# Zhang Jingsheng

Zhang Jingsheng (1888 – 18 June 1970), often referred to by his popular nickname Dr. Sex, was a Chinese philosopher and sexologist. Born Zhang Jiangliu to a merchant family in Raoping County in eastern Guangzhou, Zhang attended Whampoa Military Primary School, where he became a militant supporter of the Tongmenghui. After he was expelled from Whampoa he met with revolutionaries and entered the Imperial University of Peking. Zhang became an enthusiastic advocate of European ideas of social Darwinism, scientific racism, and eugenics, changing his personal name to Jingsheng, "competition for survival". He was an active member of the Beijing Tongmenghui cell alongside Wang Jingwei, but declined a political post in the aftermath of the 1911 Revolution, instead studying in France.
Zhang received a doctorate from the University of Lyon for a thesis on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, one of his major philosophical inspirations. On recommendation from Cai Yuanpei, he became a professor at Peking University soon after his return to China in 1920. He published his first two books in the early 1920s, where he outlined a society based around aesthetic principles, advocating a form of positive eugenics to overcome what he perceived as the weaknesses of the Chinese race. In 1926, he published Sex Histories Part I, a sexology text based on stories of sexual encounters he gathered from the public. Zhang was ridiculed by much of the Chinese press for the book. A number of unauthorized pornographic sequels spawned from the popularity of the work, leading to confusion on which books were Zhang's original work.
Zhang left teaching and settled in Shanghai shortly after the release of Sex Histories. He founded a "Beauty Bookshop" in Shanghai, which published sexual education texts and translations of European literature and philosophy. He also edited a monthly periodical he named New Culture; this saw significant censorship from the Shanghai Municipal Police due to the inclusion of a sexual advice column run by Zhang. In 1929, he returned to France to work as a translator after his business efforts in Shanghai failed. Four years later, he returned to his home county of Raoping, and became involved in local politics. He was persecuted by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution and died while in confinement.

## Early life and education

In 1888, Zhang Jiangliu (张江流) was born the third child of a well-to-do merchant family in Darongpu Village, Fubin Town, in Raoping County, a rural county in eastern Guangzhou. Before settling in rural Guangzhou, his father Zhang Zhihe and grandfather Zhang Xiangruo were affluent Overseas Chinese merchants active in Malaysia, Vietnam, and Singapore. Zhang's father took a concubine when he was young, causing great division and strife in his family.
Zhang first attended a traditional private elementary school in a nearby village, where his teacher gave him the name Gongshi (公室; 'state bureaucracy'), derived from the work of ancient philosopher Li Si. In 1903, he attended the western-style No. 1 Primary School in Raoping, and moved to nearby Shantou in 1904 to study at Tongwen High School.
In 1907, Zhang tested into the Whampoa Military Primary School, a provincial military academy that had been recently established as part of the Qing Dynasty's military modernization program. As Whampoa required the study of a foreign language, Zhang was randomly assigned French. He became a supporter of the Tongmenghui revolutionary organization through its Min Bao newspaper, which took a socialist, anti-statist position, inspired by a variety of European philosophers. Chief among the journal's ideological inspirations was Jean-Jacques Rousseau, heavily championed in columns by Wang Jingwei. The deputy director of Whampoa, Tongmenghui member Zhao Sheng [zh], connected Zhang with his revolutionary contacts.

### College education

Zhang was rejected from a government scholarship to study overseas. He became increasingly rebellious against the academy. He cut off his queue and advocated for other classmates to do the same. Incensed by the school's food service, which he claimed penalized slower eaters, he staged a protest with a friend; they were both suspended for one year. Taking advantage of the suspension, they traveled with a friend to Singapore and met with Tongmenghui leader Sun Yat-sen. Another revolutionary, Hu Hanmin, advised Zhang to return to China and infiltrate the Qing New Army.
Zhang returned in 1910, instead seeking to continue his studies; this was only allowed by his father after he was forced to accept an arranged marriage with an illiterate fifteen-year-old girl named Xu Chunjiang. Zhang deeply resented this marriage, and later wrote that it was a major contributor to his support of freedom of marriage and sexual education. He ran away from his family six months after his marriage; he began study at the French Aurora University in Shanghai, later transferring to the Beijing French Normal School and then the Imperial University of Peking.
At Peking, Zhang was introduced to the theory of social Darwinism, to which he would become a strong proponent. Inspired by this, he changed his personal name to Jingsheng (競生; 'competition for survival'). He had his first exposure to sexology around this time via Carl Heinrich Stratz's Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes ('The Racial Beauty of Women'), featuring hundreds of nude and erotic photographs of young girls and women from various countries alongside anthropological commentary advocating for the "ideal proportions" among Germanic women. Introduced to theories of scientific racism, Zhang became convinced that the Chinese race suffered from pathological androgyny – featuring "feminized men" and "masculinized women" – which could only be resolved through eugenics.

#### Revolutionary activity and overseas study

Zhang became active in the Tianjin-Beijing cell of the Tongmenghui, where he became close to Wang Jingwei and his fiancee Chen Bijun, alongside other prominent revolutionaries such as Wu Zhihui and Zhang Ji. After Wang was arrested in a failed plot to assassinate Zaifeng, Zhang raised money for a planned jailbreak. Zhang graduated in 1911, shortly before the outbreak of the Xinhai Revolution. The following year, he was appointed by Sun Yat-sen to serve under Wang as an official in the North–South Conference with general Yuan Shikai. He declined a posting in the incipient Republican government, instead opting to participate as one of the first twenty-five students sponsored by the Kuomintang to travel to France to continue their education; his participation in the study program was likely due to advocacy from fellow revolutionary Cai Yuanpei.
Zhang initially enrolled in the University of Paris. He made overtures to study medicine and foreign relations, but eventually specialized in social philosophy. He was awarded a Diplôme d'études in 1914; due to the outbreak of World War I, he moved south and continued philosophy studies at the University of Lyon. He further studied the work of Rousseau and eminent sociologist Émile Durkheim. Captivated by Rousseau, Zhang wrote his doctoral thesis on Rousseau's pedagogy, and received his doctorate in 1919; alongside biologist Tan Xihong [zh], he was the only one out of the twenty-five members of his cohort to receive a doctoral degree in his overseas study. He would later create the first Chinese translations of several of Rousseau's works, including Reveries of the Solitary Walker and Confessions. Zhang collaborated with the Sino-French Education Association to promote overseas education and work-study programs to Chinese academics, most notably through the Diligent Work-Frugal Study Movement.

## Academic career

In 1920, Zhang returned to China and became the headmaster of Jingshan Middle School in Guangdong on recommendation from politician Zou Lu [zh]. He initiated a number of reforms at the school, such as an overhaul of teachers, co-education, physical education classes, the abandonment of rote learning, and English-language instruction. He met with Guangdong warlord Chen Jiongming to advocate for the regional introduction of birth control, which was rejected; Zhang claimed that Chen called him "mentally deranged" when he made the proposal. He was forced to resign from his post after only one year, but was offered a position as a professor of philosophy at Peking University due to support from Cai Yuanpei, the university's chancellor.

### Peking University

At Peking, Zhang became strongly influenced by the political and social philosophies of the May Fourth Movement, united by a belief that China's weakness to foreign powers had to be overcome through mass political action and education. In addition to his classes on European philosophy and aesthetics, Zhang wrote articles for a variety of May Fourth movement publications, including the Jingbao Fukan and Chenbao Fukan. In 1923, Zhang married a graduate student at Peking named Chu Songxue, but broke up with her after a tumultuous and uncertain marriage.
Zhang became close to a number of other faculty at Peking, including his old Tongmenghui comrades Wu Zhihui and Zhang Ji, as well as librarian Li Dazhao. Zhang and Hu Shih served as translators for birth control activist Margaret Sanger during her visit to Beijing in 1922. Soon after he attempted to organize a visit from Albert Einstein, who ultimately skipped Beijing to spend time in Japan.
In 1924, he published his first book, A Beautiful Philosophy on Life. Published by the Shanghai firm Beixin Shuju, the book was very well received, and was reprinted twice in its first year. Zhang followed it up the next year with The Way to Organize a Beautiful Society. Both works were initially serialized through the Chenbao Fukan. They appealed to aesthetic philosophy to advocate for the westernization of China, strongly condemning Confucianism and stating that the talented and erotically-liberated inhabitants of "New China" could develop a form of "aesthetic labor" indistinguishable from play. He also espoused a form of positive eugenics, recommending interracial marriage with Europeans and the Japanese in order to overcome the "weaknesses" of the Chinese race. Interested in fostering additional research in the field, he founded an "Aesthetics Study Society" at Peking in 1924.

## Dr. Sex

Following systemic collection of folk songs by Gu Jiegang, Zhou Zuoren, and Liu Bannong in the late 1910s, a periodical entitled Folksongs Weekly was created and attracted the attention of social academics at Peking, including Zhang. Work around the journal resulted in the creation of the Customs Survey Society in May 1923, with Zhang serving as its first director. He outlined sample Customs Survey Questionnaires and field research methods, seeking to compile information from different Chinese ethnic groups on around forty topics ranging from food to crime to personal hygiene. Zhang advocated that the Survey Society collect information on sexuality and sexual customs, but this was vetoed by the rest of committee, who felt that it was too controversial to study. Zhang resolved to continue study of sexuality in work outside of the society.

### Sex Histories

In February 1926, Zhang published an announcement in the Jingbao Fukan entitled "The Best Pasttime for the Winter Vacation: An Announcement Made on Behalf of the Eugenics Society", advocating for readers to submit detailed accounts of their sex lives; prompts included with the advertisement asked readers to recount a variety of experiences, such as their earliest exposure to sexuality, their methods of masturbation, their preferred sexual positions, whether they have had homosexual experiences, and whether they have engaged in bestiality.
   Come on! Come on! Give us your detailed and truthful sex histories, and we will try to give you ultimate sexual happiness. You supply us with the materials, and we shall provide you with the correct methods. This is truly to give you ultimate sexual happiness.
Zhang claimed to have received over 200 responses to the advertisement. He chose seven of these to feature in his book, of which the identities of two respondents are known; Zhang's second wife, Chu Songxue, and novelist Jin Mancheng. Zhang's Sex Histories Part I (性史第一輯; Xìngshǐ dìyījí) was released in 1926, published by the Beijing Eugenics Society. It was an inexpensive publication, especially when compared to other academic sexological works used in legal and medical contexts. It was a portable pocket book about a hundred pages in length; Zhang biographer Leon Antonio Rocha noted that it was small enough to read with one hand. The title Xingshi carried both academic and pornographic subcontext, as the character 史; shǐ, was used to describe both sorts of publication.
In the work, Zhang railed against contemporary erotica, writing that these spread misconceptions and superstition about sex. He claimed that sexual perversions, pornography, and prostitution were the result of the silencing and repression of sexuality; he advocated for a sexual revolution towards openness and "healthy sex", seeing this as an unavoidable prerequisite for the moral and political advancement of the Chinese nation towards equal footing with the western world. Zhang stated that sexual openness, especially through the sharing and documentation of sexual experiences, was required to achieve this cultural change.

#### Reception and notoriety

Sex Histories quickly became a widespread commercial success, as well as one of the most controversial books of Republican China. The book had a relatively limited initial print run of around only 1,000 copies, but this quickly swelled. A 1936 estimate put the total circulation in Shanghai alone at around 50,000 copies, including pirated editions; the book had an exceptionally high circulation in comparison to most May Fourth Movement texts, which typically saw only a few thousand copies. Upon its release, a large group assembled at the Guanghua Bookstore in Shanghai awaiting the book, prompting onlookers to head to the store to investigate; the ensuing crowd blocked the avenue in front, leading the Shanghai Municipal Police to disperse the crowd with water cannons.
An August 1926 article in the Guangzhou Republic Daily reported that 5,000 copies of the book had been sold in Guangzhou, noting its particular popularity among adolescent girls; it described the rampant popularity of the volume as an "epidemic", mirroring various other contemporary descriptions of the book's spread. One retrospective account by academic Shen Yingming noted that the book's popularity among college students was boosted by institutions attempting to ban it.
   The Sexual Histories, Part II available on the market now, falsely using my name, is crass in content, and is sold at an exorbitantly high price. After legal action, the whole issue has been settled by a mediator. The two parties involved have decided to solve the problem in peace. Besides agreeing to compensate me for damaging my reputation and to destroy the copies in stock, the other party has agreed to print this announcement in the journal (in my name, paid for by him) and the following table of contents of the said volume, so that buyers will not be defrauded of the truth...
As the epithet Part I signals, Zhang intended to publish sequels to the book. However, numerous unlicensed editions and sequels to Sexual Histories were published by various parties over the following years, often including literary sexual tropes and explicit erotica. The first of these unlicensed pornographic sequels, Sex Histories Part II, was published by the end of the year. Zhang published a response to the sequel in January 1927, describing it as fraudulent and noting that he had settled out of court with the illicit publisher.
Various other unauthorized pornographic sequels and parodies followed, seeking to profit off of its success and notoriety. Some featured excerpts from classic erotic novels such as Jin Ping Mei and Dengcao Heshang. One particularly successful parody by comic playwright Xu Zhuodai, entitled The Art of Sex (性藝; Xìngyì), featured Zhang being visited and pleasured by various women with different sexual skills, ending with his death after his penis is bitten off by a visitor's puppy. Many readers thought that The Art of Sex was written by Zhang himself, leading to confusion over which work was the parody and which was Zhang's original work.
Several regional and local governments, including Shanghai and Guangzhou, instituted bans of the book and its parodies, raiding bookstores to prevent distribution. These, like other contemporary censorship efforts, were ineffective at slowing the circulation of the book. Tabloids began to frequently target Zhang; the Shanghai tabloid Jingbao lambasted Zhang in nearly every issue from August 1926 to December 1928. He was given various epithets and nicknames by tabloid press, notably including "Dr. Sex" (性博士; Xìng Bóshì). Academic opinion turned sharply against Zhang, with scholars dismissing his theories as either nonsensical or pornographic; even his former colleague Hu Shih would go on to denounce him. Modern Taiwanese literary critic Li Ao wrote that Zhang became one of the "three big literary monsters" of Republican China, alongside Liu Haisu and Li Jinhui. Despite the backlash, some academics supported the book; novelist Lin Yutang wrote that it was instrumental in changing the "physical and mental outlook of Chinese girls".
Zhang decided against his initial plan to publish additional volumes of Sex Histories. Conditions for professors at Peking University had worsened by late 1926; the chaotic political climate, characterized by violence such as the March 18 Massacre, had made Beijing dangerous to academics. Due to mismanaged and possibly embezzled university funding, Peking University faculty only received around 30 to 40% of their paychecks by 1926. He wrote that he never returned to the university after taking a sabbatical, moving to the emerging cultural capital, Shanghai.

### Shanghai

Zhang initially considered an attempt to secure a position at the Commercial Press, one of the three major publishing firms in Shanghai, but decided against it due to the company's conservative stance. In May 1927, he opened the "Beauty Bookshop" (美的書店; Měi de Shūdiàn) on Fuzhou Road, a center of entertainment and cultural business within the International Settlement. To circumvent potential arrest or persecution, Zhang's residence was located within the French Concession, where the International Settlement's Shanghai Municipal Police had no jurisdiction. Likely to avoid legal liability, Zhang was not officially the owner of the bookstore; the largest shareholder and general manager was a man named Xie Yunru, while Zhang was the company's chief editor. The photographer and translator Peng Zhaoliang was hired as deputy editor.
Zhang's bookshop produced three series of books. The "Little Series on Sex Education" (性慾小叢書; Xìngyù Xiǎo Cóngshū) were translated selections, about 10,000–20,000 characters long, taken from British sexologist Havelock Ellis Studies in the Psychology of Sex series. Each featured a nude painting on the front cover. The "General Literature" series featured Zhang's previous works (A Beautiful Philosophy on Life and The Way to Organize a Beautiful Society), as well as various other translations, while a "Romantic Literature" series consisted of Chinese translations of European authors such as Rousseau, Alexandre Dumas, and Victor Hugo. Zhang did not offer any textbooks for sale, the profitable genre of book for the major publishers of the period.

#### New Culture

Zhang and around five or six of his ideological disciples organized the "New Culture Society" (新文化社; Xīn Wénhuà Shè) in Shanghai, centered around sex education and his aesthetic ideology. Zhang attempted to expand the society into branches outside Shanghai, boosting the visibility of his bookstore, but these efforts were unsuccessful. Soon after his arrival in December 1926, this society began a monthly journal named New Culture, which billed itself as "China's Paramount New Thought Monthly Journal". Outlining his purpose the journal, he wrote that he sought the renewal of the Chinese people in all aspects of life, "from the most basic to the most complex: from shitting, to sexual intercourse, and on to thinking and culture".
New Culture had a monthly circulation of around 20,000 copies, not including pirated versions. Its first issue was headlined with an article on women's inheritance rights, with endorsements from various influential politicians and intellectuals, including Cai Yuanpei, Wu Zhihui, and Zhang Ji. Zhang ran an advice column titled "Sex Education Communications" (性慾通訊; Xìngyù Tōngxùn) in every issue of the paper besides the fifth, where it was noted the section had been removed by government censorship. The following issue, Zhang announced that he had received so many letters from fans of the column that he decided to restart the column despite the opposition of the Municipal Police. He mainly received letters from men, although a minority were from women. Zhang advised readers on topics such as birth control, circumcision, sex toys and premature ejaculation, incorporating both humor and sympathy into his responses.
Zhang also featured some of the excerpts he had translated from Studies in the Psychology of Sex in the paper. The paper ran intermittently for six issues before folding partway through 1927; two years later, the Beauty Bookshop itself went out of business. Zhang attributed this to harassment from "Jiangsu gangsters" and the police, writing that they had been prosecuted seven or eight times by the Municipal Police. According to Zhang, the police attempted to negotiate with him to remove the nude paintings and pay them a significant bribe; he claimed that when he refused, the Shanghai Post Office stopped delivering mail to his store, severely impacting his business. Unsustainable business practices likely played a major role in the shop's decline.

## Later life and death

After the closure of the Beauty Bookshop, Zhang continued his work on translating Rousseau, and earned an income delivering lectures. He released an abridged Chinese translation of Rousseau's Confessions in 1928, with a full translation produced the following year. He was arrested while visiting Hangzhou in 1929 for "corrupting and poisoning the youth"; he wrote that his arrest was ordered by Jiang Menglin, a colleague at Peking University who now served as the educational minister of Zhejiang. Zhang's release from prison was secured by two of his old friends, the Kuomintang officers Zhang Ji and Zhang Renjie.
Zhang briefly returned to Shanghai, but was unable to maintain a steady income. He signed a contract with the major Shanghai publishing company World Books, who sponsored him to relocate to Paris later in 1929 and translate books into Chinese. He published translations of Goethe's Dichtung und Wahrheit, George Sand's Indiana, and Lord Byron's Don Juan, as well as various volumes of romantic fiction for his publisher. He also became interested in the work of Sigmund Freud; he was the first to translate Freud's Interpretation of Dreams into Chinese, which was published serially in the magazine Dushu Zazhi. Zhou Jianren, the science editor of Commercial Press, feuded with Zhang over the definitions of science and pornography. Zhang published two of his own books during this period; Great and Sinister Art and Introduction to the Romantics.
Zhang returned to China in the summer of 1933. Increasingly disillusioned with Chinese politics and culture, he returned to Raoping County after a brief stay in Shanghai, and became active in local politics. He remained in relative obscurity; some thought that he had committed suicide. He married Huang Guannan in Guangzhou in August 1935. He wrote three memoirs during the 1950s: Ten Years in the Battlefields of Love (1953), Reveries on a Floating Life (1956), and Whirlpools of Love (1957). He also wrote a play focused on the warlord and former Chinese president Yuan Shikai.
During the Cultural Revolution, Zhang was harassed by the Red Guards and sent to a reeducation facility. On 18 June 1970, he suffered a brain hemorrhage and died in forced confinement.

## Views and philosophy
### Republic of Beauty

Zhang conceptualizes an "aesthetic state" structured around beauty, with the ultimate goal to "facilitate the people's pursuits of their own interests and inclinations, to provide them with the necessary resources for living, and to guide them to ultimate happiness."
Zhang advocates transforming work into play; to this end, he proposes that state-sponsored vocational schools should be established for all fields of work (with cooks, maids, rickshaw-pullers, carpenters, gardeners and prostitutes specifically mentioned) in an effort to organize each into both a science and an art form. Although some forms of work are purely a matter of manual labor, he argues that incorporating aesthetic and scientific elements into the trade would be beneficial. For the example of rickshaw-pulling, Zhang posits that education on the mechanics of rickshaws and the proper posture, breathing, and gait while pulling them would transform the otherwise menial task into something enjoyable.
The sexual division of labour is embraced in Zhang's political philosophy. He argues that the division of labor does not violate equality between the sexes, but instead recognizes their respective strengths and weaknesses. He writes that men are inherently suited for manual labor, which requires physical might and an ability to tolerate filth; meanwhile, women (being more emotionally inclined) would be best suited for artistic and service work, as well as homemaking.

### Sexology

The theory of sexual practice proposed by Zhang centers around the absorption of sexual fluids produced during sex. During his model of ideal, pleasurable sex, women would absorb semen from men, while men would absorb three kinds of fluid from women: the first from the labia, the second from the clitoris, and the third from the Bartholin's gland. This last fluid, which Zhang names the "Third Kind of Water" (第三種水; Dìsānzhǒng shuǐ), was the focus of his instructions. Zhang saw sexual pleasure as conducive to the vitality of fertilized egg cells. He believed that egg cells fertilized during orgasm, especially if preceded by elaborate foreplay, would be strengthened by the "Third Kind of Water", resulting in children with greater intelligence and physical strength. These stronger children would in turn strengthen the Chinese nation.
Zhang described sex as both a form of play and a form of work. Unlike many other sexologists in his time, he did not particularly explore sexual perversion or psychosexual disorder, although he opposed what he regarded as sexual immorality, including homosexuality and masturbation. He criticized the use of aphrodisiacs, which he compared to opium, warning that once one became addicted to them, they could no longer have sex without them.
Zhang recommended that couples sleep in separate beds or rooms to reduce the frequency of sexual intercourse. He outlined a series of "control methods" for a husband to gain the affection of his wife, including sharing household chores, holding open-air dinners, and gifting flowers. He claimed that the vagina and labia minora would suction in the penis during sex if the woman was properly stimulated, allowing "the male and female organs to harmonize most perfectly", producing positive and negative currents.

#### Big breast renaissance

Zhang was heavily opposed to the practice of breast binding, publishing a polemic in New Culture in June 1927 calling for a "Big Breast Renaissance" (大奶復興; Dànǎi fùxīng). With flat chests seen as a symbol of purity and virginity, binding emerged among Chinese women at least by the late Qing period, although it may date as far back as the Ming dynasty. It reached a height of popularity during the Republican period, where it was often accomplished through the "little vest", a form of vest-shaped binder. In the wake of the successful anti-footbinding movement, an anti-breast binding movement emerged across the political spectrum during the 1920s, seeing support from educators, medical professionals, and politicians. The same year as Zhang's declaration of a "Big Breast Renaissance", Hu Shih made a speech to a graduating class of female students in Shanghai advocating what he termed "Big Breastism".
Zhang argued that breast binding impaired women's health and destroyed their 'natural beauty', arguing that women should embrace having large breasts to celebrate their physical sexual differences from men. He criticized the practice as limiting both women's and men's sexual pleasure; he equated this to suicide, seeing it as taking away the inherent positivity and joy of life. He theorized that the spirits of the most intelligent women were found in their breasts, and that it was important for men to suck their partner's breasts during sex to ensure their pleasure. An article falsely published under his name praised breast binding, infuriating Zhang, who responded that he was the first man in China to take a strong stance against the practice.

## Legacy

His former residence in his hometown of Raoping, destroyed during land reform in 1952, was rebuilt by the Raoping County government in 2004 and converted into Dr. Zhang Jingsheng Park. It serves as a memorial to his life and work which also serves as a regional sexual education center. In 2011, it was declared a county-level historical site.
Writer and scholar Leo Ou-fan Lee described Zhang as an extremist, but cautions against interpreting his work as "the weird product of a deranged mind", writing that he intensified existing strains of modern Chinese philosophy (such as Liang Qichao's idea of the 'new citizen') to their most extreme form. Sexologist Pan Suiming, writing in 1998, defended Zhang's reputation as a sexologist, arguing that his methodology in compiling Sex Histories was in line with other scholars during the period.