Suzhou, China

Professor Dalin's Museum of Sex

9,000 years of carnal history is on display at China's original Museum of Sex.

Housed in a sprawling suburban campus fifty miles west of Shanghai, China’s first sex museum has been titillating visitors since 1999. The museum’s main collection is divided into several exhibits including “Unusual Sexual Behavior”, “Marriage and Women”, and “Sex in Primitive Society”, where guests can contemplate the x-rated artifacts of China’s earliest societies.

The sex museum is the brain child of Liu Dalin, a retired professor of sociology at Shanghai University and China’s answer to Alfred Kinsey. In 1990 Professor Dalin completed a national survey of sexual behavior and attitudes in China. Informally dubbed the “Chinese Kinsey Report”, the survey’s results were published in English in 1997 as “Sexual Behavior in Modern China”.

Professor Dalin originally opened his sex museum in Shanghai, but government enforced restrictions limited publicity and ultimately drove him out of the city. At first government officials would not allow the character for sex to appear in the museum’s sign. Then the museum was denied status as a “scenic location”, a designation that would have allowed tour agencies to list the museum in brochures and advertisements. As a result museum attendance suffered, and the Professor decided to move his collection of ancient pornography and sexual relics to the more accommodating town of Tongli in nearby Jiangsu province.

The museum’s current location includes a provocative statue garden and a traditional tea pavilion, as well as meeting facilities, where Professor Dalin invites executives to hold their next meeting in the museum’s “inspiring atmosphere.”