At the age of 9, his father was classified as right winger and suffered unfair treatment.
In 1966, Mao Zedong launched the ten-year Cultural Revolution, Pan became a sent-down youth at a state farm in Heilongjiang province.
Pan's first book, Mysterious Fire: Sociological History of Sex, was published in 1988.
He founded the Institute for Research on Sexuality and Gender at the Renmin University in 1991.
He is one of the pioneers in researching and teaching sexology in China and a published author.