Would-be civil servants who took Sichuan Province's annual recruitment exam over the weekend complained that they were confronted with an embarrassing question on the paper - asking if they were satisfied with their sex life.

Some 192,138 people sat the province's exam on Saturday to compete for 8,000 jobs, setting a new record of candidate numbers in the province's history, according to a Sichuan Province-based Chengdu Business Daily.

But afterwards, many people told the newspaper that they were puzzled by some of the questions, with several covering sex.

According to the newspaper, the most embarrassing question was: "Are you satisfied with your sex life?"

Many exam takers said they couldn't figure out the purpose of such a question and wondered why they had to answer it.

"What is the relationship between my sex life with the public security job position that I applied for?" asked Wang Li, an exam taker from Chengdu, capital of the southwestern Sichuan Province.

The newspaper said some candidates answered the question very carefully as they feared it was connected with basic information they had submitted before.

One candidate said: "If I submitted the information at first saying I was not married and then answered that I was satisfied with my sex life, will the judges erase my name from the job list because I have had premarital sex?"

Although embarrassed, most candidates didn't leave the answer blank as, according to the exam's regulations, at least 30 percent of the questions must be answered.

Some exam takers believed that the question was actually a polygraph test.

"There are several other questions related to it, so if you give answers that contradict each other, the judges can easily see that you're lying," the newspaper quoted one candidate as saying.