Beijing’s first sex culture exhibition ended up being shut down the same day when it opened.

Before the opening ceremony for the event scheduled for 9:30 am on Monday, Ma Xiaonian, a reputed sexual therapist, director of the Chinese Sexual Counseling and Therapy Committee and supplier of many of the exhibits, had already been working for two hours to make sure all the items for display at the Shijingshan District Family Planning Service Center were properly labeled and explained.

“This exhibition offers a platform for reviewing the evolution of China’s sexual culture,” he explained. “Some sex-related relics might evoke misunderstandings, so it is crucial to give detailed information about all the pieces.”

With the opening approaching, the event’s organizing committee twice demanded Ma remove some exhibits and cover the “healthy” bits of others on grounds that they were pornographic. Later, a cautionary sign was posted outside the entrance to the exhibition hall that read in bold characters, “Visitors under 18 prohibited.”

Once the doors opened, the exhibition proved a popular success, as visitors crowded into the hall to get glimpses of the nearly 700 ancient sex-related articles from China’s dynastic past on show.

In order to ensure visitors’ safety as numbers mounted, the center's leaders required afternoon guests to enter the show in groups of 10 and set a 10 minute time cap for all groups. When the exhibition closed at 5 pm, there were still many prospective viitors waiting outside.

Li Nan, a 25-year-old visitor, said, “It is a good exhibition. This is the 21st century, and more Chinese people can think and talk about sex more calmly and rationally these days.”

In the opinion of 32-year-old Wang Ning, “The exhibits displayed here should not be used as important means for defining the evolution of Chinese sexual culture,” because here is no way to prove they represent the mainstream sexual environment of their respective periods.

The unexpected number of visitors seemed to trouble the center’s leadership, who held an emergency meeting as soon as the doors closed for the day.

At first, they told Ma to remove even more exhibits, including ancient sexually-explicit pictures, but by the end of the meeting, the decision was made to terminate the exhibition.

According to a report in Beijing Youth Daily on Wednesday, Pan Shuzhen, director of the Beijing Shijingshan District Commission of Population and Family Planning, the body that oversees the service center, explained that it was impossible for a regional family planning commission to fulfill the task of enhancing the whole population’s sexual awareness.

A member of the center’s staff said on the condition of anonymity that the leadership committee was afraid that some visitors might be egatively affected by misunderstanding some exhibits. That person added that because this was the first exhibition on sexual culture ever held by a local government in China, the center’s leaders felt it best to be very cautious.

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