According to the Beijing Youth Daily, the previous Qianmen Grain Street in Beijing has nowadays become a street selling sex products. There are many wholesale houses providing commodities for most of the city's sex shops. The wholesalers have even established their own chamber of commerce to solve commercial disputes.

Meanwhile, the trade is also brisk in south China's Guangdong Province, the newspaper reported. One of the sex commodity wholesale markets in the province has more than 80 shops. "I saw shopkeepers' children just doing their homework in shops," said Wen. "Sometimes the kids even laugh, fight and run all over the place, throwing artificial sex organs at each other."

Wen said that the country currently has only made clear stipulations for the standard of family planning contraceptives and has no related stipulations yet for the standard of other products such as artificial sex organs. Among the 22 functions for the food healthcare products approved by the Ministry of Health, there is no mention of "improving sexual functions".

"Viagra is prescription medicine, but quite a lot of fake products are sold in the market," Wen said. While people are denouncing sex products which run counter to the norms of social ethics and discussing if sexual abuse products like whips, chokers and electric clips should be put on shelves, sex shops have already regarded the products as sales gimmicks to attract attention.

"That is probably the situation of China's sexual health commodity industry," said Wen. "An exclusive agency chain operation is hard to continue in the fierce market competition. The Adam & Eve Health Center has had to close many of its branches, increase product varieties and reduce operational areas."

Now, he believes, it is necessary to find new ways to survive the competition and develop a longstanding, stable business.

"I don't want to think only of present profits," Wen said. "I was lucky to be the first. If I were the second, perhaps I would only think about making profits."

(China.org.cn by Li Jingrong, March 24, 2008)