Tuesday 21 October, 2008Sex museum turns a profit

A new branch of China's first sex museum has eked out a profit for the first time since it opened a year ago in Pudong, in the pedestrian tunnel under the Huangpu River.

The Ancient Chinese Sex Culture Museum was founded in 1995 by Liu Dalin, a sociology professor at Shanghai University. But restrictions on advertising and financial problems forced Liu to move the museum several times over the years.

Thanks to the new location and a growing openness to sex, the sex culture exhibition hall attracted more than 120,000 visitors last year, about 20 percent of them foreigners, and reported a profit of about 400,000 yuan (US$49,382). 

The hall, called the Modern Educational Exhibition Hall of Sex Health, contains 500 sex-related artifacts that Liu, a scholar specializing in sex culture, has collected over the years from home and abroad. The exhibits include jade carvings, sculptures, paintings, furniture, shoes, and clothes, some of which are thousands of years old.

The main museum, located in Tongli, Jiangsu Province, houses the rest of Liu's vast collection, nearly 3,700 items related to Chinese sex culture. One such treasure is a set of scrolls revealing couples in various sexual positions, given by a mother to a daughter on her wedding day. More than simply conveying technical information, the gift demonstrates how families once communicated with each other.

Originally established in a farm house in rural Minhang District in 1995, the museum was relocated to the bustling Nanjing Road Pedestrian Mall in 1999 so that it could attract more visitors. But Liu said that he was prohibited from putting up signs for the museum that contained the word sex. This made it difficult to advertise, and Liu was forced twice to relocate his museum.

Finally, with the opening of the new branch, rent exemptions in both locations, and marketing efforts, the Ancient Chinese Sex Culture Museum is on the road to success.