Feature: Love studies blossom in China's ivory towers

"Who never dated before college?" Hu Deng asks his students.

The lecture hall goes quiet and several hands go up.

"No wonder you chose this course," Hu says in mock surprise. The students laugh.

It's a joke, but a telling one: "We crave love, but we don't know how to love."

Hu, 45, is an associate professor at Renmin University of China (RUC), renowned for its socialist ideology studies and where teachers like him used to break up student romances.

Now he teaches "The Psychology of Emotions". After examining kinship and friendship, he has maneuvered his 180 students to their ultimate goal: love.

More Chinese universities are offering such courses, including the China Youth University of Political Studies (CYUPS). Most recently, Tianjin University announced plans to start an optional course proposed and conducted by students next semester called "The Theory and Practice of Love".

Love is no longer taboo in China's ivory towers.

TIPS FOR NOVICES

The lecture hall is packed long before the starting bell rings. Latecomers must stand at the back. The course has only 150 places, but every class draws a bigger audience.

Hu encourages students to pursue love bravely. He thinks longing for love is natural, especially in high school years.

Some students are surprised by this suggestion, which contradicts the lectures of parents and middle school teachers that adolescent romance is a distraction from studies.

Dating tips are a popular topic. For example, the best answer to the question "How many girls have you dated before?" is three, because it is not too many and believable. When you start a relationship, be wary of physical contact that makes a woman uncomfortable. Make eye contact often as the eyes never lie.

The 90-minute class is like a talk show with constant laughter. Instead of acting as a scholar, Hu acts as a "buddy" sharing rich experience and a willingness to help his young charges avoid pitfalls on the road to love.

MORALITY PATROLS

Such courses are a hard-won victory after decades of preaching of the conflict between romance and college.

In the 1970s, Chinese universities banned students from dating. "School authorities used to catch couples like they caught thieves," says Li Yidan, who graduated in 1978 and is now deputy Secretary of the Party Committee of Tianjin University.

In his day, colleges had the power to assign graduates to jobs. If dating students refused to break up, they would be punished with jobs a great distance apart.

After opening up began in the 1980s, attitudes softened: "Neither advocate nor oppose," as Hu Deng describes the policy. But he still recalls during his college years how a female student was expelled after becoming pregnant.

Under the Provisions on the Administration of University Students at that time, students could be expelled for getting married -- and never be enrolled again.

In 1992, Hu began working at the RUC dean's office. He had to conduct "morality patrols" on campus at night to look for dating couples, because campus romances could discredit a college's reputation. "If we saw couples cuddling or hand-holding, we would shout at them, 'Hey, please stop holding hands'."

Almost a decade later, he became a psychology teacher. He would have added some love-related topics to his courses, but was afraid of upsetting school authorities.

In 2005, the ban on marriage was lifted.

"College has become more humane," says Hu. "Not long ago, a female business school student of Renmin University came for her graduation pictures with her baby in her arms," says Hu.

The bigger progress has been made in the classroom where teachers can freely discuss homosexuality, premarital sex, abortion and other such topics.

"Sex is okay if you make sure it is safe, predictable and responsible," Hu says, adding such subjects are rarely discussed by Chinese parents.

LESSONS FOR LIFE

Hu says the classroom may not be the best platform to study love, but it is the most needed.

"People can learn from movies," Hu says. "But if there is lack of education, unscientific values will become mainstream."

Zhou Shaoxian, a professor of psychology at CYUPS, views love as "the most important course in youth".

Compared with one-to-one psychological services, the classroom is more open, says Zhou. "In the classroom, people have fewer worries than seeing a psychologist at a clinic."

Hu Xue, head of a student dating club at Tianjin University, says she and her classmates felt the need for a course after seeing so many students hit relationship troubles that, in turn, affected their studies.

Student suicides had also shocked her.

But it was only when an ex-boyfriend tried to choke her in public that she suddenly realized that something was lacking in their understanding of relationships.

Hu Deng thinks the only children from China's one-child policy have become too self-centered, and developing a relationship is also learning about oneself. "They should see their partners as a mirror to understand themselves."

Many students lose confidence when a relationship fails, "but I tell them that failure in love only proves that you two don't match". Enditem

(Intern Lu Xingji and Sun Yizhen also contributed to this story.