China erects "world's biggest condom"
( 2003-07-13 09:54) (www.CNN.com)
A bright yellow condom covered the facade of a 20-storey, phallic-shaped
hotel in the southern Chinese city of Guilin to mark U.N. World Population Day
in the most populous nation on the globe.
"Our hotel is very round," said the manager of the three-star Fragrant River
Hotel on Saturday, who declined to give her name.
"The initial plan was to cover the whole building, but because the wind was
so strong they could only cover the front half."
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| The Guilin Xiangjiang Hotel | The
Guilin Latex Company has applied to the publishers of the Guinness Book of World
Records to recognize their giant condom, 80 meters (260 ft) tall and nearly 100
meters (330 ft) around, as the world's biggest, the Xinhua news agency said.
The company joined local birth control officials in Guilin on Friday to
promote contraception, distributing free condoms and brochures to passers-by, it
said.
The semi-official China News Service said the condom had cost more than
200,000 yuan ($24,000) to display and carried the message: "Control population
growth, pay attention to sexual health, prevent AIDS."
Despite Beijing's strict one-child policy, an attempt to halt ballooning
growth of the country's 1.3 billion population, it is only in recent years that
the Chinese have felt able to discuss sexual health in public.
International experts and local activists say that more publicity and
government leadership was needed to avert an AIDS catastrophe in China. Beijing
says that around one million of its people suffer from HIV, the virus that
causes the disease.
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