History
Some Taoist sects during the Han Dynasty performed sexual intercourse as a spiritual practice, called "HeQi" ("Joining Energy"). The first sexual texts that survive today are those found at the Mawangdui tombs. While Taoism had not yet fully evolved as a philosophy at this time, these texts shared some remarkable similarities with later Tang dynasty texts, such as the IshinpÅ. The sexual arts arguably reached their climax between the end of the Han dynasty and the end of the Tang dynasty. After 1000 A.D., Confucian puritanism became stronger and stronger, so that by the advent of the Qing dynasty, sex was a taboo topic in public life. These Confucians alleged that the separation of genders in most social activities existed two thousand years ago, and suppressed the sexual arts. Because of the taboo surrounding sex, there was much censoring done during the Qing in literature, and the sexual arts disappeared in public life. As a result, some of the texts survived only in Japan, and most scholars had no idea that such a different concept of sex existed in early China.
Read more about this topic: Taoist Sexual Practices
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