Professor Hu Zhen began her first class of the semester with a deceptively simple question: What is sex?

She asked the 300 Chengdu University (CU) undergrads in attendance to write down their answers anonymously on a piece of paper and hand them in.

As males made up a vast majority, many of the girls giggled and turned red as the class' answers appeared on the blackboard: Impulses, genitals, desire, love, sublime emotions and satisfying physical need were the most common answers.

"Today's students are more progressive and outspoken about sex," explained Hu. "When I asked my students this same question 10 years ago, all of them lowered their heads and were too embarrassed to answer."

A university professor with 10 years experience in sex education, Hu has been teaching at CU since last September. She now teaches the school's first ever sex education course – sex science and health last Monday.

Originally opening the class to 40 seats, so many showed up the first day that the university had to scramble for a bigger classroom to accommodate them all. However, this did not come as a surprise to Hu.

"I talked with many students last semester who were asking me to teach a class like this," she explained. "I want them to have an interest in this course and the right attitude toward sex from the very beginning."

"I have a lot of questions about sex," said Yi Yongjun, a mechanical engineering sophomore at Chengdu University. Like many of his classmates, Yi is single and most interested in Hu's future lessons on "how to seek a mate."

"I think I can find the answer to my questions here," he said.

Grading on curves

Following her "what is sex?" question, Hu shared her own definition: an action in accordance with cultural and social values based in physical and sexual psychological health.

During the course of the semester, Hu will explore sexual psychology as well as the cultural aspects of sex and marriage through lessons like "sex in China and abroad."

"I hope to make students aware that differences in culture are an important reason we have different attitudes toward marriage. That's why many marriages between Chinese and foreigners fail in the end."

"People should take each other's family background, values, personality and their way of dealing with things into consideration. These are all possible reasons for future stress in the relationship," she added.

Sexual healing

Although schools in major cities have offered health classes since the 1990s, most of the course's content is devoted to anatomy, while many teachers resort to assigning reading instead of teaching.

"Sex education should be taught to children in primary school or ever earlier, in kindergarten. But for decades, most schools in China have overlooked it all together."

Hu attributes this lack sex education in China to persisting traditional views of sex, as well as recent historic events and changes in society.

"Generally, Chinese parents have always been too conservative and embarrassed to talk with their children about sex," Hu explains. "Most speak too indirectly about it to avoid embarrassment."

As early as the 1960s the government had advocated sex education as part of the nationally planned curriculum. But due to the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), sex education was non-existent for decades. It was not until 1988 that the Ministry of Education began promoting widespread sex education.

However to this day, these polices are rarely carried out on the local level.

"Chinese schools focus on exams and getting students a good job after graduation, but ignore the fact that being a husband or wife is a life-long job," she said.

Educate me

China's educational system is making progress in addressing sex issues. In 2008, the Ministry of Education for the first time issued outlines for lesson plans according to grade.

"In recent years I've been receiving a lot more letters from both parents and students asking about sex issues. I have watched open discussions about children's sex education on TV programs and many cities in western China are publishing their own sex education textbooks. These are all big steps," she added.

In spite of this progress, Hu pointed out that roadblocks still exist hindering people to develop an informed view on sexuality.

"Many traditional fallacies about sex are still deep rooted and reinforced in schools. That is a national trend and is dangerous," Hu said.

"Offering sex education in college is remedying this problem, and I hope the next generation of students learn this in primary and high schools," she said.