Banking on men(2)

A sperm bank doctor freezes a sample. Photo: Cai Xianmin/GT

Different motives

While only the healthiest applicants are selected as donors, the volunteers are given payments as the tests progress - a sort of thank-you gift, Hu said. Applicants get 50 yuan for going to the hospital to have their blood and semen tested. Donors get 100 yuan for every milliliter they give to the bank.

"Usually it takes donors seven or eight visits to complete a 17-milliliter donation. If they continue donating they could make 5,000 yuan."

It's that 5,000 yuan that seems to be the big drawcard for many. One anonymous college student commented: "I masturbate anyway so why shouldn't I come to the sperm bank? The sperm won't be wasted and I can earn some easy money."

But other donors have different motives. Some want to be fathers, some feel it is a social duty. Hu said he met a university professor who was a keen donor and wanted to pass on his good genes to others.

In Chinese law a donor's sperm can only be used to impregnate five women. But it would still be possible (although unlikely) for two children from the same donor to meet, fall in love and have children years later.

Senior technical officer Liu Yong explained that the hospital had to formally advise would-be parents who used sperm from the bank that they would have to tell their children to ask lovers whether their fathers were sperm donors and, if so, which bank was involved.

"Although the identity of the biological father is confidential, people can trace the origin of a sperm donation. Every sample has a unique code," Liu said.

To cut down on the chance of an accident, the five sperm donations from each donor are sent to different provinces. But as Liu explained, the transportation of sperm has its own problems.

"The sperm samples are frozen and preserved in portable liquid nitrogen tanks but they are delicate. They cannot be X-rayed. So at railway stations and airports when travelers have to go through X-ray detectors the medical staff carrying the sperm samples have to try to persuade the security guards to let them through without being X-rayed.

In China only married couples can legally buy sperm from a bank. One sample costs 1,500 yuan and it usually takes one to two months for a suitable donation to become available, Liu said.

With many young Chinese couples wanting their children to be the product of the actual parents, the sperm bank offers another service. If a young man gets cancer and will have to undergo fertility threatening chemotherapy or treatment he can have his sperm stored by the bank.

An underground scene

All of the 17 sperm banks in China are nonprofit institutions funded by the government and overseen by the National Health and Family Planning Commission. But on China's QQ instant messaging service underground sperm donations seem to be thriving. Tapping in the words "sperm donation" to search reveals 10,280 QQ groups. When the search is for "Shanghai sperm donation" 184 groups show up.

The Global Times logged on to the "Shanghai Sperm Donation QQ Group" and found many of the group used it for downloading porn, lewd jokes and advertisements for Viagra and similar drugs.

Fan Shaokun is a 24-year-old man very newly arrived in Shanghai from Guizhou Province. He works as a security guard at a restaurant and while the restaurant provides him with free food and accommodation he needs some cash to support him until his first payday in a week or so.

"I heard that I could earn money with sperm donations but the sperm bank told me that only people who have graduated from a technical secondary school or higher qualify. I only attended primary school," Fan said sadly.

Renji's Hu defends the bank's rules on education levels - he regards the sperm bank as a project involved in the long-term development of the country.

He said there were some so-called private hospitals or centers that claimed to be able to help people who had been rejected or had to wait for a long time for an official sperm bank but these were not safe and not hygienic.

At present there is no center that stores human eggs for IVF in Shanghai. There are a few stored at an egg bank at the Peking University First Hospital in Beijing. Collecting human eggs is a difficult procedure and freezing the eggs successfully is a more complex operation than for sperm.