Secluded in a quiet alley some 200 to 300 meters away from the city hub, Tong Songzhen’s sex health clinic sits among various others in a street of Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province.

The clinic is divided into several rooms with doors and windows tightly shut. In stark contrast to the overcrowded halls in China’s hospitals, the corridor of the clinic is empty and patients need to book before getting treatment. Outsiders hardly know what exactly happens inside, as privacy is a top concern.

“In a word, the task of sexologists is to teach people how to make love,” said Tong, a 41-year-old nurse-turned-sexologist, who organized the Sixth World Chinese Sexologists Academic Conference and Sex Therapy Academic Forum from Aug. 29 to 31, 2014.

Having worked as a nurse in Chang-Gung Memorial Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan for 12 years, Tong recalled her first sight of a bone fracture patient with his leg hung high in the air kissing his wife passionately. Showing no signs of disgust or scorn towards the couple who would have otherwise stifled their emotion until the man returned home, Tong was inspired by the intimate scene and began to think about the role of sex in life.

Tong was later enrolled in Shu-Te University in Taiwan, where she chose Human Sex Studies, the only sexology major in the province. She also received certificates granted by the American College of Sexologists and Tantra Studio in Germany, which led her to prominence as a sex therapist in Taiwan. When her clinical experience matured, Tong expanded her business from Taiwan to Hangzhou and Wuhan, Hubei Province, on the mainland.

Despite the low-key style of Chinese sexologists and their concern for privacy, Tong revealed some aspects of her treatment. “Sometimes, we will touch the patients, but with gloves, and tell them to concentrate.”

“The patients are sometimes required to wear blindfolds and imagine they are making love in their own mind rather than being guided by us,” she explained.

According to China News Weekly, a man from Chongqing, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he received treatment from Tong and found it was merely masturbation with the help of clinical staff.

So when does treatment cross moral lines? Senior Chinese sexologist Ma Xiaonian explained that the patient had suffered from erectile dysfunction for two years and if the treatment can help cure him cure, then it would be an improvement.

Ma started working in sexology 18 years ago when he was 51 years old. He resigned from the National Family Planning Commission and set up a sexology clinic in Yuquan Hospital. However, in 2003, Yuyuan Hospital merged with Tsinghua University as an affiliated hospital and the sexology department became peripheral. Viagra prescription used to be the major treatment that Ma gave to his patients, because of the 20,000 patients that Ma diagnosed before his retirement in 2005, 83 percent were men with erection problems.

According to Ma, doctors need to help patients overcome their agitation when they are making love, to guarantee a successful erection.

Ma’s theory is refuted by Pan Suiming, former director of the Sociology of Sex Research Institute at Renmin University. He believes the impotence and premature ejaculation were regarded as illnesses, and the quacks touted treatment and prescriptions just to make money.

They are actually technical problems and need psychological adjustment for the man and the woman, not only medicine for the man, Pan said.

Sex problems can be categorized into six grades: moral suppression, ignorance, timely agitation, unharmonious couples, psychological conflict and family issues, according to Wu Minlun, a sexologist at Queen Mary Hospital. Based on his clinical experience, 80 percent of patients suffer from the first three types, which can be solved through psychological guidance and sex education. But patients with the last three types of problems are very difficult to cure, and require a lot of assistance from sexologists.

For traditional and religious reasons, sexology remains a sensitive topic in China and Chinese society. When Tong’s father heard what her daughter was doing in the mainland, he was angry.

In the future, computerized virtual treatment, in which patients can experience sensual pleasure with the help of digital glasses and a helmet, may replace massage by people to reduce the controversy of sex therapy, Ma said.

Nowadays, a big hassle for the sexologists is how to get some patients to avoid falling in love with them, said Wu.

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