Love Land Don't Live Here Anymore

         China has lost it's sexual attraction: Before it even got a chance to nail its first tourists, to test the "If you build it they will come" theory, the Chinese sex theme park, Love Land (entrance below), was closed down by local authorities.

         It’s kind of easy to make fun of the idea of a sex theme park,  easy to wonder if there would have been rollercoasters with dongs stuck to the seats and a tongue-shaped water slide (these were never planned). And because it's easy to make fun of it's easy to dismiss as having been a bad idea in the first place.

         But that cynicism starts to evaporate when you read about the Love Land theme park in Jeju, South Korea (and this great piece in Associated Content). Jeju is an island where bashful couples joined in pre-arranged marriages once came to honeymoon and where people were available to make them feel more….at ease…with the first-time sex they were about to have (an idea that’s either wonderfully quaint or wonderfully progressive). Eventually Jeju became the home of Love Land, a park equipped with larger-than-life sexually graphic statues (some of which become animated with the help of a hand crank – who doesn’t?), paintings, a sex shop and educational lectures at the visitors center. Once this open-air sexual science center image replaces initial thoughts of shaking hands with a Mickey-esque costumed character named Syphilis Phil (I kid you not - here he is) the thought of a sex theme park becomes kind of cool.

         And the ladies of China might enjoy a little outreach. Li Yinhe, an expert on sexual attitudes at the Chinese Academy of Social Sceinces said in the Guardian UK that she’s read a report say that only 28% of women in China have experienced orgasm as opposed to 90% of their Western counterparts.

         "There's a need for sex education which isn't boring and information which isn't sleazy,"  Dr. Sarah Brewer of the Amora sexual theme park in London about that theme park when it opened and that’s a perfect summing-up of the quandary of adult sex ed in general. Instead of cordoning it off, why not literally look at it in the sunshine?        

         Too bad the tourists and locals of Chongqing won’t get that chance. And though Orlando is the tourist capital of Earth I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that we’re not going to be getting a Love Land here either. Too bad. I envision it as being right across the street from The Holy Land Experience by the Mall at Millenia. Guess you'll just have to make your own in your bedroom...summer project!