Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T12:38:31.128Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Neither “Bad” nor “Dirty”: High-end Sex Work and Intimate Relationships in Urban China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2017

Eileen Yuk-ha Tsang
Eileen Yuk-ha Tsang*
Affiliation:
City University of Hong Kong. Email: eileen@cityu.edu.hk; tsangeileen@gmail.com.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The relationship between sex workers and their clients is generally characterized as being based entirely on the direct exchange of sexual favours for money. However, this received wisdom cannot account for a nation such as China which attaches significant value to “face,” social status and interpersonal dignity. This paper draws parallels with high-end sex workers elsewhere in Asia as well as globally. With a focus on the high-end sector, I examine how workers and their clients engage not only in pecuniary transactions but also in genuinely intimate and non-remunerative relationships. High-end sex workers make use of their earned economic capital to acquire cultural capital, and use online apps as marketing tools to target local elites and expats to forge longer-term intimate relationships. Male clients in more commercialized, post-industrial cities in China continue to seek diverse types of sexual experiences, with some clients seeking genuine intimacy. Furthermore, I explore how Chinese and foreign clients overcome social barriers to develop such relationships with sex workers. Building on this sociocultural perspective, this paper analyses ethnographically both sides of the female sex worker–client relationship in high-end karaoke lounges and bars in Dongguan, southern China.

摘要

般大众对性工作者与客人关系的认知, 是建基於性与金钱的交换。是次研究旨在探究性工作者与客人的关系会否超越金钱交易, 从而产生亲密关系。中国社会着重面子, 地位和尊严, 这与其他国家文化有所不同。本文将会探究中国高级性工作者与亚洲或世界各地高级性工作者的异同。本文的研究重点是中国的高级性工作者与她们客人之间的关系, 本文发现高级性工作者与客人投放了真实的亲密情感以及超越金钱的关系。高级性工作者会利用赚取的经济资本去获得更多文化资本, 以及利用美貌作为营销工具, 从而建立长期亲密关系 (Hoang 2010; 2011)。同时, 男性客人亦开始在较商业化及後工业化的中国城市, 追求不同类型的性经验。本文亦探究中国和外国客人怎麽排除万难的与性工作者一起建立更加复杂的亲密情感关系。本文透过社会文化学的视野, 以民族志方法来分析中国现代性工作者与她们客人之间的亲密情感关系。

Keywords

sex workcultural capitaleconomic capitalemotional labourbounded authenticityChina性工作文化资本经济资本情绪劳动有界真实性中国
Type
Articles
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 230 , June 2017 , pp. 444 - 463
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © SOAS University of London 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allison, Anne. 1994. Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Askew, Marc. 2002. Bangkok: Place, Practice and Representation. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Elizabeth. 1999. “What's wrong with prostitution? What's right with sex work? Comparing markets in female sexual labour.” Hastings Women's Law Journal 10(1), 91–117.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Elizabeth. 2007. Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity, and the Commerce of Sex. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Elizabeth. 2008. “Sexual commerce and the global flow of bodies, desires, and social policies.” Sexuality Research and Social Policy 5(4), 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1986. “The forms of capital.” In Richardson, J. (ed.), Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. New York: Greenwood, 241–258.Google Scholar
Brown, Eleanor. 2007. The Ties that Bind: Migration and Trafficking of Women and Girls for Sexual Exploitation in Cambodia. Phnom Penh: International Organization for Migration.Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope, and Levinson, Stephen. 1987. “Politeness: some universals in language usage.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Choi, Susanne Y.P. 2011. “State control, female prostitution and HIV prevention in China.” The China Quarterly 205, 96–114.Google Scholar
Choi, Susanne Y.P., and Holroyd, Eleanor. 2007. “The influence of power, poverty and agency on condom negotiation among female sex workers in mainland China.” Culture, Health and Sexuality 9(5), 489–503.Google Scholar
Cohen, Erik. 1986. “Lovelorn farangs: the correspondence between foreign men and Thai girls.” Anthropological Quarterly 59(3), 115–127.Google Scholar
Cressy, Paul Goalby. 2008. The Taxi-Dance Hall: A Sociological Study in Commercialized Recreation and City Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1988. “Technologies of the self.” In Gutman, Huck, Hutton, Patrick H. and Martin, Luther H. (eds.), Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 16–49.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1972. “On face-work: an analysis of ritual elements in social interaction.” In Goffman, Erving (ed.), Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behaviour. London: Penguin, 5–46.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Annette. 1997. “Primal dream: masculinism, sin and salvation in Thailand's sex trade.” In Manderson, Lenore and Jolly, Margaret (eds.), Sites of Desire/Economies of Pleasure: Sexualities in Asia and the Pacific. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 145–165.Google Scholar
Hansen, Mette Halskow. 2014. The Individualization of Chinese State Education: Life in a Rural Boarding School. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Hoang, Kimberly Kay. 2010. “Economies of emotion, familiarity, fantasy, and desire: emotional labour in Ho Chi Minh City's sex industry.” Sexualities 13(2), 255–272.Google Scholar
Hoang, Kimberly Kay. 2011. “‘She's not a low class dirty girl’: sex work in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 40(4), 367–396.Google Scholar
Hoang, Kimberly Kay. 2014a. “Competing technologies of embodiment: pan-Asian modernity and Third World dependency in Vietnam's contemporary sex industry.” Gender and Society 28(4), 513–536.Google Scholar
Hoang, Kimberly Kay. 2014b. “Vietnam rising dragon: contesting dominant Western masculinities in Ho Chi Minh City's global sex industry.” International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 27(2), 259–271.Google Scholar
Hochschild, Arlie Russell. 2003[1983]. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hoefinger, Heidi. 2011. “Professional girlfriends.” Cultural Studies 25(2), 244–266.Google Scholar
Hoefinger, Heidi. 2013. Sex, Love and Money: Professional Girlfriends and Transactional Relationships in Cambodia. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jeffreys, Elaine. 2007. “Governing buyers of sex in the People's Republic of China.” Economy and Society 35(4), 571–593.Google Scholar
Jeffreys, Elaine. 2010. “Exposing police corruption and malfeasance: China's virgin prostitute cases.” The China Journal 63, 127–149.Google Scholar
Jeffreys, Elaine. 2012. Prostitution Scandals in China: Policy, Media and Society. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kipnis, Andrew (ed.). 2012. Chinese Modernity and the Individual Psyche. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Lau, Ying, and Wong, Daniel 2008. “Are concern for face and willingness to seek help correlated to early postnatal depressive symptoms among Hong Kong Chinese women? A cross-sectional questionnaires survey.” International Journal of Nursing Studies 45, 51–64.Google Scholar
Liu, Min. 2012. “Chinese migrant women in the sex industry: exploring their paths to prostitution.” Feminist Criminology 7(4), 327–349.Google Scholar
Otis, Eileen. 2011. Markets and Bodies: Women, Service Work and the Making of Inequality in China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Pan, Sui Ming. 1999. Cunzai yu huangmiu: Zhongguo dixia “xing chanye” kaocha (Reality and Absurdity: An Investigation of the Underground Sex Industry in China) . Beijing: Qunyan chubanshe.Google Scholar
Pan, Sui Ming. 2000. Shengcun yu tiyan : dui yi ge dixia “hongdeng qu” de zhuizong kaocha (Subsistence and Experience: Investigation of an Underground Red-light District) . Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe.Google Scholar
Parrenas, Rhacel. 2011. Illicit Flirtations. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Sanders, Teela. 2008. Paying for Pleasure: Men Who Buy Sex. Devon: Willan.Google Scholar
Yan, Yun Xiang. 2009. The Individualization of Chinese Society. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Zelizer, Viviana. 2005. The Purchase of Intimacy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Zheng, Tiantian. 2003. “Consumption, body image, and rural–urban apartheid in contemporary China.” City and Society 40(2), 143–163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zheng, Tiantian. 2008. “Complexity of life and resistance: informal networks of rural migrant karaoke bar hostesses in urban China's sex industry.” China: An International Journal 6(1), 69–95.Google Scholar
Zheng, Tiantian. 2009. Red Lights: The Lives of Sex Workers in Postsocialist China. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar