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This paper examines how Chinese immigrants to Canada perceive and experience sexuality in a transnational context as revealed in a qualitative study. It identifies cultural interactions and tensions between ‘the West’ and ‘China’ embedded in participants’ sexual narratives. Three thematic aspects of sexuality are explored: different views toward ‘relationships’ and how sex is involved in different stages of a relationship; physical desire and sexual attraction based on individuals’ dialogues with contemporaries and their own cross-racial dating experience; and perceptions of sexual risks associated with an increasing awareness of China’s opening up, in particular risks associated with attitudes towards condom use. The paper also discusses how such sexual narratives challenge dichotomous imaginings of ‘sexual openness/conservativeness’ in the West-China relationship. Findings help us to better understanding how Chinese immigrants to Canada view the West through the lens of sexuality, and how their transnational experiences have challenge the West-China dichotomy in the sexual imagination and shape understandings of sexual risk. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent critical studies of men and masculinities have encouraged greater consideration of global, international and transnational perspectives and processes. Drawing on interview data from a larger research study of transnationalism and HIV risk through the experiences of recent male Chinese immigrants to Canada, this article examines the intersection of masculinity, sexual practice and the HIV risk in a transnational context. As a gendered strategy, transnational mobility is not only employed by men to cope with the challenges of masculinity enactment encountered in Canada, but also to facilitate sexual activities back in China. By highlighting particular risk factors arising from transnational spaces these men inhabit, the paper reveals the interactive and interconnected effects that such experiences have on Chinese immigrant men’s particular behavioural patterns associated with HIV risk, as well as their capacity to respond to this risk. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]