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By Root 1269 0

powder they bought was really baby powder or the High-Quality DVD Genuine Imitation Mission Impossible III was, in fact, High-Quality, and not, in fact, the recording of some guy with a camcorder sitting in a theater. Near the river, in the warren of alleys that is the Yuyuan Bazaar, between the clusters of old men playing mah-jongg, I’d spotted absolutely everything ever made for sale—buttons, cloth, yarn, fans, belts, sunglasses, beads, tea, antiques, so alleged—and I even beheld in my hands a carved mammoth tusk (!), which has to be just about one of the finest things one could ever have on a shelf of curios. Mammoths, of course, have long been extinct, which solved any potential moral qualms I had. And while I wasn’t at all certain whether the global ban on ivory trading extended to mammoth tusks, I did very seriously consider beginning bargaining proceedings with the proprietor, who assured me that it was very real. But I didn’t completely believe her. You can’t in China.

After I’d been accosted by the twentieth watch peddler, I began to wonder if there was anything else of interest on the Bund. I’d popped into the Peace Hotel, the home away from home for luminaries like Charlie Chaplin and Noël Coward. I’d turned to glance up at the apartment of Victor Sassoon, bon vivant of the Shanghai of yore. I’d pondered the boundless river traffic, the trawlers bearing coal and trucks beneath the steel-and-glass facade of Pudong. And then, as I ambled onward, I came across the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel and I thought, Hey, I’m a sightseer on the Bund, so why not have a gander?

All I can say is that if you happen to find yourself in Shanghai with a bag of magic mushrooms and you were looking to maximize the sensory overload of your magic mushroom ride, the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel is just the place for you. I was led to an underground monorail that called to mind a Jetsons cartoon, and soon I was experiencing one of the trippiest journeys I’d ever made. There were flashing lights and lasers, and then suddenly balloonlike figures, like the ones you see fluttering in suburban car dealerships, appeared, followed by a film screen with sharks on it, which quickly rolled up, and all the while a strange, female voice would murmur space swirl, magma, fossil variations, shooting stars, and as I stepped off with a baffled air—what the hell was that?—I soon found myself confronted by a big sign that read “China Sex Culture and History Exhibition: First Time in 5,000 Years,” and I began to wonder, What doesn’t this tunnel have?

In the spirit of journalistic inquiry, I put on the proverbial raincoat, bought a ticket, and entered the exhibition, which could have been called The Art of the Dildo. I had assumed that China maintained a relatively repressed attitude toward sex, but in this, too, I was wrong. True, the government holds a prudish disposition and keeps a careful eye on the lyrical content of pop songs and the skin content of films, but Chinese society, at least its urban variation, seemed to have a rather Swedish disposition toward sex. Whereas the French suffuse sex with romance and eroticism, Swedes have a much more matter-of-fact approach. It’s just something people do. No big deal. The Chinese, thus, are the Swedes of Asia (you heard it here first), and nowhere is this more evident than in the sweeping proliferation of dildo shops in urban China. Every neighborhood seemed to have one. It’s true. You can’t buy Playboy in China, but should your sexual needs involve battery-operated devices, just head on down to your friendly neighborhood sex-toy emporium and pick up the new and improved Deep Thruster—made in China, of course, which has pretty much cornered the global dildo market.

And, as I was now being informed, China has a long history with dildos—5,000 years apparently. There were jade dildos and ivory dildos and wood dildos of every size and shape. And there was also ancient porn. I’m partial to an illustrated Kama Sutra. (Have you seen the ancient Hindu goddess of fertility? Hot, even with four arms.) But, as I peered a little