Nowadays, if you stroll around cosmopolitan cities in China, you will not fail to notice the glaring advertisements for nanke (men's medicine) along streets and at public transits. Unlike the clinical flyers for sexually transmitted diseases, which appear in the marginal areas of the urban space, these advertisements display a formal and professional image. The growing publicization of men's medicine may arouse your curiosity to ask further questions: Does it imply the spread of impotence epidemic among the population? Is it a consequence of sexual liberation since the country's opening up? How do these patients define and describe their problem, and how are they perceived by their family and in the social surroundings? What kinds of medical treatment are available for these patients? To what extent does the professionalization of men's medicine contribute to the treatment, and how well are the medical suggestions being taken? Everett Yuehong Zhang's ethnography about the impotence epidemic provides rich data and insightful analysis of these important but overlooked issues, and it furthers our understanding of the complexity and dynamics of post-Mao transformation.
