamily discussing the championship performance of the male quarry in the video, married man Tseng Chung-ming, in the company of male friends and family members. Men, on the other hand, are far less likely to have seen the video, and for once are on the distant end of the pornographic divide.
In a quirky bout of justice, several other smutty events are coinciding with the VCD release. (which is under criminal investigation, obviously because the parties involved were allegedly unaware of its recording or distribution, but also because it became widely available as a supplement on a tawdry gossip magazine, Scoop Weekly.) Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou has tried unsuccessfully to eradicate what thousands of years of governments before him also failed to do – stamp out prostitution. (actually, Chen Shui-bian tried the same thing when he was mayor of Taipei.) A no-brainer of a concept for most other foreign cities, 80 percent of Taipei citizens too have expressed the need for sex industries to be regulated, not stamped out, in a December report titled Taipei Citizens’ Understanding and Attitudes on the Sex Trade. More mayors and elected officials are taking a beating in this sexual revolution: the closest to the heat being a former boyfriend of Chu’s, and a former Hsinchu mayor, Tsai Jen-chien, who is under suspicion for actually helping coordinate the taping of Chu’s liaison – er, liaisons: Taiwan is eagerly awaiting the release of more footage documenting Chu with nine other men. And on it goes?
Add to this the recent case of legislator Huang Hsien-chou’s alleged drug- and prostitute-fuelled binge at the Grand Hyatt; the release this week of a Japanese sex guide called Paradise in Taiwan which documents the best places to have sex on the island; and the age-old bugbear of secretly-filmed train station ‘panty-cams’ on the Web – again, an overflow of Japan’s hypersexuality – who can’t escape the smut.
In an explosion of licentious fervor, it’s no wonder that VCD-star Chu Mei-feng has entered the Lycos 50 most searched-for terms on the Web in the week ending January 12, beating World War II and the Euro. While the full ins and outs – so to speak – of this case is a blast unto itself, I’m not suggesting a blow-by-blow description – oops, I did it again. Rather, maybe we can revisit some of the data of our Sex in Asia material which is still living and breathing on the Web from last year (www.time.com/time/asia/features/sex/) in a look at prevailing sexual mores of local and expat Chinese communities, tying in the established-Hong Kong smut media industry (thanks Jimmy Lai, his Next magazine now nearly a year old here in Taiwan, with a Taiwan Apple Daily newspaper mooted.) and the breakdown of the Chinese family unit, as measurable.
