president of WenZhou
Loves Health Products
By BRYAN WALSH WENZHOU
Lining a wall of the factory
show-room like sentinels, the dildos are the color
and size of rainbow Popsicles and give off a faint
electric glow, except for the pink one that appears
to have the head of George Washington. Lift-size blow-up
dolls hang nearby, blonds, brunettes and red-heads
with crimson mouths shaped in a permanent 'O', as
if surprised to find themselves rolling off the production
line of a dingy Chinese factory. The sheer variety
of sex toys, both anatomically correct and physiologically
implausible, being readied for shipment from Wenzhou
Loves Health Products is disturbing .But as company
president Wu Wei says, "Everyone has their own taste."
Which, Hopefully, explains the inflatable cow-a black-spotted
Holstein-tucked in the corner. "The cow is ordered
by European companies," Wu says, "maybe because Westerners
treat animals more equally?"
He shrugs. The sex toy
king of China doesn't judge. It's bad for business.
With his crew cut, oversize glasses, blue jeans and
phlegmatic manner,33-year-old Wu looks like a teenager
slouching in the back of sexed class-but he's an empire
builder emblematic of China's only major government
licensed erotica manufacturer. The plan daily pumps
out some 10,000 sex toys destined for bedroom drawers
worldwide, but Wu and his Japanese venture partner
have grander plans: a $ 12 million investment in a
new factory that could triple Loves' production and
push sales past $100 million.
It's an ambitious goal.
Loves' sales last year were just $8 million .But with
China's sexual revolution blooming, the domestic market
for onanism aids is expanding at a pace that can only
be described as blistering. The communist era of enforced
asceticism and prudery has been giving way to more
liberal, if not libertine ,attitudes .After Beijing
legalized the sale of sex toys in 1994, "I knew that
sex could be sold," Wu says, Even so, when he applied
for a license, he soft-pedaled, pushing to get his
wares classified as medical devices. "I wanted to
promote the product as a tool for social stability,"
he says.
Well, idle hands are the
devil's playthings. But redeeming social value is
less of a worry these days. "Even women no longer
shy away from buying such things," says Miss Wang,
a lab-coat-wearing saleswoman at downtown WenZhou's
Adam Eve Health Center, part of a nationwide sex-shop
chain.
On the dusty glass shelves
of the store sit many of the products from the loves
factory. The names range from the whimsical ("The
Plump Landlady.") to the boastful ("The Great Penis")
to the perspicacious ("The Strongly Systolic"). Prices
range from $ 1 to $150 plus. Wang, who is frequently
asked for advice because the government still insists
that sex toys bear nondescriptive packaging.
Neither does Wu, a native
of WenZhou, long renowned for producing hard-nosed
businessmen. His concerns are familiar to entrepreneurs
the world over: competition, innovation and industrial
espionage. Boosted by an e-commerce website, sales
were up 1,200% last year, half of the total accounted
for by exports. Wu attributes rapid growth in part
to advanced R. and D. With the help of his Japanese
partner (the Japanese are, unsurprisingly, the leaders
in sex toys innovation), he is developing unusual
products to fill new niches of sexual proclivity-and
not just farm animals. Work-in-progress in-clude a
"lovebot," a humanoid doll with life-like skin that
will be able to move and speak lines such as, "Am
I going too fast for you? Wu claims companies in Hong
Kong and Taiwan are so worried they've tried to steal
his designs by sending spies posing as foreign journalists
to his factory.
Like Wu, Wen Jing Feng,
president of the Beijing-based Adam Eve Health Centers,
if trying to ensure China is not left behind in the
race to perfect the vibrator. During a question-and-answer
segment at last month's Boao Economic Forum, a regional
summit held on Hainan Island, Wen urged prime Minister
Zhu Rongji to work with Thailand on a sex industry
technology-transfer agreement. To the amusement of
the audience, Zhu said that sex was not on the agenda.
Maybe not for Zhu, but
sex is ,in fact, on every agenda, as Freud so famously
declared. After much pressure, Wu allows a glimpse
of his factory's musty purification room, where six
Chinese women of varying ages slap translucent disinfectant
on a pile of swirl-shaped green dildos, rapidly passing
them down the line like volunteer fire fighters .Wu
fades to the back and begins inspecting a box of pink
toys, examining the motors and picking minute imperfections
off the skin. With sex toys, quality is job one. "The
market will be mature," says Wu, "when Chinese people
think using this product is just like when they're
thirsty, they drink water."
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