Freakonomics

I’d never heard of Canadian-Chinese pop singer Edison Chen, 27, until a link on racialicious.com told me his sordid story. In short: Brother took a laptop in to have it fixed. Then, in late January 2008, a picture of him in a compromising position with an Asian starlet appeared on the web.

At first, Chen gave the usual excuses—It’s not me, I’m being framed, etc. But, then, soon, more of the explicit flicks appeared, not just one or two, five or six, but dozens.

When the dust started settling, investigators counted over 1,300 images of the actor/singer undressed and/or having sex with as many as fourteen female celebrities. The pictures had been taken by Chen himself during coitus, and, apparently, were liberated from his laptop by a dishonest technician while it was under repair. In the case of one fellow actor, Cecilia Cheung Pak-zhi, right, police counted approximately 143 images. (I’ve seen just a few and, uh, let’s just say that Cheung isn’t shy.) Cheung is also married.

Hong Kong’s sexual mores are even more conservative than those in the U.S. So, it was probably not surprising to many when, on February 21, about a month after the scandal broke, Chen finally made a statement that the photos were his, fully accepting responsibility for what had happened, apologizing for his behavior, and announcing his retirement from Hong Kong entertainment.

The most interesting thing to come out of this, for me, though, are not Chen’s conquests, his humiliation, nor glimpses of the hirsute Cheung,

It’s this diagram, which outlines the scandal in graphic form, showing the varied lines of interaction between numerous players in the drama. Even if you can’t read Cantonese, it’s clear what’s going on. When I first saw the image, it immediately reminded me of another. similar graphic.

It’s the so-called “Rockdale matrix,” from the 1999 Frontline documentary, The Lost Children of Rockdale County, which explored a massive, 1996 syphilis outbreak in a upper-class Atlanta neighborhood.

Sex works best as a deep and tender form of touch, shared between two people who have been uniquely united for profound existential purposes. When it is merely a form of common or cold exchange, however—a way to spend the afternoon between tours, photo shoots, or lunch periods—I dunno. It’s interesting, to me, how the graphics seem to pick that up and convey it, too.

BONUS RELATED-UNRELATED: CNN: Unmarried Chinese increasingly having sex, studies show