The Politics of a Chinese Orgy
A couple of years ago, the Times ran a piece by Edward Wong with a headline that stays with you: “18 ORGIES LATER, CHINESE SWINGER GETS PRISON BED.”
It was the profile of a computer-science professor named Ma Yaohai who was in his early fifties, lived with his mother, and was best known by his Internet handle: Roaring Virile Fire. To his chagrin, Roaring Virile Fire had become a dissident of sorts when he was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for joining clubs that promoted partner-swapping and group sex. He had been convicted of the little-known offense that the Chinese government calls “crowd licentiousness,” a relic of the days when the government charged people with “hooliganism” for sex outside of marriage and other flights of turpitude. The professor insisted that his efforts to organize and participate in eighteen orgies was nobody’s business but his own, as long as he was not causing a disturbance. “Privacy needs to be protected,” his lawyer, Yao Yong’an, told the Times.
Orgies are back in the news in Beijing, but this time it’s the Communist Party that has found itself in an uncomfortable position, and it is now praising the virtues of privacy.
