BEIJING — China has long been known as the land of cheap fakes — Rolexes, DVDs, handbags and designer clothes.
Now, add a new one to the list: fake virgins.
A growing number of young Chinese women — mostly in their 20s and about to get married — are opting for a surgical procedure called “hymen restoration,” which repairs the hymen to its previous condition before it was ruptured, which most typically is done by first sexual contact but can also happen by playing sports or riding a bicycle.
Even as China has flung open its doors to the West and modernized, a deeply conservative, male-chauvinistic attitude persists. Many men, including white-collar professionals, still say they want their future wife to be a virgin. And increasingly liberated Chinese women have found a way to give men what they want.
“We can fix it so everything is perfect, so the men can believe they are marrying virgins,” said Zhou Hong, a physician and director of gynecology at the Beijing Wuzhou Women’s Hospital. “We don’t advertise it. We don’t publicize it.”
For women who don’t want to undergo a surgical procedure, a cheaper, faster path to “revirgination” is available in most sex novelty shops: a Chinese-made artificial hymen that, when inserted, purports to create a lifelike sensation for the man and emits fake blood when ruptured.
