From Jo McMillan’s piece on Chinese sex shops in the current issue of Granta:

Dr Wang opens her eyes. She is ready now to pronounce, to prescribe for my lack of man. She fishes keys from her pocket and unlocks a cabinet. ‘This is what you need,’ she says, and offers me a pink baton, a face moulded into the head, the shaft embossed with rows of nodules that look – here, in this clinic, in this doctor’s hands – like an unusually disciplined rash. She balances the vibrator in the tips of her fingers, showing it off to me. I catch the smell of garage forecourts.

Having stayed in a lot of Chinese hotels over the last few months, I am pleased to report that the quality and range of sexual health products supplied in the rooms has improved immeasurably from 8 years ago. Though there are still the lotions that misleadingly promise genital hygiene (which are dangerous, in that their use dissuades people from using more reliable methods of prevention) there are now always condoms as well, sometimes for free (for instance in Yining, which has a high rate of HIV infection).