THE "click ... click ..." sound of the coins falling into the condom vending machine made him feel as if the whole world was watching him.

　　Jiang Yabing, 26, an engineer, recalled his experience years ago when he was in a university in Hefei, Anhui Province.

　　He usually preferred to buy condoms in drug stores.

　　"At least, far fewer people were around," he said.

　　Since the university strictly checked every dorm, Jiang, together with his girl friend, had to stay in an apartment rented by his friends.

　　Very occasionally, if other roommates were not in, they would have sex in the dorm.

　　Some hotels and inns offered suites which guests could rent by the hour. He would find a cheap one, costing around 20 yuan per hour. "We didn't have much money at that time," he said.

　　The hotels didn't ask for any marriage-status certificate, as they once did.

　　About half of his classmates who had steady boyfriends or girlfriends acquired sexual experience during their college years.

　　Although the school would have given them a "big lesson" if they were discovered, "there was nothing wrong in us doing this because we were serious about the relationship and whether or not to have sex was our right and a private matter," Jiang said.

　　Sun Baohong, a researcher from the Institute of Youth at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said it was one thing for college students to have sexual experiences but quite another for them to have children.

　　"The school can't control a student's emotional and physical needs. The key is to give them the values of responsibility to society and family," Sun said.

　　He thought such sexual experience could be a good experiment helping them attain a happier marriage in the future.

　　Jiang said he was lucky his girlfriend never got pregnant, but some of his classmates had to seek abortions in private clinics or far-away hospitals to ensure they didn't run across acquaintances.

　　In a survey conducted by the Shanghai Institute of Planned Parenthood Research, which took place in two key Shanghai universities, about 33.3 per cent of college students who have regular sex partners have sex more than twice a week, another 33.3 per cent once a week and 23.8 per cent once in a month.

　　Almost 76 per cent students use condoms as the main method of birth control, followed by counting safe-periods, external ejaculation and oral contraceptives.

　　The research reports that 6.1 per cent of college students have had sexual experiences. It says the average percentage around domestic universities is 15 per cent.

　　Although college students are open-minded about sex, they are still influenced by traditional concepts when choosing whether to engage in sexual behaviour.

　　Lack of education

　　Lou Chaohua, professor at the Institute of Planned Parenthood Research, said China has always encouraged sexual abstinence before marriage, while Western culture teaches its youth how to have safe sex and to protect themselves.

　　Confronting the high frequency of sex on campus, the schools still insist on maintaining the purity of the "ivory tower".

　　"Students should behave as such - study is their task," said a local student director.

　　In pursuit of this attitude, Chinese schools almost never encourage sex education for students.

　　Lou said some students even lack common sense about sex. "Some girls didn't knew they were pregnant until their bellies plumped up and it was usually too late for them to have a safe abortion," she said.

　　Biology books studied during middle school contained some human sex knowledge, but teachers wouldn't discuss this in class, choosing instead to have students study it by themselves.

　　Sun said from the view of Chinese culture, people think it's shameful to talk about sex to others. "Neither Chinese parents nor teachers want to confront it but prefer to ignore it as long as possible."

　　They thought giving students such knowledge would encourage them to experiment.

　　He thought young people were maturing physically much earlier, so it was important to point them in the right direction.

　　Jiang, the engineer, said most of his knowledge about sex came from pornography VCDs and from a friend who was a doctor.

　　"Lots of video shops around campus have such VCDs or computer compact discs," Jiang said.

　　However, Lou said pornography is different from sex education. "Sex is not only about physical need, but also about love and responsibilities. We should let young people know this."

　　Lou said they were under great pressure when advocating teaching high school students how to use condom.

　　The institute recently set up a trial sex-education website to answer questions from students and show them videos about healthy sex and procreation.