Conclusion: “If Shen (the Kidney) Is Strong, Life Is Good”

This chapter summarizes a number of the book’s discoveries considered important by the author, and reflects on the ethnographic adventure this book has taken. It first reflects on the fast-paced change over the past decade in the ethnographic sites as well as in China as a whole, which has posed the challenge to anthropologists of China as to how to make the ethnographies endure. It then reflects on overcoming the difficulty in doing fieldwork on sexuality and impotence. It finally reflects on the studies of the experience of impotence and its capability of engaging bigger issues such as Chinese modernity and its future.