Whispers and Moans: Interviews with the Men and Women of Hong Kongs Sex Industry

These Tan-ka people of the Canton river are the descendants of a tribe of aborigines pushed by advancing Chinese civilisation to live on boats on the Canton river, being for centuries forbidden by law to live on shore. The Emperor Yung Ching A. These Tan-ka people were the secret but trusty allies of foreigners from the time of the East India Company to the present day.

They furnished pilots and supplies of provisions to British men-of-war and troop ships when doing so was by the Chinese Government declared treason, unsparingly visited with capital punishment. They invaded Hong Kong the moment the Colony was opened, and have ever since maintained here a monopoly, so to say, of the supply of Chinese pilots and ships' crews, of the fish trade, the cattle trade, and especially of the trade in women for the supply of foreigners and of brothels patronised by foreigners.

Almost every so-called "protected woman," i. It is among these Tan-ka women, and especially under the protection of those "protected T;in-ka women, that private prostitution and the sale of girls for purposes of concubinage flourishes, being looked upon by them as their legitimate profession. Consequently, almost every "protected woman keeps a nursery of purchased children or a few servant girls who are being reared with a view to their eventual disposal, according to their personal qualifications, either among foreigners here as kept women, or among Chinese residents as their concubines, or to be sold for export to Singapore, San Francisco, or Australia.

Those protected women, moreover, generally act as protectors each to a few other Tan-ka women who live by sly prostitution.

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The latter, again, used to be preyed upon—till quite recently His Excellency Governor Hcnnessy stopped this fiendish practice—by informers paid with Government money, who would first debauch such women and then turn round against them charging them before the magistrate as keepers of unlicensed brothels, in which case a heavy fine would be inflicted, to pay which these women used to sell their own children, or sell themselves into bondage worse than slavery, to the keepers of the brothels licensed by Government. Whenever a sly brothel was broken up these keepers would crowd the sheriff's office of the police court or the visiting room to the Government Lock Hospital to drive their heartless bargains, which were invariably enforced with the weighty support of the Inspectors of brothels appointed by Government under the Contagious Diseases Ordinance.

The more this Ordinance was enforced the more of this buying and selling of human flesh went on at the very doors of Government offices. It is amongst these outcasts of Chinese society that the worst abuses of the Chinese system of domestic servitude exist, because that system is here unrestrained by the powers of traditional custom or popular opinion.

This class of people, mustering perhaps here in Hong Kong not more than 2, persons, are entirely beyond the argument of this essay. They form a class of their own, readily recognised at a glance. They are disowned by Chinese society, whilst they are but parasites on foreign society. The system of buying and selling female children and of domestic servitude with which they must be identified is so glaring an abuse of legitimate Chinese domestic servitude that it calls for corrective measures entirely apart from any considerations connected with the general body of Chinese society.

Japanese prostitutes called Karayuki-san , many coming from poor villages in Kyushu , started coming to Hong Kong in , and constituted the majority of Japanese residents of the territory in the s and s. There were 13 licensed Japanese brothels and prostitutes in Hong Kong in , with the figure reaching a peak of in Initially located in Central, the Japanese brothels later moved to Wan Chai. Another major aspect of this trade is migrant sex workers.

These sex workers are particularly visible in the Wan Chai district, catering mainly to Western businessmen and tourists. The sex workers operating in this area are predominantly Thai including transsexuals and Filipino. Ziteng campaigns for changes in the law, in particular the overturn of ban on brothels with more than one prostitute, since this prevents sex workers banding together for protection.

Many migrant sex workers arrive on a short tourist visa and try to make as much as money as possible by prostituting illegally before leaving Hong Kong, some returning frequently. There are also "underground" organisations such as Thai restaurants and escort bars that arrange for foreign usually Thai and mainland girls to gain work in Hong Kong legally with an entertainment visa, but in fact they actually work in go-go bars in Wan Chai or other hostess clubs around Hong Kong.

Despite the more visible presence of Thai and Filipino sex workers in Hong Kong, the majority of migrant sex workers who come to Hong Kong are from mainland China. It is reported that with RMB10,—20,, mainland Chinese girls would normally secure a three-month visa. Other frequent or previously deported visitors might experience tight visa requirements and would normally obtain only seven-day visas. The necessity to make money quickly also means that the sex workers are more likely to take risks. Many mainland girls advertise their services on websites where they put their pictures, contact numbers and service charges.

Prices are lower than for girls who target the tourist hotels, variations in price being a product of location, with those working within the corridor formed by Nathan Road being on the whole higher than that found in the towns of the New Territories. Prostitution in Hong Kong is legal, but subject to various restrictions, mainly intended to keep it away from the public eye. In practice, a woman on the street in certain areas well known for streetwalkers such as Sham Shui Po might well be arrested even if seen smiling at a male passer-by.

Time Out records it as the 36th most popular website in Hong Kong. Organized prostitution, in the form of directing "over another person for the purpose of This gives rise to the so-called "one-woman brothel" where one woman receives customers in her apartment, which is restricted by Section , which prohibits young persons to engage in prostitution.

Brothels are illegal, prostitution in private however is legal. So, many prostitutes in Hong Kong are "one for one" girls. To avoid the operation of an illegal brothel, triads will purchase apartments in certain apartment blocks — usually older tenements — for subdivision, and "sublet" them for amounts several times the prevailing rent for equivalent-sized units so that the letter of the law is complied with.

The girls advertise their services on web sites or in local publications. Xing gong zuo zhe2: Wo bu mai shen, wo mai zi gong Visual 1 edition published in in Chinese and held by 15 WorldCat member libraries worldwide See Summary in Chinese. Gu lao sheng yi xin zhuan ye: Xianggang xing gong zuo zhe she hui bao gao by Yishan Yang Book 2 editions published in in Chinese and held by 15 WorldCat member libraries worldwide.

Xun zhao bai jin by Yishan Yang Book 1 edition published in in Chinese and held by 8 WorldCat member libraries worldwide. A unique story that belongs to Hong Kong only, the film frankly and sensitively portrays the lives of two women who choose to sell themselves: Jack left Sam and starts teaching dance classes to youngsters.

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Later Sam met Jack and his students in a dancing contest outside the Cultural Center. Sam discovers that Jack's students are brilliant and talented. Yet the elder brother of Ching disbelieves his practice and causes Jack to lose his teaching job. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Thanks for telling us about the problem.

Whispers and Moans: Interviews with the men and women of Hong Kong's sex industry

Return to Book Page. Preview — Whispers and Moans by Yeeshan Yang. Interviews with the men and women of Hong Kong's sex industry by Yeeshan Yang. Hong Kong has a bewildering range of sex businesses offering services to suit various imaginable tastes. This book shows the human side of sex for sale. It contains tales of easy money, financial ruin and hopeless relationships - and rare insights into Hong Kong's huge but hidden sex industry. Interviews with the men and women of Hong Kong's sex industry. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

To ask other readers questions about Whispers and Moans , please sign up. Lists with This Book. Nov 23, Isham Cook rated it it was amazing Shelves: There is nothing more difficult than finding out what goes on in the mind of a prostitute, even when one is genuinely curious and not afflicted by sanctimony.

Whispers and Moans: Interviews with the men and women of Hong Kong's sex industry by Yeeshan Yang

She won't give men an honest answer, since they are potential customers, and will claim she earns less than she actually does to gain sympathy. She won't give women an honest answer, since they are potential competitors or worse - moralists. Academics and sociologists have no better luck trying to interview the prostitute, even when offeri There is nothing more difficult than finding out what goes on in the mind of a prostitute, even when one is genuinely curious and not afflicted by sanctimony.

Academics and sociologists have no better luck trying to interview the prostitute, even when offering to pay for her time; she will then be happy to cooperate and will tell them exactly what she thinks they want to hear, exaggerating her circumstances and stories for shock effect. It's a classic problem of circling around the truth without ever getting any closer to it. Perhaps the female ethnographer could penetrate more deeply into this world by becoming a prostitute herself for a spell, but this is usually precluded by ethics protocols in academia not to mention that in most countries sex work is an illegal activity.

Another potential source of valuable information is the men who regularly sleep with prostitutes, though the information and stories they have to offer are secondhand and bound to be deeply subjective and self-serving as well. Yeeshan Yang does not shy away from these obstacles. She confronts them directly in the first chapter, laying out her informal methodology - a compromise between the social worker interviewer and partial participant observer. We never really find out why she herself is interested in the topic of prostitution, but it's enough to know that she is, as we all are.

However, her honesty inevitably forces her to confront the ultimate question as a female researcher, why she doesn't engage in sex work herself to gain the priviest perspective, and her response is poignant in its blunt candor: The insights that emerge from this approach are numerous and startling. If you talk to enough people in the same occupation, you will begin to see patterns and truths, some that I have never quite understood myself, despite my own extensive acquaintance with numerous sex workers in mainland China, e. Yang lacks the academic's sense of structure, and there is a loose sense of organization to her chapter sequencing that may strike some as haphazard.

Hong Kong film actresses

She also lacks the novelist's conciseness of expression and dramatic propulsion. The stories pile up of initially colorful characters who descend one after another into the same sad degeneracy of their materialistic fetishes, abusive relationships with pimps or boyfriends, drug addiction, jail and the repeating of these cycles over and over until they either waste away in prison or disappear into obscurity.

She seeks but fails to find the counterpoint to these tragic tales - the happy hooker. We are left wondering if this mythical creature could possibly exist anywhere or may very well exist but was missed because the author was hanging out with all the wrong people. One suspects that if another intrepid author set about writing the same sort of book, a whole different cast of characters might emerge that would still bring us no closer to the truth of the prostitute.