She lay quietly in a narrow bed, staring blankly at her customers as her breasts grew and her hips grew cold.
A high-quality sex doll made from thermoplastic elastomer, which is softer than silicone and has adjustable hands and changeable heads and genitals, costs about $2,500 at the Beijing store that sells sex products.
Mr. Liu, who is married and lives in a small, dimly lit apartment in an industrial suburb of Beijing, owns several sex dolls, including one of the high-end items mentioned above. Like millions of Chinese who leave their homes to work in cities, the 29-year-old car designer lives alone on weekdays and can only return to hebei on weekends to be with his wife and children.
Liu has been married for more than a decade and does not want to do wrong to his wife.
“To be honest, you can find a woman in China for a small amount of money, but I just don’t allow myself to cheat on my wife, so it never occurred to me.” But he also ruled out inflatable dolls, saying he would never have sex with cheap inflatable plastic anyway. So he forked out 15,800 yuan, close to his monthly salary, to buy a more realistic version of a high-end domestic product.
Removable parts make it easier to clean and replace dolls, and liu, an industrial designer, is a little disappointed to find that many domestic and imported brands are subtly different. He said he only used it a few times because he couldn’t ignore the small details. The only good thing about dolls is that they don’t resist your demands and do whatever you ask them to do.
The salesman at Mr. Liu’s doll store said most people find their dolls more attractive than real women. Dolls are not first hair, customers want to buy different styles of wigs according to their preferences. Some dolls are so small that they almost look like children, which is more “convenient,” according to the salesman. He says his customers are usually workers or businessmen in their 30s and 40s, and he praises them for their integrity.
“Is it not respectable for married men not to seek young ladies, but to use dolls instead?” The salesman said some people also bought dolls for their husbands, but he admitted that many of his clients’ spouses were not very receptive to the dolls.
China’s sex toy market is estimated to be as large as rmb100bn a year. Yet real – life dolls are only a small part of the market. Despite being illegal, many perform sex-selective abortions, with 116 boys for every 100 girls born in China, well above the world average of 107. As a result, there are fewer and fewer women, and it is becoming more and more difficult for young Chinese men to find girlfriends.
For some buyers, who don’t buy dolls for sex and call themselves “baby friends,” anonymous users gather on dedicated forums to share tips on how to use them. The number of baby friends has grown from a few hundred to 20,000 in recent years.
Many people first buy dolls for sex, then change their clothes and give them names. Eventually you get emotional about the doll. But Mr. Liu thinks the doll is just lust.
“It doesn’t satisfy me. It doesn’t titillate me.”
“To me, it is nothing compared to a real woman, but at least it can deceive myself.”