Robert van Gulik (1910–1967) was a Dutch orientalist, diplomat and writer, a man of complex fate and varied interests. From 1928, Gulick began publishing his own articles, devoted mainly to Chinese poetry, and in 1934 he entered the University of Leiden, where he studied Indology, Chinese and Japanese; in the same year he defended his dissertation. In 1935, Gulick was recruited by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and assigned to Tokyo. In Japan, despite his heavy workload with diplomatic work, he finds time for extremely diverse scientific pursuits - from the study of calligraphy and Far Eastern painting to music and literature. Since 1942, Robert van Gulik has lived in China. In our country, Robert van Gulik is mainly known thanks to masterfully written detective stories on the theme of traditional Chinese stories about the perspicacious and wise Judge Di. However, van Gulik is also the author of numerous books and works devoted to the cultures of the countries of the Far East. “Sexual Life in Ancient China” is the first large-scale work of its kind in world science, covering a large and varied material on this topic from Chinese antiquity to 1644 g.The book is published in Russian for the first time