CARNAL NATION

Probably many of the objects surrounding you right now were made in China, and there's a good chance that some of them were manufactured by workers in Guangdong, the southeastern province known as the "workshop of the world."  Also, if you weren't aware, the workers that probably made them--young migrant laborers separated from their families for extended periods of time--are very, very desperate for sex.

That's what Zhang Feng, a Chinese government official, told a local newspaper this week.  The Times of London reports that Zhang, a family planning expert and vice-chairman of the government authorized China Sexual Association, believes the millions of workers should be given sex toys and allowed "conjugal homes".   “In this province we have thirty million migrants living apart from their wives or husbands whose hunger for sex has never been recognised by society or the government,” Zhang said.  Often, these workers live in single-sex dormitories policed by security guards.

Zhang, who told the newspaper that sex toys aren't shameful, believes to plan would help calm the thriving prostitution industry in Guangdong, and would also help prevent the spread of AIDS in the province.  He also discussed the Guangdong Sex Festival, which took place over the weekend.  The festival, something of an anomaly in the often repressed Chinese society, deals with sex education and health care, though its most populat events are a lingerie show and an exhibit of sex toys and other sex-related merchandise made in the region.