CHINA SEX PART TWO: BONKING MAD
March 19th 2007 21:20
YEAR OF THE ROOSTER PROMPTED BONKING BINGE IN CHINAThe Chinese New Year 2005 opened with a bang for many Chinese guys who celebrated the advent of the Year of the Rooster by buying condoms and Viagra in record numbers.
Official news agencies reported that sales of rubbers and sex-boosting pills doubled in China during the week of the New Year celebrations, signifying that China has well and truly ditched the Cultural Revolution, and is now embracing the Permissive Revolution.
China has rediscovered sex, and has gone barking bonking mad.
Actually, the Chinese were always heavily into sex – it is no accident that it is the world’s most populous nation – and in the grand glory days of imperialism, Shanghai was dubbed the Paris of the East and the Whore of the Orient. During Shanghai’s hey day it was estimated that it had a population of 30,000 whores on hand to service the needs of the westerners flooding the city for a good time.
Today, while the official People’s Daily argues that “sex is still a dirty word in China,” the Associated Press reports, “The Shanghai sex industry is thriving as never before. Men say finding a barbershop that actually offers haircuts can be a challenge.”
While living in Rangoon, Burma, next door to China, for a year and half I began hearing stories about rampant sex in southern China, but at first I dismissed such stories simply because they didn’t fit the image of China that most westerners harbour. A young Brit, Martin, who I met in Rangoon, had worked as an English teacher in southern China for a year, and claimed the experience was an out-of-control sex romp. He said visits to bars, barbershops and clubs meant negotiating a minefield of amorous and enthusiastic hookers, and that, for a young westerner in the entertainment districts, there was no escaping them – and no denying them.
Another expatriate living in southern China, Andres Gentry, penned a study titled The Sex Trade in China, about his adventures in a provincial city. “The streets of Yangshe are very narrow and the alley walls are about 10 feet from each other,” he wrote, “The women would leave their workplaces and attempt to physically drag me back in with them. There was no way to avoid them when they impeded my path. I felt their nails through the sweatshirt I wore and had to shake their hands off with my elbow as I trudged on.”
I was still dubious about such reports until I made my own forays into the southern Chinese regions, just north of the Burmese border. My first port of call was an isolated mysterious city, Mong La, a modern gambling centre hidden in the wilds of the remote Golden Triangle region. The city is believed to have been built from the proceeds of opium sales by the war lords operating in the district and running the city. Although Mong La is officially on the Burmese side of the Chinese border, it is really a Chinese city, with only Chinese currency accepted, Chinese the official language, and the clocks set on Chinese time.
During the day the city is relatively quiet, with most of the action going on inside the many cavernous casinos built along bizarre architectural lines, incorporating the grossest of western and Chinese kitsch. During the day the numerous transvestites who perform in the entertainment centres and dance halls roam the town on scooters, but in the evening the whores come out to prey. Hundreds of them in cockroach-like numbers, many working in packs, all eagerly touting their services and all drastically reducing their original asking prices. Forays across the border into southern China revealed similar scenes in the provincial cities, especially near market and entertainment districts, with a proliferation of barbershops that offer almost anything but hair cuts.
It wasn’t long before the world at large caught up with what was happening behind the bamboo curtain, and westerners were surprised in late 2003 when sensational news of a mass orgy between Chinese hookers and Japanese businessmen spread through the media like pox in a poorly run knock shop.
New York has its September 11, but the southern Chinese provincial city of Zhuhai now claims it has its September 18, the day in 2003 when the infamous sex scandal happened. Three hundred Japanese tourists descended on the city’s most luxurious hotel, the Zhuhai International Convention Centre, to party with 500 southern Chinese hookers. It was also the day, coincidentally, that the Chinese mourned the 72nd anniversary of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.
Locals say the Japanese were completely outrageous, playing Japanese martial music from the 1930s and shagging women in corridors and open-doored rooms.
In late December 2003 two of the Chinese hotel workers were sentenced to life in prison for organising the mass prostitution, twelve other hotel workers were sentenced to prison for two to 15 years, and 15 police and tourism officials were disciplined. A friend of one of the men sentenced to life, Ye Qiang, told the press that Ye was a fall guy and that he’d worked hard to make the gig a success for his boss. “There were not enough ladies in Zhuhai so he had to bus in 200 more from other cities. He was only doing his job.”
Now Zhuhai is a city reportedly in shame because of the scandal. A taxi driver, Zang Ming, said, “The whole country and the whole world knows about 9-18. Our dignity has been abandoned.”
Sex tourists flock to the city to check the action of which apparently there is still plenty but it’s now more discreet. “Businessmen now come here from the outside and that’s all they want,” said Zang.
But Zhuhai has been receiving sex tours for years. A local tourism bureaucrat said, “Over the years Zhuhai residents have grown oblivious to the sight of busloads of up to 100 ‘hostesses’ arriving at hotels.”
Kevin Lau, a Hong Kong based journalist, said the hookers were tolerated in southern regions because they boosted the local economy. The free market reforms of recent years have bought a proliferation of sex workers from poor outlying provinces to China’s booming cites.
Officials simply turned a blind eye, or to use the Chinese parlance, it’s a case of, “One eye open, one eye closed.”
Renowned Chinese novelist Xue Xinran, author of The Good Women of China says despite the claims of the early communists to have completely eliminated prostitution the Chinese red light districts were bigger than ever.
She told the BBC “If you go to these modern hotels in China’s south you will see thousands of poor girls from the countryside openly selling themselves to visiting businessmen from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and elsewhere.
Due to the one eye open, one eye closed policy, and the secrecy and total media control of the Chinese government, it’s difficult to get a fix on the true extent of licentiousness in this land that’s often described as a sleeping giant that’s waking up to become a bonking giant.
But a glimpse was revealed in 2000 when an academic published figures amassed during anti vice campaigns. Beijing police estimated that there were between 200,000-300,000 hookers in the city in 1999 and action was taken against 6000 hair salons, baths and other establishments concealing vice. Many establishments housed 100 prostitutes while the average for hair salons was ten hookers per salon.
But in the provincial cities the ratio of hookers to residents was even higher. In the southern city of Hang Zhou one establishment, the Searching for Dreams Dance Hall, housed 400 prostitutes. In Wuning and Yining cities prostitute wholesaling centres were established and at last count there were 25 such centres in Yining alone. In Dongwan, where many businessmen from Hong Kong and Taijuan live, hookers are part of an apartment rental agreement: hot and cold water and hookers on tap. In the city of Taijuan there were 5000 registered dance halls, but police discovered a further 3000 unregistered halls, and this smallish city is said to be the world’s prostitution capital, home to about 100,000 prostitutes.
Prostitution has been estimated to come in at about 12.1 to 12.8% of China’s Gross Domestic Product and during the crackdown in 1999, when the “Regulations of the management of Places of Entertainment” were briefly implemented, the Chinese GDP dropped by 1%.
Indeed a popular saying in modern China is, “People laugh at poor people but don’t laugh at prostitutes.”
Earlier this year reports seeped out of China about the opening of a sex café in Shenzhen, southern China, and its immediate popularity. The Sex Café, which has walls adorned with prints of paintings by Picasso and Dali, gives customers free condoms, and allows them to borrow sex education books and to surf websites giving sex advice. Café owner Tao Lin said his aim was to bring convenience to customers by providing tea, coffee, sex education and counselling, and free condoms as part of a “one-stop experience.”
Mack Yu, a young real state agent who visited the Sex Café with four colleagues, blushed at first when questioned, but then said, “The café is awesome.”
Official news agencies reported that sales of rubbers and sex-boosting pills doubled in China during the week of the New Year celebrations, signifying that China has well and truly ditched the Cultural Revolution, and is now embracing the Permissive Revolution.
China has rediscovered sex, and has gone barking bonking mad.
Actually, the Chinese were always heavily into sex – it is no accident that it is the world’s most populous nation – and in the grand glory days of imperialism, Shanghai was dubbed the Paris of the East and the Whore of the Orient. During Shanghai’s hey day it was estimated that it had a population of 30,000 whores on hand to service the needs of the westerners flooding the city for a good time.
While living in Rangoon, Burma, next door to China, for a year and half I began hearing stories about rampant sex in southern China, but at first I dismissed such stories simply because they didn’t fit the image of China that most westerners harbour. A young Brit, Martin, who I met in Rangoon, had worked as an English teacher in southern China for a year, and claimed the experience was an out-of-control sex romp. He said visits to bars, barbershops and clubs meant negotiating a minefield of amorous and enthusiastic hookers, and that, for a young westerner in the entertainment districts, there was no escaping them – and no denying them.
I was still dubious about such reports until I made my own forays into the southern Chinese regions, just north of the Burmese border. My first port of call was an isolated mysterious city, Mong La, a modern gambling centre hidden in the wilds of the remote Golden Triangle region. The city is believed to have been built from the proceeds of opium sales by the war lords operating in the district and running the city. Although Mong La is officially on the Burmese side of the Chinese border, it is really a Chinese city, with only Chinese currency accepted, Chinese the official language, and the clocks set on Chinese time.
During the day the city is relatively quiet, with most of the action going on inside the many cavernous casinos built along bizarre architectural lines, incorporating the grossest of western and Chinese kitsch. During the day the numerous transvestites who perform in the entertainment centres and dance halls roam the town on scooters, but in the evening the whores come out to prey. Hundreds of them in cockroach-like numbers, many working in packs, all eagerly touting their services and all drastically reducing their original asking prices. Forays across the border into southern China revealed similar scenes in the provincial cities, especially near market and entertainment districts, with a proliferation of barbershops that offer almost anything but hair cuts.
It wasn’t long before the world at large caught up with what was happening behind the bamboo curtain, and westerners were surprised in late 2003 when sensational news of a mass orgy between Chinese hookers and Japanese businessmen spread through the media like pox in a poorly run knock shop.
New York has its September 11, but the southern Chinese provincial city of Zhuhai now claims it has its September 18, the day in 2003 when the infamous sex scandal happened. Three hundred Japanese tourists descended on the city’s most luxurious hotel, the Zhuhai International Convention Centre, to party with 500 southern Chinese hookers. It was also the day, coincidentally, that the Chinese mourned the 72nd anniversary of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.
Locals say the Japanese were completely outrageous, playing Japanese martial music from the 1930s and shagging women in corridors and open-doored rooms.
In late December 2003 two of the Chinese hotel workers were sentenced to life in prison for organising the mass prostitution, twelve other hotel workers were sentenced to prison for two to 15 years, and 15 police and tourism officials were disciplined. A friend of one of the men sentenced to life, Ye Qiang, told the press that Ye was a fall guy and that he’d worked hard to make the gig a success for his boss. “There were not enough ladies in Zhuhai so he had to bus in 200 more from other cities. He was only doing his job.”
Now Zhuhai is a city reportedly in shame because of the scandal. A taxi driver, Zang Ming, said, “The whole country and the whole world knows about 9-18. Our dignity has been abandoned.”
Sex tourists flock to the city to check the action of which apparently there is still plenty but it’s now more discreet. “Businessmen now come here from the outside and that’s all they want,” said Zang.
But Zhuhai has been receiving sex tours for years. A local tourism bureaucrat said, “Over the years Zhuhai residents have grown oblivious to the sight of busloads of up to 100 ‘hostesses’ arriving at hotels.”
Kevin Lau, a Hong Kong based journalist, said the hookers were tolerated in southern regions because they boosted the local economy. The free market reforms of recent years have bought a proliferation of sex workers from poor outlying provinces to China’s booming cites.
Officials simply turned a blind eye, or to use the Chinese parlance, it’s a case of, “One eye open, one eye closed.”
Renowned Chinese novelist Xue Xinran, author of The Good Women of China says despite the claims of the early communists to have completely eliminated prostitution the Chinese red light districts were bigger than ever.
She told the BBC “If you go to these modern hotels in China’s south you will see thousands of poor girls from the countryside openly selling themselves to visiting businessmen from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and elsewhere.
Due to the one eye open, one eye closed policy, and the secrecy and total media control of the Chinese government, it’s difficult to get a fix on the true extent of licentiousness in this land that’s often described as a sleeping giant that’s waking up to become a bonking giant.
But a glimpse was revealed in 2000 when an academic published figures amassed during anti vice campaigns. Beijing police estimated that there were between 200,000-300,000 hookers in the city in 1999 and action was taken against 6000 hair salons, baths and other establishments concealing vice. Many establishments housed 100 prostitutes while the average for hair salons was ten hookers per salon.
But in the provincial cities the ratio of hookers to residents was even higher. In the southern city of Hang Zhou one establishment, the Searching for Dreams Dance Hall, housed 400 prostitutes. In Wuning and Yining cities prostitute wholesaling centres were established and at last count there were 25 such centres in Yining alone. In Dongwan, where many businessmen from Hong Kong and Taijuan live, hookers are part of an apartment rental agreement: hot and cold water and hookers on tap. In the city of Taijuan there were 5000 registered dance halls, but police discovered a further 3000 unregistered halls, and this smallish city is said to be the world’s prostitution capital, home to about 100,000 prostitutes.
Prostitution has been estimated to come in at about 12.1 to 12.8% of China’s Gross Domestic Product and during the crackdown in 1999, when the “Regulations of the management of Places of Entertainment” were briefly implemented, the Chinese GDP dropped by 1%.
Indeed a popular saying in modern China is, “People laugh at poor people but don’t laugh at prostitutes.”
Earlier this year reports seeped out of China about the opening of a sex café in Shenzhen, southern China, and its immediate popularity. The Sex Café, which has walls adorned with prints of paintings by Picasso and Dali, gives customers free condoms, and allows them to borrow sex education books and to surf websites giving sex advice. Café owner Tao Lin said his aim was to bring convenience to customers by providing tea, coffee, sex education and counselling, and free condoms as part of a “one-stop experience.”
Mack Yu, a young real state agent who visited the Sex Café with four colleagues, blushed at first when questioned, but then said, “The café is awesome.”
| 36 |
| Vote |
Subscribe to this blog
Comment by Cibbuano
20/20 Filmsight
Science News
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak