Sexuality and everydayness in a transnational context: toward a re-imagined West-China relationship?

Abstract

This paper examines how Chinese immigrants to Canada perceive and experience sexuality in a transnational context as revealed in a qualitative study. It identifies cultural interactions and tensions between ‘the West’ and ‘China’ embedded in participants’ sexual narratives. Three thematic aspects of sexuality are explored: different views toward ‘relationships’ and how sex is involved in different stages of a relationship; physical desire and sexual attraction based on individuals’ dialogues with contemporaries and their own cross-racial dating experience; and perceptions of sexual risks associated with an increasing awareness of China’s opening up, in particular risks associated with attitudes towards condom use. The paper also discusses how such sexual narratives challenge dichotomous imaginings of ‘sexual openness/conservativeness’ in the West-China relationship. Findings help us to better understanding how Chinese immigrants to Canada view the West through the lens of sexuality, and how their transnational experiences have challenge the West-China dichotomy in the sexual imagination and shape understandings of sexual risk.

Résumé

Cet article examine comment les immigrés chinois au Canada perçoivent et expérimentent la sexualité dans un contexte transnational, tel que révélé dans une étude qualitative. Il identifie les interactions et les tensions culturelles entre « l’Ouest » et « la Chine », intégrées aux récits sexuels des participants. Trois aspects thématiques de la sexualité sont explorés : les points de vue distincts sur « les relations » et la manière dont les rapports sexuels s’intègrent aux différentes étapes d’une relation ; le désir physique et l’attirance sexuelle, basés sur le dialogue des individus avec leurs contemporains et sur leur propre expérience des relations amoureuses transraciales ; et les perceptions des risques sexuels, associées à une sensibilisation de plus en plus forte à l’ouverture de la Chine, en particulier ceux qui sont associés aux attitudes vis-à-vis de l’usage du préservatif. L’article examine également comment de tels récits sexuels remettent en question les visions dichotomiques de/du « l’ouverture/conservatisme sexuel(le)s » dans la relation « Ouest-Chine ». Les résultats nous aident à mieux comprendre comment les immigrés chinois au Canada perçoivent l’Ouest à travers le prisme de la sexualité, et comment leurs expériences transnationales remettent en question la dichotomie Ouest-Chine dans l’imaginaire sexuel, et déterminent les compréhensions du risque sexuel.

Resumen

Basándose en un estudio cualitativo, el presente artículo examina cómo perciben y experimentan la sexualidad en un contexto transnacional los chinos que han migrado, en este caso a Canadá. En las narrativas sexuales de los participantes identifica las interacciones culturales y las tensiones existentes entre “Occidente” y “China”, arraigadas en las mismas. Se analizan tres aspectos temáticos vinculados con la sexualidad: las distintas percepciones en torno a las “relaciones” y a la forma en que el sexo incide en las distintas etapas de las mismas; el deseo físico y la atracción sexual basados en los diálogos sostenidos entre los participantes y sus pares y en la propia vivencia que han tenido durante citas interraciales; y las percepciones acerca de los riesgos sexuales asociados a su creciente conciencia sobre la apertura de China, en particular los riesgos vinculados a actitudes ligadas al uso del condón. Asimismo, el artículo aborda la forma en que tales narrativas sexuales cuestionan los imaginarios dicotómicos de “apertura sexual/conservadurismo” en la relación “Occidente-China”. Los hallazgos resultantes ayudan a comprender mejor cómo perciben a Occidente los inmigrantes chinos a Canadá a través de la lente de la sexualidad y cómo sus vivencias transnacionales ponen en cuestión la dicotomía Occidente-China en el imaginario sexual, moldeando su comprensión del riesgo sexual.

Keywords:

• Sexuality
• transnationalism
• everydayness
• Canada
• China
• West-China relationship

Introduction

The introduction of market-based economic reforms and the open door policy in China in 1978 was accompanied by dramatic social transformations, including the new marriage law, the one child policy, the fading of traditional beliefs and increasing exposure to ‘Western cultures’ through popular music, dance and movies, a major increase in social mobility and the popular use of the Internet and mobile phones (Pan and Huang 2013). Rooted in such local social changes, relationships among marriage, family, love, gender and sexuality – the elements that establish people’s primary life circles (Pan 2006) – are changing and becoming more complex and dynamic.

National survey data suggest that rapid change is happening with respect to Chinese people’s sexualities. In the decade between 2000 and 2010, for example, the prevalence of multiple sexual partnerships, extra-marital sex and one-night stands increased significantly, and sexual identities, norms and practices became more diverse among both men and women (Pan and Huang 2013). An opening up of sexual culture in the last 30 years has been demonstrated in several qualitative and observational studies (Farrer 2002; Huang 2008; Pan and Huang 2011; Wei 2015). Creative social and cultural activities organised by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender groups, feminists and sexuality educators have claimed gender and sexual rights and increased the social visibility of sexual and gender issues (Wei 2015). Hence researchers argue that China is undergoing a ‘sexual revolution’ both at the level of individual practice and in the broader realm of sexual culture (Pan 2008).

In response to changes in behavioural practices, social debate surrounding sex and sexuality has exploded in public discourse. Some practices are becoming more socially tolerated than others (e.g., premarital sex), some are regulated in a much stricter way by the state (e.g., pornography) and a few are being lobbied for (e.g., sexual health) and against (e.g., sexual violence) in public policy arenas. While attitudes surrounding these debates vary, the moral panic toward ‘sexual liberalism’ among the public is often attributed to ‘influence from the West’. The West is popularly regarded as the origin of greater sexual openness in China – an openness that poses a threat to traditional Chinese culture, which is usually imagined as sexually conservative, regardless of historical or contemporary reality (Huang 2008).

Tensions between Western ‘sexual openness’ and China’s ‘sexual conservativeness’ also appear in academic discourses focusing on sexualities in China. Some scholars view the sexual revolution in China as part of the processes of modernisation and Westernisation, arguing that China’s market reform and opening up (Farrer 2002; Jeffreys 2006) have precipitated a decline of Chinese traditions, putting China on a trajectory of Western sexual liberation (e.g., Fan et al. 1995). Others, such as Pan (2006) argue that this revolution is not a straightforward product of Western influences, but stems from radical changes rooted in a transitional society. In the context of these conflicting assessments, research on Chinese individuals’ experiences with Western sexual culture, including through migration to the West, is warranted; however such research is scarce.

A body of literature on sexuality and international migration has pointed to the cultural gaps, interactions and tensions between more open sexual environments in Western developed countries (such as the USA and Australia) and relatively conservative sexual environments in developing countries (such as Latin America and South Asia). By comparing sexual behaviours and attitudes among Mexicans residing in the USA and Mexican sending communities, for example, Parrado and Flippen (2010) found that living in the USA shifted their attitudes towards sexuality after migration so as to display a higher tolerance for infidelity. Smith (2012) found that cultural expectations of marriage, social stigma about homosexuality and a lack of private spaces for sexual exploration constrained the sexual expression of Asian gay men living in Australia. Okazaki (2002) also pointed out that research reveals relatively conservative sexual behaviours among Asian Americans compared to White Americans who are more sexually open. He also found that most of the studies attributed sexually conservative behaviour among Asian Americans to cultural values such as the primacy of the family and collective’s goals over individual wishes. Zhou’s (2012) work is one of the few bodies of literature that has focused on sexuality relating to Chinese immigrants in North America. In it, particular attention is paid to the opening up of sexual behaviours after migration to Canada on one hand, and continuing silence when it comes to talking about sex and safer sex on the other.

Although the cultural gaps, interactions and tensions between the West and non-West have been addressed in the literature on immigration and sexuality, existing knowledge tells us little about how the West and the West-China relationship have been viewed and constructed among Chinese immigrants through their sexual experience, especially from a transnational perspective. Therefore, this paper aims to explore how the transnational living experience of these immigrants has challenged the dichotomous understanding of Western sexual openness – Chinese sexual conservatism that pervades the imagination of contemporary Chinese society as well as the academic literature.

Transnationalism and sexuality in everydayness: a proposed conceptual framework

In the context of international migration, transnationalism is best understood as ‘the processes by which immigrants forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement’ (Basch, Schiller, and Blanc 1994, 6). It offers the potential to overcome the dichotomy between the global and the local and to identify cross-border connections in a globalising world (Amelina et al. 2012). Grewal and Kaplan (2001) argue that the emerging concept of ‘global (sexual and gender) identity’ does not begin to get at the complex terrain of sexual politics that is at once national, regional, local, even ‘cross-cultural’ and hybrid, and the ‘global’ is often seen as a homogenising influence from West to non-West. They suggest that the term transnational can better address the asymmetries of the globalisation processes.

With an emphasis on social relations and complex interactions among migrants, transnationalism also goes beyond a more macro level nation-state perspective (Lunt 2009) and allows a potential theoretical space for lived and bodily experience in everydayness. De Certeau’s (1980) concept of ‘everydayness’ calls for attention to the complex practices of everyday life which are very easily taken-for-granted because of the mundane, trivial and expedient characteristics of the ordinary world. Such a micro-level perspective rooted in people’s everyday life not only critiques the routines shaped by social norms and the dominant culture, but also creates space in which to examine how individuals use personal strategies and tactics to respond to social structures and power relationships (de Certeau 1980; Lefebvre 1984).

In the study reported on here, participants’ frequent travel between China and Canada, their ongoing interactions with China, as well as their transnational consciousness – such as their constant comparisons between Canada (as the host country that is part of the West) and China (as the home country that is perceived as different from the West), whereby the two countries each provide a reference system for navigating their daily lives – give rise to a form of transnationalism concerning sexuality. The theoretical perspective of everydayness underscores the need to pay attention to individual Chinese immigrants’ lived experience, as it emerges from their discourse about lived bodies, sex and sexuality, in which they refer to both countries. In particular, it is important to pay attention to the complex and sometimes contradictory nature of experience embedded in everydayness, which can challenge the simplified dichotomies asserted in popular culture and academic literatures. Such a perspective emphasises experiential knowledge verses grand discourses imbued with politics and power, and further deconstructs taken-for-granted terms such as ‘sexual openness’, ‘the West’ and ‘West-China’ relationship that frequently arise in conversations among Chinese people on sexuality (Huang 2008). Attentiveness to sex/sexuality and its everydayness in a transnational context also needs to take a critical view of the influence of the West over post-colonial societies and developing countries, including the dominance of Western theories and discourses, including those concerning modernity (Rofel 1999; Sang 2014; Huang and Souleymanov 2014).

Methods

This paper draws on data from a qualitative study conducted at four sites, two in Canada (Toronto and Vancouver) and two in China (Beijing and Shanghai) between 2011–2016. The study explores how the experience of living in transnational spaces shapes the sexuality, gender and STI/HIV-related risks of Chinese immigrants to Canada. Data were collected through one-on-one, semi-structured interviews with 66 adult Chinese immigrants. Interviews were conducted by team members who were experienced in, or who had received training in, probing sensitive issues. Eligible research participants were adult individuals who were from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and had lived in Canada for at least one year, who self-identified as having close connections with China while living in Canada, who were willing to talk about sex and sexual health and who at the time of the interviews lived in Canada or China. Recruitment was through advertisements within Chinese immigrant communities and the social networks of the researchers and personal referrals.

In this paper, I explore how a West-China transnational sexuality is lived in everyday life, and whether this echoes or contrasts with the dichotomies present in popular culture and much academic literature – in particular, Chinese immigrants’ understandings of the West and imagination of the West-China relationship. These questions offer a compelling and underexplored focus of enquiry that emerged strongly from 4 of the 66 interviews. While many of the study participants drew comparisons between China and Canada, these four interviews break down the ‘sexual openness/conservativeness’ binary and each addresses important aspects of sexualities through even more open comparison between Canada and China (e.g., dating culture and the relationship between love, sex and marriage; sexual attraction and the physical body; and sexual risks), further complicating a dualistic understanding of ‘Western openness-China conservativeness’. Where additional data from across the data-set permit, connections are made to other participants’ comments for what they also help to reveal about the West-China relationship and for how they contribute to better understanding the four critical interviews.

Such an analytical strategy has limitations in terms of reflecting the diversity and richness of the participants’ lived experience and makes it impossible to generalise to the situations of Chinese immigrants to Canada. Nonetheless, the data provide insight into how the West and the West-China relationship is viewed through the everydayness of transnational lives. The narratives chosen for analysis are those of Mr. Li, Mr. Liang, Mr. Hua and Ms. Wen.

Mr. Li, a young, single man who had being studying in Canada for three years, is open-minded in his attitudes about sexual behaviours and got to know Western dating culture on a university campus in Canada. Li explicitly compared the dating culture and romantic relationships in the West with China, as did other immigrants we interviewed. However, unlike most of the informants who were older than him, Li believed he was familiar with Western culture, through media and popular culture, before moving to Canada. His imagination about the ‘West’ was reinforced and elaborated on by living in Canada.

Mr. Liang is a gay man in his 30s who first came to Canada in the mid-2000s. He had experience dating Caucasians after moving to Canada and dating Chinese gay men while in China. He reported that the less homophobic social context in Canada was an important motivation to migrate. Liang differed from most of the other participants in his openness in talking about sexual desire, the pursuit of sexual freedom and his embracing of Western gay culture. In interview, he contrasts the West and China in terms of their different cultural ideals around the body, physical attraction and sexual desire. At the same time, his interview reveals a strong (unconscious) influence of Western gay culture on his own view about sexuality.

Mr. Hua is a middle-aged, married, heterosexual man who immigrated to Canada in 2009 and travels frequently between Canada and China for business. Compared to other informants, Hua had a more open attitude and practice in ‘talking about sex’ with his wife. He and his wife communicated about sexual issues in their daily conversations, and held different aesthetic views about male and female Western bodies compared to male and female Chinese bodies. He believes that Chinese society is already imbued with Western influences; more precisely, Western culture has invaded China. His understanding of the West-China relationship developed in China before he migrated to Canada.

Ms. Wen is a middle-aged woman who immigrated to Canada in 2003 with her husband, and then got divorced. At the time of the interview, she was dating a Canadian man and described her changed attitude toward condom use – a shift in thinking that stemmed from her cross-racial sexual experience. A comparative understanding of condom use and its meanings in Western culture and Chinese culture was explicitly described. Wen’s dating experience in Canada had clearly (re)shaped her imagination of the West, and the West-China relationship, at least so far as condom use and sex education are concerned.

Talking about sexualities in a transnational context

Relationships, marriage and family

A number of study participants mentioned the difference between China and Canada with respect to views toward dating, relationships, marriage and family, and how sex is involved in different stages.

In contrast to other study participants, Li perceived himself as someone already influenced by Western culture before he moved to Canada. As he stated, ‘I think before I went there, many of my views were already influenced by the Western popular culture, movies, some basic influences, so I merged quickly.’ He described his interest in exploring youth culture on the campus of the Canadian university he attended and expressed his understanding of the differences between Western and Chinese sexuality when it comes to romantic relationships (ganqing guanxi) and how sex is perceived within such a relationship:

For example, [in the West] two people [go] from hanging out to going out to date, to relationship, to engagement, to marriage, the differences are very clear, the two people would also continuously confirm which stage are they in, if you don’t want to continue, then just separate or something. But in China, the stages are different; we don’t separate them so clearly. We only consider whether two people are dating or not … I think, the views about romantic relationship are very different.

For Li, relationships in Western culture were seen to move through clearly defined stages of attraction, sex and love happening way ahead of entering a serious relationship, while in Chinese culture, the notion of ‘being in a relationship’ is less clearly defined than in Western society. Li observed that even though attitudes toward sex are changing among Chinese young people and becoming ‘much more similar to the Westerners’, sex in China still carries a lot of burdens and responsibilities and therefore it is expected to take place within the context of a serious relationship. Li referred to this kind of understanding of sex in China as the ‘burden of tradition’ that involves social relationships beyond just the relationship between the couple, ‘especially from our parents, family, including very specific concept such as loyalty’. Li further explained his view by drawing comparisons between China and Canada:

They [Canadians] can ask for sex directly, for example if we both go to a bar, we basically know, if we are both just one person, you are available, I am available, if we have a nice chat and have a good first impression about each other, then this time or next time will be it, get to a stage of bodily relationship. But in China, even [if] we both have the need, we need to overcome many mental burden and pressure, then the guy has to consider promising responsibility. The girl has to consider what if they will not be together. … or if there is no protection during sex, they have to consider the risk of pregnancy …

Li believed that for Chinese people who are ‘with historical burden and traditional burden’, there are many extra things to consider in a relationship. Li’s observation also suggests a strong essential view toward differences in sexual experience based on different gender expectations, which has been found in previous studies (Huang 2008) to be a commonly held one. Li perceived that such gender differences are not present for Canadian young people, stating that for them, ‘everyone, as long as you are at this age and not married, they all go to bars.’

Li, as well as other informants, recognised the role of family in relationships in Chinese culture, both as a receptacle of traditional culture and as an authority that intervenes in relationships, especially when it comes to the relationship stages of engagement and marriage. This was viewed as one of the key differences between the West and China. However, several participants were surprised to learn how Westerners view marriage and family or, more precisely, how Canadians’ family values are stronger and more serious than originally imagined before immigration. Before migration, participants believed that family responsibility was a defining feature and merit of Chinese, but not Western, culture. However, the increase in extra-marital sex (‘second wives’) and one-night stands (both for single and married people) in China, the growing sex trade in present-day China and what participants learned about Canadians’ commitment to marriage and family supported the ‘new’ view that China is more sexually open nowadays than the West. Instead of seeing a division between ‘Chinese-conservativeness’ and ‘Western-openness’, Li felt that young people in China have become similar to Westerners in their attitudes toward sexuality. Another interviewee in the larger group from which this sub-set of informants was drawn believed that Canada is much more conservative than he imagined, and that China had already thrown away traditional values and was more open than the West.

In the larger study several participants questioned whether such ‘sexual openness’ in China nowadays is not a ‘real openness’, but some kind of ‘mess’ or a ‘failure’ in dealing with relationships, because people do not know what they want before marriage nor how to deal with marriage rationally. Several participants specifically pointed to rich businessmen and officials in China who visit female sex workers and keep ‘mistresses’ as examples of this new sexual openness. A few others mentioned that young people from affluent Chinese families who are sent to Canada for secondary or post-secondary education are seen to be more open than their peers in China in terms of both sexual attitudes and behaviours. ¹

Sexual attraction and physical body

Since the 1980s, the English-language literature on sexual attraction and mate preference and selection in a cross-cultural context has focused largely on the importance of both physical body characteristics and social-cultural factors (Buss 1989; Buss et al. 2001). However, references to sexual attraction were often veiled in Chinese participants’ narratives. Only a few expressed their views about bodily attraction or described concrete sexual behaviours, Liang and Hua were two of them, but in widely different contexts.

Mr. Liang was a very successful professional in China but decided to move to Canada mainly because of his gay identity. Although Liang mentioned he had an active sex life with his Chinese boyfriend in China (‘having sex whenever and wherever possible’), he felt there is a much more friendly social space in Canada for homosexuality. He was especially afraid that coming out or exposing his gay identity in China would have negative consequences for his family and make his mother and brothers feel ashamed. He also faced a lot of pressure to get (heterosexually) married back to China. Liang not only compared the social openness, especially attitudes toward gay people in China and Canada, but also between his own home city, a small city that he describes as very conservative, and more open big cities like Beijing. Liang realised his gay identity in his 20s, and had boyfriends in China and now has a North American boyfriend, ‘a White guy’, and his views are mostly based on his own sexual experience of living in-between the two cultures. Unlike most of the interviewees, Liang was explicit about his desire for the physical body of White guys:

… it’s a known fact that 90% of Caucasian guys are better looking than Asian guys, even the plainest looking Caucasian guys. Who does not like good looking guys? Second of all, they are fairly skinned which looks very clean, particularly [the] genitals. Asian guys are generally darker skinned. Besides, White guys have [a] huge penis, which most Asian guys like. Therefore, Caucasian guys are good looking, fairly skinned and have [a] huge penis …

In Liang’s view, sexual attraction is rooted in bodily attraction. He went on to express his view about the differences between Canada and China when it comes to partner-selecting criteria. In Chinese culture, social factors, rather than physical appearance play a much more important role:

In China, regardless it’s between same sex or male and female, employment income, social status and even family background are all taken into consideration when one is choosing his/her partner. But those are not a considering factor in Canada. At least, I have never considered … I’m looking for what comes with this guy. I care for the skin tone and huge penis … in China, I would have to think about it (social factors) …

In differentiating the West and China, Liang seems to have already assimilated himself to Canadian culture by emphasising his interests in physical attraction and sexual desire. Yet he acknowledges his desire criterion is more complex than bodily attraction by addressing it later on when the interviewer digs deeper, ‘it’s not only sexual satisfaction …. It’s the whole package of Caucasians that I’m very appealed to. Sex is a very important factor for sure’. By this, he seems to mean other social factors that he refuses or is reluctant to delve into as he says ‘there are other stuff as well, but it’s hard to say what’.

In Liang’s narrative, his awareness of his desire for White men became stronger during his journey from his hometown to Beijing and then his move to Canada. In other words, Liang’s desire was contextualised in his migration experience and the three sites – his hometown (in China), Beijing and Canada – reflect different levels of exposure to White men and Western gay culture.

Several of the heterosexual study participants also described perceived differences between Westerners and Chinese relating to the aesthetics of the physical body. They had discovered these either through chatting with others or based on their own cross-racial sexual experience since moving to Canada. Unlike Liang, however, they were more reticent when talking with the interviewer about the subject.

Mr. Hua, for example, displayed an open attitude to talking about sex with his wife, who was also from Beijing. In their daily conversations, they exchanged views about gay couples, their own sexual preferences and the aesthetics of Western and Chinese bodies:

She likes the body figure of Westerners, women with big breasts, long legs. Then for men, White men are very tidy all over their body, with obvious masculine features. My aesthetic judgments for men is similar to hers, but for women, I like [the] Asian style, medium build, medium size, not appear to be wild, not give a feeling like a beast, but feel reserved, an oriental feeling. Eh, sometimes, we discuss our differences in aesthetic judgments.

In line with previous studies on Chinese women’s developing sexiness in urban society (Huang 2008; Pei 2011), a preference for Western style bodies has become popular over the last 30 years. Instead of holding an essentialist view, Hua further linked these aesthetic judgments, especially his wife’s preference for the Western female body type, to the experience of growing up in urban Chinese society, which was flooded with images of Western bodies through movies, magazines, television and advertising:

I feel this is a strange thing. Not only [my wife], but also some of my female friends, who were born in Beijing, grew up there and still live there. They also have similar aesthetic judgments. I think for sex, there exists a Western culture invasion to the Eastern culture. Also there exists a culture invasion from the developed countries to the developing countries …. Many young Beijing girls, including ones I know, they are willing to date White men and men from developed countries. But not for immigration, not for study, or reference letters for jobs, not for career development, not for all of these. They have good lives and work in China …

In Hua’s assessment, his view, as well as those of his wife and his female friends in China, had not been shaped by their experience of living in transnational space but, rather, ‘the environment you grew up in’, which was already mixed with Western culture through mass media. Hua attributed the willingness of such young women in Beijing to date White men from developed countries to their perceptions of, or imagination about, White men as ‘more educated’, ‘car[ing] more about women’ and ‘more skilled in sexual techniques’. For him, these perceptions are a result of cultural invasion ‘which spread this kind of positive information into people’s aesthetic views in the developing countries’.

Both Liang and Hua talked about sexual attraction and the aesthetics of the body, but in different ways. Liang placed greater emphasis on difference – different criteria of partner seeking – while Hua paid attention to Western influence on Chinese culture, flagging a power tension between by using the term ‘invading’. Liang also talked more about the intersection between sexuality/homosexuality and cross-racial physical attraction in term of his own dating experience in a transnational context. Hua focused on the intersections between culture, gender and physical attraction – intersections that were strongly influenced by exposure to the Western mass media in daily life, both pre- and post-migration and regardless of the ‘real’ diversity of body types existing in Canada. For both Liang and women in Hua’s narrative, desire for the Western body was shaped by their imagination about the West, a more culturally informed rationale than explanations of attraction based primarily on physical size. This imagination has been shaped by China’s process of opening the door to the world (including to dominant Western cultures).

Sexual risks, condom use and sex education

A common view that arose from the larger study was even though Canadians are seen as sexually open, they have a better sense of safer sex, better sex education and are more willing to use condoms, which makes them low-risk partners. Cultural differences, rather than similarities, with respect to negotiating condom use arose many times in the study, regardless of their reality in the two societies.

For instance, Ms. Wen clearly stated that her dating experience with a White guy changed her view and behaviour concerning safe sex. She had felt embarrassed to bring up the issue of condom use to her partner, as she said ‘Chinese people might think it strange using condom because it’s like we are having a sex trade’; therefore, she was very shocked when her current Canadian partner mentioned using condoms, ‘it’s not like we are having sex trade business here. We are dating ….’

Wen expressed her lack of awareness of self-protection and embarrassment in bringing up the condom use issue several times, and described how her Canadian partner had taught her about self-protection, challenging her previous ideas that linked condom use to a lack of trust and cultural notions about the type of woman (e.g., female sex workers) who used condoms:

He said, how come you had no sense of self-protection at all. It has nothing to do with how I feel about you or how close we are. It’s not like I don’t trust you. No, nothing like that. I asked him whether foreigners always use [a] condom. He said some people have been married for many years but still keep using condom[s] … I asked him why you wanted to use condom. He said that that is how they were taught in high school that protection is very important …

Wen was impressed by her current partner’s risk awareness and attitude toward safer sex, which she also perceived as in contrast with her ideas back in China. She had never talked about condom use and sexual risks with her former Chinese husband, and had almost no sense of sexual risk before coming to Canada because:

I didn’t go to night clubs and I didn’t have sex partners outside marriage. I was living the normal life of a family. I was not fooling around or anything like that. So I don’t think I faced any risk then.

She believed that her current relationship had changed her mindset.

However, it seems that despite this insistence, her attitude toward risks did not change in some situations. She revealed ‘later when we have been really close, we don’t use it now’ or ‘It’s a very necessary protection, unless you will provide test result showing you are disease free.’ Wen’s self-awareness of the influence from her current partner may be exaggerated and despite her learning from her partner, the idea of condom as a barrier to intimacy (in which trust was viewed as essential) never left her safer-sex practice. However, in her eyes, her attitudes toward condom use, especially by regular partners had been challenged, becoming more complex and fluid, based on her cross-racial sexual experience and frequent comparisons of the two countries’ cultural attitudes toward condom use. It is also worth noting that for Wen, as well as quite a few other women interviewed in the larger study (especially middle-aged women), sexual risks referred mainly to STIs rather than other issues such as contraception.

Wen further attributed the difference in cultural attitudes toward condom use to the different kinds of sex education provided in Chinese and Canadian schools. A few participants in our study, although with different social and sexual experience from Wen, also mentioned that there was a much better understanding among Canadians of how to protect oneself from STIs and HIV as well as pregnancy by using condoms and a much healthier culture of talking about sex. With the exception of some young immigrants from big cities like Beijing who had received some at university, most participants reported a lack of proper sex education.

Discussion and conclusion

The West-East relationship has been challenged in academia following the publication of Said’s Orientalism (1978). Research has made a major contribution to challenging the stereotypes and embedded power relationships between the West and East (Huang and Souleymanov 2014). When it comes to the West-China relationship in the field of sexuality and gender, researchers have in particular emphasised the importance of Chinese local contexts and voices from Chinese people’s everyday lives (e.g., Hershatter 1997; Rofel 1999; Sang 2014). Much of this literature, however, is about how Westerners view China or Chinese culture. There is still a lack knowledge about how ordinary Chinese people experience, understand and imagine the West and the West-China relationship (Xiang 2012), especially with respect to sexuality.

In this paper, I have tried to show that the dualist West-China framework is still strongly embedded in participants’ sexual schema, despite their experience of living in two countries (China and Canada). Differences rather than similarities were nearly always emphasised in the four focal interviews. Li, for example, described different ways of defining ‘relationships’ in the West and China. Liang asserted that Westerners paid more attention to physical attraction in partner seeking while the Chinese pay more attention to social considerations; he also believed that the West has more open attitudes toward homosexuality. Wen compared different the meanings of, as well as attitudes towards, condom use, as well as the availability of sex education in Canada and China.

The interaction between the West and China was also addressed by these four participants. Their statements about the West’s influence on China (Li), or Western culture having ‘invaded’ China (Hua) through the mass media, underscore the fact that the power asymmetries are still strong. Liang’s narrative reveals the influence of Western gay subculture in his preferences and experience, although he seemed unconscious of it and did not realise that the cultural construction of ‘homophobia’ in current society also derives from Western culture. Wen’s comments about her change in attitudes toward condom use more explicitly address the influence of her Caucasian partner’s attitudes without digging more deeply into the reality of sex and sex education in Canada.

Some participants held fast to a ‘China-conservative/West-more open’ understanding when it came to ‘relationships’ and other aspects of sexuality, including social attitudes toward homosexuality. Others, however, saw China’s opening up as a disruption of conservatism in China, and even reversed the China-conservative/West-more open dualistic view, pointing to increased extra-marital sex, one-night stands and commercial sex in China as evidence. Some informants spoke of their ‘new’ view that Canada was not as sexually open as they used to believe, based on their experience of living in both countries.

The narratives, therefore, break down terms such as ‘sexual openness’ and the emotions involved. The notion of sexual openness, for most of the study participants, views certain sexual behaviours and sexual relationships as a negative influence coming from the capitalist West, a perspective emphasised by socialist culture since Mao’s era. However, a few participants’ discussed this openness more positively with respect to talking about condom use and sex education. In the latter case, openness was seen in a positive way. A newly emerging understanding seems to be that while China may now be more sexually open at the behavioural and relationship level, it lags far behind in sex education for safe sex and condom use, which may mean a greater vulnerability to sexual health risk. Canada is also sexually open (especially when it comes to pre-marital sex), but Canadians are perceived to have a better sense of self-protection and health awareness, therefore, they are seen to be relatively low risk partners. The imagining of the West’ as being a less sexually risky social environment with better sex education is an optimistic one yet lacks detailed and critical examination of the reality, as in Wen’s case. Such a new understanding of the sexual openness and risks in the West-China relationship calls attention to the need for health and sex education programmes for Chinese immigrants living in Canada. While some myths may be being deconstructed, others are emerging.

Referring back to the earlier discussion of transnationalism (Basch, Schiller, and Blanc 1994; Lunt 2009; Amelina et al. 2012), it is not only the frequent travel and close connections between the two countries among our study participants, but also their frequent comparisons between the two, which demonstrates a form of transnationalism concerning sexualities. While the home country continues to exert influence over perceptions and practices of sexuality (Zhou 2012), the actual experience of living in Canada challenges their previous imagination of the West, more in some aspects and less in others. Participants’ transnational experience complicates the construction of Western openness versus China conservativeness as explored in a previous study (Huang 2008), even though the dualist framework still often appears in the interviews, where it is much less critically challenged than it is in academic discourses. In addition, tensions between the West and China remain strong among our participants’ sexual narratives in a transnational context. That participants keep referring back and forth between the two countries, comparing one with the other, provides evidence of what Grewal and Kaplan (2001) view as the asymmetries of the globalisation process.

Further reading of the narratives suggests that the everyday experience of Canada allows a more embodied understanding of Canadian sexual culture. Meanwhile, a sense of the rapidly changing sexual culture back home in China has also changed participants’ judgement of Canadians’ sexuality and challenged the ‘West-openness versus China-conservativeness’ knowledge schema. The latter is attributed to China’s marital and family planning policies as well as social change, which has been accompanied by a strong dissatisfaction with political and social problems, such as corruption, lack of social security and moral panic (Pan 2008).

While offering some descriptive insights into how Chinese immigrants viewed and challenged Western openness versus Chinese conservativeness through the lens of sexuality, a more contextualised and historical analysis is needed to better understand the sexual and transnational stories told by participants in this study. Further examination of the intersections between transnationalism, sexuality and factors such as gender, race, generation and types of immigrants would enrich the descriptive insights from the work reported here and contribute toward constructing of a more adequate theory of sexuality and transnationalism as part of everyday life.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding

This work was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research [grant number CIHR [grant number 111081] and by a McMaster Arts Research Board Scholarly Publications Grant [grant number 2016-2018].

Notes

1. It is worth noting that in these narratives, as well as among many Chinese people (Pan and Huang 2013), prostitution, mistresses and same-sex relationships are often lumped together as part of ‘sexual openness’. Participants tend to believe that this occurred as a result of negative influence from the capitalist West during China’s opening up and economic reform in the 1980s, regardless of the reality in the West and of ‘tradition’ (Huang 2008; Pan et al. 2005; Hershatter 1997).