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The Hierarchy of Shanghai Prostitution, 1870-1949 Author(s): Gail Hershatter Source: Modern China, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Oct., 1989), pp. 463-498 Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/189241 Accessed: 06-02-2016 07:16 UTC

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The Hierarchy of Shanghai Prostitution, 1870-1949

GAIL HERSHATTER Williams College

Shanghai has been called "the key to modern China" (Murphey, 1953) because of its rapid expansion in the nineteenth and twen- tieth centuries, its importance as an industrial and commercial center, its extensive exposure to foreign economic and cultural influences, and its role as a hotbed of the radical politics that eventually shaped the Chinese revolution. Yet although recent scholarship has done a great deal to illuminate various aspects of Shanghai's modern growth, large parts of its history remain hidden from view, among them the history of women's experi- ence outside the industrial sphere. By some estimates numbering 100,000 in the 1930s, prostitutes made up arguably the single most numerous of all female groups living and working in the city. Although less visible and more diverse than the ranks of Shanghai cotton-mill workers, they were no less crucial to the city's development. Their labor helped to support their families, promoted the development of commercial and service establish- ments, and lined the pockets of the police and the powerful underworld gangs that controlled much of the urban economy. If

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Substantial portions of this article will appear in Rubie Watson and Patricia Ebrey (eds.), Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, forthcoming). This volume is an outgrowth of a conference held in January 1988 under the sponsorship of the Joint Committee on Chinese Studies of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council, with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The author wishes to acknowledge helpful comments from the participants in the conference, particularly Susan Mann, Susan Naquin, Rubie Watson, and Arthur Wolf. In addition, various drafts of this article were given critical readings by Wendy Brown, Christina Gilmartin, Carma Hinton, Emily Honig, Lisa Rofel, Margery Wolf, Christine Wong, and Marilyn Young. All interpretations and errors are the responsibility of the author.

MODERN CHINA, Vol. 15 No. 4, October 1989 463-498 C 1989 Sage Publications, Inc.

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464 MODERN CHINA / OCTOBER 1989

Shanghai is the key to modern China, prostitution is one of the keys to modern Shanghai.

The category of "prostitute" covers such a range of arrange- ments and experiences that use of a single term to describe all of them seems inappropriate. Shanghai's hierarchy of prostitu- tion was elaborate, structured by the class background of the customers, the native place of both customers and prostitutes, and the beauty and age of the prostitutes. The hierarchy changed dramatically over the first half of the twentieth century, with the proliferation of "modern" institutions for selling sexual services: guide agencies, massage parlors, and dance halls. An examination of this hierarchy reveals much about the changing population of Shanghai, male as well as female.

The hierarchy must also be understood from the inside-that is, as it appeared to the prostitutes who lived inside the brothels. This task is extraordinarily difficult, because almost all surviving historical records reflect not the perspectives of the prostitutes themselves, but those of the press, reformers, police, and patrons. Nevertheless, these accounts allow us to begin to answer two questions. First, what degree of control did prostitutes have over their own working conditions, and how did this vary with their place in the hierarchy? Working conditions included control over the number, frequency, and choice of partners in sexual encoun- ters, as well as over reproduction and income. Second, how permeable was the boundary around prostitution? How easily and often did prostitutes move on to other work, to concubinage, or to marriage? How did their mobility vary with their place in the hierarchy?

THE HIERARCHY OF PROSTITUTION

The changing Shanghai market in women must be utiderstooci in the context of the city's rapid growth in the first half of the twentieth century.' The population of Shanghai, including the International Settlement and the French Concession, almost tri- pled between 1910 and 1930. At the conclusion of World War II,

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Hershater / SHANGHAI PROSTITUTION, 1870-1949 465

its population was roughly the same as in 1930; but between 1945 and 1947, it again grew by one-third.2 Migrants from other parts of China made up more than 82% of this population in 1910 and more than 90% in 1930 (Luo, 1932: 27, Table 43). Women migrants to Shanghai found work in manufacturing, particularly in cotton textiles; as household servants or wetnurses; as itinerant peddlers; and as entertainers or prostitutes.3

But far more men than women migrated to Shanghai. In the Chinese-governed sector of the city in the early 1930s, there were typically 135 men to every 100 women, although this ratio dropped to an average of 124:100 in the three years following World War II (Shanghai Civic Association, 1933: Population, 2, Table 3; Shanghai shi wenxian weiyuanhui, 1948: 14, 16, 18). The ratio was even more skewed among Chinese adults in the Inter- national Settlement (156:100 in 1930) and the French Concession (164:100 in 1930) (Luo, 1932: 30). Republican-period social reformers were fond of pointing out that the predominance of unattached men in the urban population increased the demand for commercial sexual services.

It is impossible to say with any certainty how many women worked as prostitutes in Shanghai. The profession was alternately forbidden and tolerated in the International Settlement, and broth- els were licensed in the French Concession. The inconsistent attitude of multiple municipal governments meant that no system- atic statistics were collected. Even more unlucky for the re- searcher, brothel owners often had an interest in concealing the nature and scope of their business, if only to avoid paying bribes to the authorities. Virtually every observer of the Shanghai scene commented that licensed brothels were outnumbered by unli- censed ones and by disguised forms of prostitution. Taxi dancers in the dance halls, masseuses in the massage parlors, waitresses in the vaudeville houses, guides in the tourist agencies (xiangdao she), female vendors of newspapers, cigarettes, and fruit, and itinerant menders of sailors' clothing all engaged in prostitution, either because their jobs required it or because their precarious incomes needed augmenting (Tang Youfeng, 1931: 154; Yu Wei, 1948: 11). Although they were seldom counted among the ranks

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of prostitutes in contemporary surveys, these part-time or "dis- guised" prostitutes must be considered when estimating the size of the sexual service sector and understanding the employment alternatives for women.

The fragmentary statistics available indicate the secular growth of prostitution. A 1920 report of the Special Vice Commission counted 4,522 Chinese prostitutes in the International Settlement alone, or 1 out of every 147 Chinese residents of the Settlement. If the greater population of Shanghai was taken to be 1.5 million, the report added, and if prostitutes in the French Concession were figured in, then 1 in 300 Chinese residents of Shanghai sold her sexual services for a living (Special Vice Committee, 1920: 84). These figures did not include what the report referred to as "sly" prostitutes, and in fact another set of statistics collected at around the same time found more than 60,000 prostitutes at work in the two foreign areas, most of them streetwalkers known as "pheasants" (Wiley, 1929: 45; Yi Feng, 1933: 39). By 1935, combined estimates of licensed and unlicensed prostitutes ran to 100,000, with much of the increase attributed to rural disaster and Depression-related factory closings (Luo Qiong, 1935: 37). A postwar study put the number of full-time prostitutes at 50,000, but suggested that the figure should be doubled to account for women "whose activities approach those of prostitutes" (Yu Wei, 1948: 10). If the Shanghai population at that time is taken as 4.2 million, then 1 in every 42 city residents was directly involved in prostitution. (Compare the highest estimates of 100,000 prosti- tutes to 173,432 female industrial workers in Shanghai. The largest subgroup of these workers, some 84,000, were in cotton spinning. So there were arguably more prostitutes than cotton spinners in Shanghai, China's largest industrial city [Honig, 1986: 24-25] .)4

But prostitution was central to the Shanghai economy far be- yond its direct significance as an employer of women. Many a small shop survived on the sale of goods and services to the upper-class brothels. "In the vicinity of her residence," a writer observed in 1929, "are numerous tailoring shops, hair dressers, makers of silk and satin shoes, embroidery shops, whose trade is

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Hershatter / SHANGHAI PROSTITUTION, 1870-1949 467

enriched by her patronage" (Wiley, 1929: 74). Brothels also provided a venue for the meeting of the Shanghai powerful; merchants concluded deals and officials made alliances in the house of upper-class changsan entertainers (Tu Shipin, 1968: xia, 76). For all these reasons, prostitution touched virtually every sphere of Shanghai life.

One way to untangle the complex structure of prostitution in Shanghai is to look at the types of prostitutes who provided sexual services to different classes of men, from the literate scion of the elite to the transient foreign sailor. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the prostitutes most often written about were those who entertained the local literati. Famed as singers and storytellers, they were commonly addressed with the respectful term xiansheng, most frequently translated into English as "sing-song girl." The public spaces where they performed were known as shulou (storytelling houses), their private residences as shuyu (storyteller's residences). The last term was also used to refer to them as a group ("Demi-monde," 1923: 783; Tu Shipin, 1968: xia, 76; Lemiere, 1923: 127-128; Wang Dingjiu, 1932: "Piao," 1-2).

Shuyu prostitutes traced their entertainer pedigree back a thou- sand years. Famed for their beauty, extravagant dress, and elabo- rate opium and tobacco pipes, they were equally renowned for their ability to sing and accompany themselves on stringed instruments, skill at composing poetry, and their refined artistic sensibilities and conversational prowess. Their professional names (chosen at the time of entry into the shuyu) were meant to invoke both sensual pleasure and literary associations. One famous nineteenth- century sing-song girl took the name Lin Daiyu after the heroine of Dream of the Red Chamber (Lemiere, 1923: 127-128, 130; Arlington, 1923: 317; "Demi-monde," 1923: 783).

This group of prostitutes mimicked the titles and habits of the elite men they entertained. Transported by sedan chair to their storytelling houses or to parties, they were sometimes preceded by a male servant holding a lantern on which was inscribed "chief magistrate on public business" (gongwu zhengtang) (Yu Muxia, 1935: shang, 23-24.) After the establishment of the Republic, the

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terms changed, although the arrogation of official titles did not. Famous prostitutes were often referred to as "president," "vice- president," or "premier of the flower country" (Xin shijie baoshe, 1918: passim).

Members of the shuyu class regarded themselves as skilled entertainers rather than providers of sexual services; they prided themselves on "selling their voices rather than their bodies." One Republican-era description of them, colored perhaps by nostalgia, reported that the shuyu had such high moral principles that if one was discovered having secret relations with a sweetheart, then her bedding was burned and she was driven out. Other accounts say that the shuyu did "sell their beauty" in their resi- dences, but kept this practice secret and made their reputations as singers (Lemiere, 1923: 127-128; Wang Dingjiu, 1932: "Piao," 1-2; Liu, 1936: 136; "Demi-monde," 1923: 783; Tu Shipin, 1968: xia, 76). Later the popularity of this geisha-style service declined; at least one source hints that the cause of its downfall was the unwillingness of the women to have sexual relations with their customers. By the 1920s the shuyu had been absorbed into the changsan class of prostitutes, although the term shuyu was used intermittently as late as 1948 ("Demi-monde," 1923: 783; Lemiere, 1923: 127-128; Tu Shipin, 1968, xia, 76; Wang Dingjiu, 1948: 1932; "Piao," 1-2; Yu Wei, 1948: 11).

The term changsan ("long three") is derived from a domino with two groups of three dots each. Traditionally, changsan pros- titutes charged 3 yuan for drinking with guests and 3 more for spending the night with them; the name remained long after the fee structure had changed. Throughout the Republican period, changsan women were at the top of the hierarchy of prostitution. Like shuyu, they performed classical songs and scenes from opera, dressed in elaborate costumes, and specialized in hosting banquets and gambling parties for merchants and well-placed officials. In the era before taxis became common, women rode to these parties in horse-drawn carriages or were carried on the shoulders of male brothel servants "like a Buddhist pagoda," providing live advertisement for the services of their house (Tu Shipin, 1968: xia, 76). The changsan brothels in Huile Li, a lane

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off Fuzhou Road, were the most famous. Sometimes wealthy customers would request that a woman accompany them to a dra- matic performance or other places of entertainment (Henderson, 1871: 14; Tu Shipin, 1968: xia, 76). The woman's brothel charged a set fee for all such services. Although they were less sexually available than lower-class prostitutes, a patron who went through a long "courtship" process and paid elaborate fees to the woman and her madam could hope for sexual favors ("Demi-monde," 1923: 783-785; Tu Shipin, 1968: xia, 76; Wang Dingjiu, 1932: "Piao," 1-2; Yu Wei, 1948: 11; Liu Peiqian, 1936: 136; Yi Feng, 1933: 39).

Next in the hierarchy were the ersan and yao'er prostitutes, also named for dominos ("two three" and "one two"). The ersan group was absorbed into the changsan class sometime during the Republican period, but the yao'er maintained a separate identity. In the 1940s, their fees were quoted as 1 yuan for providing melon seeds and fruit (called a "dry and wet basin") and 2 yuan for drinking companionship. Although their actual fee structure in a time of changing currencies remains obscure, it is clear that an evening in the company of prostitutes cost considerably more by the Republican period than the domino names indicate. Sources agree that the singing of yao'er prostitutes was not as good, nor were their sexual services as expensive as the changsan. Yao'er houses were most numerous along Peking Road and in the French Concession (Yu Wei, 1948: 11; Tu Shipin, 1968: xia, 76-77; "Demi-monde," 1923: 785; Wiley, 1929: 65; Yi Feng, 1933: 39).

The largest group of brothels in the next grade down were called "salt pork shops" (xianrou zhuang). Unlike all the grades above them, they were devoted exclusively to the on-demand satisfaction of male copulative desires, with little attention to singing, banqueting, or other ancillary forms of entertainment. Women were the "salt pork"; as a 1932 guidebook put it, "the price in the shop depends on the taste of the meat. Everyone knows that a slice costs 3 yuan, and an entire night 5 to 8 yuan." In these houses customers were said to divide up the women as if cutting salt pork (Wang Dingjiu, 1932: "Piao," 27-28). Another

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1930s guide reminded its readers that salt pork was no longer fresh meat, that it might in fact be rotten (Wang Zhongxian, 1935: 23-24). In the late 1940s the clientele of the "salt pork shops" was mainly laboring people. Many of these brothels were located in the vicinity of the French Concession's Bridge of the Eight Immortals (baxian qiao) (Tu Shipin, 1968: xia, 77; Wang Dingjiu, 1932: "Piao," 25; Yu Wei, 1948: 11).

By far the largest group of prostitutes in Republican Shanghai were the "pheasants" (yeji or zhiji). These were streetwalkers whose name described both their gaudy dress and habits of "go[ing] about from place to place like wild birds" ("Demi-monde," 1923: 785-786). Every evening, groups of them could be seen on both sides of the main streets, aggressively seeking customers. Guide- books of the period repeatedly warned Shanghai visitors to be- ware of the pheasants, whose eager assaults on passersby could shade into pickpocketing. Mixing ornithological metaphors, one author warned that pheasants fastened onto their prey "like an eagle seizing a chick" (Tang Youfeng, 1931: 152-153). Their prices as reported in 1932 ranged from 1 yuan for what was euphemistically called "one cannon blast-ism" (yipao zhuyi) to 7 yuan for a night (Wang Dingjiu, 1932: "Piao," 49).

Although pheasants worked the streets, they were by no means independent of the brothel system. Most operated under the con- trol of madams, often under more restrictive conditions than their higher-status sisters. Brothel attendants supervised them as they went about finding customers, who were then brought back to the brothel (Tu Shipin, 1968: xia, 77). "No matter the weather, hot or cold, rain, frost, or snow, when evening came they must stand in groups and call out to men and on the least response they must take hold of them and cajole them to respond," commented a 1923 article. "If not successful, the girls were beaten" ("Demi-monde," 1923: 786). In at least one respect they were certainly worse off than other prostitutes: Because they did not remain in brothels, they frequently came into conflict with the local police, who enforced municipal ordinances against street soliciting (see, for example, Shibao, July 22, 1929: 7). One guide advised Shanghai visitors that the only way to shake off a determined pheasant was

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to drag her into the street, because then she would become fearful of police intervention and desist in her efforts (Tang Youfeng, 1931: 152-153).

Lowest of all in the hierarchy of prostitution were the em- ployees of brothels called "flower-smoke rooms" (huayan jian) and "nailsheds" (dingpeng). Flower-smoke rooms were places where a customer could smoke opium and visit prostitutes ("flowers") simultaneously. After 1933, when opium was banned, these establishments reportedly disappeared. Nailsheds, scat- tered throughout the city, were rudimentary brothels that catered to rickshaw pullers and other laborers; the prices ranged from 2 jiao for quick sex to 1 yuan for the night (1932 figures) (Tang Youfeng, 1931: 154; Yi Feng, 1933: 39; Tu Shipin, 1968: xia, 77; Wang Dingjiu, 1932: "Piao," 50-51).

Like workers in other sectors of the Shanghai economy, most prostitutes were not of local origin. In part, this reflected the fact that Republican-period Shanghai was an expanding city that at- tracted peasants with the hope of work at the same time that rural crisis and war were pushing them out of the countryside. Also in part, it reflected the presence in Shanghai of powerful merchant and official cliques who hailed from Guangzhou, Ningbo, and the cities of the lower Yangzi; men from all of these regions appar- ently preferred prostitutes from their own native places. And in part, it reflected the particular nature of the traffic in sexual services; those who bought women preferred to resell them far enough from home so that their families would not clamor for the return of the goods or a share of the profits (Wiley, 1929: 52-53). For the brothel owners, buying women from other regions in- creased their ability to control them, because "[i]f the prostitute [was] removed from her home community she [was] absolutely at the mercy of her keepers" (Wiley, 1929: 66-67). For the same reason, "Shanghai girls, as a rule, when sold or mortgaged, are shipped off to some far away place," as one contemporary account noted (Lemiere, 1923: 133).

As with most occupations in Shanghai, the hierarchy of prosti- tution was structured by regionalism. Women in the shuyu and

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changsan houses came mainly from cities in the Jiangnan, notably Suzhou (famed for its beauties), Wuxi, Nanjing, Hangzhou, and Changzhou (Lemiere, 1923: 133; Yi Feng, 1933: 39-40; Wiley, 1929: 53, citing Morris, 1916.) Even those singsong artists and changsan who came from Shanghai proper did their best to affect a Suzhou accent and claim Suzhou as their native place (Tu Shipin, 1968: xia, 76-77; Yu Wei, 1948: 11). Prostitutes of the grade of yao'er and below came largely from Yangzhou and other parts of Subei, like the laborers who patronized their brothels. Subei prostitutes also carved out special niches for themselves in the sexual service market; for example, some specialized in row- ing out to the junks moored on the Huangpu River and selling themselves to the Chinese sailors (Yi Feng, 1933: 39-40; Shibao, April 6, 1929: 7). This intersection of class and regional divisions, with Subei people at the bottom, mirrored the larger occupational structure of Shanghai (Honig, 1988).

Regional divisions shaped prostitution in other ways as well. Distinct groups of prostitutes from Guangzhou and Ningbo ser- viced the merchant and official groups from those cities who were resident in Shanghai. In the 1920s, warlord conflicts drove many wealthy Cantonese to migrate to Shanghai, where they opened large businesses such as Sincere and Wing On; the ranks of Cantonese changsan increased accordingly. Ningbo prostitutes, supervised by madams, lived in and worked out of hotels in the Wu Malu and Da Xinjie area, receiving guests with Ningbo-style snacks of salted fish and crabs. The high-status Cantonese and Ningbo prostitutes kept to their own communities, and generally did not welcome guests from other regions (Wiley, 1929: 52; Yi Feng, 1933: 39-40; Lemiere, 1923: 133; Wang Dingjiu, 1932: "Piao," 34-35).

Another group of Cantonese women, who traced their presence in Shanghai to the early nineteenth century, specialized in enter- taining foreign sailors. They were known as xianshui mei, or "salt-water sisters," which may have been a reference to their maritime patrons; but one source explains that their name was a transliteration of "handsome maid" into Cantonese (hansui mui) (Tu Shipin, 1968: xia, 77). They were reputed to be "more hy-

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gienic than some others, partly because of the Cantonese love of cleanliness, and partly because they wish to attract foreigners" ("Demi-monde," 1923: 787-788). (This emphasis on cleanliness was far more pronounced in guides to Shanghai written by for- eigners than in the Chinese literature, although the latter also featured occasional warnings about venereal disease.) Neverthe- less, their solicitation of foreign sailors, and the resultant spread of venereal disease, attracted the attention of the British Admi- ralty, which in 1877 requested that Shanghai open a lock hospital to examine and register Cantonese prostitutes. Undaunted, the women proceeded to use their hospital registration cards, each with a photo identification, as advertisements for their services. Examinations continued until 1920, when prostitution was offi- cially (although ineffectually) phased out of the International Settlement (Special Vice Committee, 1920: 83-84).

Foreign prostitutes came to Shanghai from all over the world, recruited by the shadowy traffickers whom reformers called "white slavers." Among them were many Russians, whose numbers grew larger after the Russian Revolution; in the 1930s, one observer noted that 8,000 Russian prostitutes resided in Shanghai. Many were brought in from the northern city of Harbin, and either worked openly as prostitutes in "Russian houses" (Luosong tangzi) in the French Concession and the Hongkou area, or became taxi dancers who sold sexual services for an extra fee. Japanese prostitutes also worked in the Hongkou area, sometimes doubling as maidservants or waitresses. Foreign prostitutes apparently drew most of their clientele from among the foreign community and transient sailors, but some of them entertained Chinese customers as well (O'Callaghan, 1968: 11-12; Champly, 1934: 188; Hauser, 1940: 267; Tang Youfeng, 1931: 153-154; Tu Shipin, 1968: xia, 77; Yi Feng, 1933: 41).5

In addition to native place, beauty was a second factor determin- ing a woman's place in the hierarchy of prostitution. A Suzhou woman, no matter how well her relatives or fellow villagers were known to the owner of a changsan brothel, could not hope to become a prostitute there unless she was beautiful. Less attractive women could only work as servants in these houses. On the other

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hand, particularly beautiful women from other regions sometimes entered high-class houses without the benefit of connections. One small but prosperous brothel, a former resident of the neighbor- hood recounted, had two prostitutes, one from Suzhou and one from Shandong, but "the second one was so beautiful you couldn't tell she was from Shandong." As one moved down the hierarchy, the prostitutes became less beautiful (Sun Liqi et al., 1986).

A third factor determining a woman's place in the hierarchy was age. Many prostitutes in changsan houses first entered the brothels as children, purchased by the madams as "foster daugh- ters" (yangnu). If a woman had already passed adolescence, then no upper-class house would want her; madams reasoned that she was already untrainable or that she would not be able to work enough years to pay back the investment. Pheasants and other low-class prostitutes, on the other hand, were described as either very young and "not yet fully grown," or aging, "of fading beauty," and "badly nourished" (Liu Peiqian, 1936: 136.) Of 500 prostitutes surveyed in 1948, almost half had begun work between the ages of 15 and 19; the largest group was between the ages of 20 and 24 at the time the interviews were conducted (Yu Wei, 1948: 11).

Any account of Shanghai's hierarchy of prostitution is by necessity incomplete for two reasons. First, many worked outside the confines of the brothel system. They were the casual laborers of the sexual labor market, entering or leaving prostitution as necessary to supplement their income from other jobs. Techni- cally, their labor was illegal, because they were not licensed by any of Shanghai's municipal administrations. (Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, Shanghai's various govern- ments undertook to license brothels and prostitutes, sometimes in an attempt to eliminate the trade, and other times to tax it. An account of these efforts is beyond the scope of this article but all observers agreed that the various governments were unsuccessful in registering many of the women who sold sexual services both inside and outside the brothels.) The ranks of licensed prostitutes, from changsan to yeji, were equalled or outnumbered by these unlicensed prostitutes, who were known by such terms as "private"

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(sichang), "secret" (anchang), or "half-open door" (bankai men) (see, for example, Yu Muxia, 1935: shang, 30.)

Second, the hierarchy of prostitution changed in the 1930s and 1940s, with the proliferation of ancillary occupations such as tea hostesses, taxi dancers, masseuses, and female guides. All of these women were nominally hired to perform other services. Tea hostesses, also known as "glass cups" (bolibei), provided com- panionship to tea-drinking guests in the lower-class amusement halls. Most had a dozen or more regular tea-drinking customers, and in the 1930s could net a monthly income of several hundred yuan. When business was slow, they earned additional fees by spending the night with customers (Xu Chi et aL., 1942: 57-61). Taxi dancers worked out of the city's many dance halls, where patrons bought tickets in order to dance with them; many doubled as prostitutes (Mo Ruoqiang, 1930: 1-4). The female attendants at massage parlors were known to offer two types of massage: "clear" (qing) or "muddy" (zhuo), the latter including either quick ("cannon blast") intercourse (kaipao) or masturbation (shouyin). One guidebook wryly noted that "a small minority of massage parlors actually do only massage" (Yu Muxia, 1935: shang, 34-35). Female guides were employed by agencies that usually were owned by small-time hoodlums. The agencies advertised their services by sending salesmen into restaurants and hotels, where they passed out advertisement cards and cajoled patrons with pictures of the guides. Once called, a woman would "sit across from you or at your side, and silently wait for you to make a move. Then she follows your conversational lead.... They are not as skilled at conversation and laughter as the popular taxi dancers." Of the 10 yuan per day a guide might earn in the 1940s, she was able to keep about one-third; the rest went to waiters, salesmen, and the agency owner. When expenses for clothing, makeup, and hair were figured in, noted one author, the women's income was simply inadequate, unless they slept with customers for additional money (Xu Chi et al., 1942: 61-65). As paid companions, enter- tainers, and sex workers, each of these new types of prostitute appropriated some aspect of the older changsan traditions; but

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they did so in Westernized dress and with none of the mimicry of elite customs that characterized changsan practice. Theirs was a "modern" form of prostitution, with emphasis on functional and efficient delivery of services to members of the commercial and industrial classes.

INSIDE THE BROTHELS

Perhaps the most important factor affecting a prostitute's con- trol over her working conditions was the arrangement under which she entered a brothel. Women who became prostitutes were almost without exception poor, and it was this poverty that either drove their families to sell them, caused them to choose prostitu- tion themselves, or made them vulnerable to the wiles of traffick- ers. Very little is known about how poor families decided to sell their daughters as brides, maidservants, or prostitutes, although it is generally assumed that they attempted to emulate richer fami- lies in keeping their daughters on the marriage market and out of the brothels. But marriage was not a lifetime guarantee of respect- ability for a poor woman;6 even a safely married daughter might find herself sold as a prostitute. Of the 500 prostitutes surveyed in 1948, two-thirds were unmarried and another fifth were wid- ows; more than 9% had living spouses (Yu Wei, 1948: 11; Yu and Wong, 1949: 236, table V). The percentage of married women and widows was higher among lower-class prostitutes (Shibao, Au- gust 26, 1929: 7; Yu and Wong, 1949: 236, table V). Although the data available are not conclusive, they do suggest that disin- tegration of family networks through death or poverty, or detach- ment from family networks in order to find work in Shanghai, increased a woman's chances of ending up in a brothel.

Women entered brothels of all classes in Shanghai under one of three arrangements. A small number (estimated by one inves- tigator at less than 5%) entered as employees or "free persons" (ziji shenti or zijia shenti), paid all expenses themselves, and controlled their own work. A free prostitute in theory controlled her own earnings, but in practice she had to give half or more

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Hershatter / SHANGHAI PROSTITUTION, 1870-1949 477

of her income to the madam in return for use of the brothel facilities. Often the madam kept complete control of the finances and paid each prostitute a fixed salary per season ("Demi-monde," 1923: 784-785; Lemiere, 1923: 131; Yi Feng, 1933: 40-41; Luo Qiong, 1935: 35). The majority of prostitutes mortgaged (yazhang or baozhang) themselves or were mortgaged by relatives or traf- fickers for a fixed term, much like pawned goods, as collateral for a loan ("Demi-monde," 1923: 784-785; Lemiere, 1923: 131; Yi Feng, 1933: 40-41). At the end of each month, the money earned by a pawned woman was typically divided between the brothel owner and her parents or husband; out of their share, the woman's family paid interest on the loan (Henderson, 1871: 7). The remaining women, known as "completely eradicated" (dujue or taoren), were sold outright to the brothel by relatives or traf- fickers ("Demi-monde," 1923: 784-785; Lemiere, 1923: 131; Yi Feng, 1933: 40-41; Zhang and Sang, 1987: 32-33). The purchaser often signed a contract with the parents, and also received a bond signed by guarantors, just like apprentices in the trades (for an example of a contract and a bond, see Henderson, 1871: 8-9). Unlike an apprenticeship, however, this sale was for life. Prosti- tutes who had been sold, rather than pawned, into the brothel were regarded by the madams as their own property. The only way that they could be released from service was if someone paid what the brothel owner regarded as "a fair market price" (O'Callaghan, 1968: 13-14).

Trafficking in women was big business in Shanghai. Traffick- ers, both men and women, would go to rural districts that suffered from flood or famine, and purchase girls and young women "for a couple of dollars apiece," reported a foreign observer in 1940. "And if they were lucky, they could resell the choice ones for a thousand dollars in Shanghai" (Hauser, 1940: 268). Equally com- mon, and featured more prominently in the cautionary tales of the Shanghai press, were urban traffickers who preyed upon recent migrants to the city and sold them into brothels by trickery or force. Some professional traffickers pretended to be labor recruit- ers, promising to introduce women into legitimate jobs as servants or factory workers in Shanghai (Shibao, March 2, 1929: 7; Zhang

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and Sang, 1987: 31). They played upon native-place ties in order to win the confidence of the women and their families. Other traffickers made no attempt to entice women, instead kidnapping them by force. One such case involved a married woman named Xiao (nee Wang) who was grabbed by three men as she washed clothes on a riverbank in Subei. Gagged and restrained, she was taken to Shanghai. Her case came to public attention when, after several months of streetwalking, she spotted her kidnapper on the street and alerted the police (Shibao, April 6, 1929: 7). Another woman, new to the city, was forcibly pawned by the owner of the rickshaw that her husband pulled (Shibao, August 21, 1929: 7). A third sought lodging in a local monastery while looking for work in the city, only to be mortgaged into prostitution by the monks (Shibao, October 20, 1929: 7). It was not uncommon for male traffickers to rape or seduce young women before selling them into prostitution, thus making their return to a spouse or the marriage market more difficult (Tang Youfeng, 1931: 481; Shibao, October 14, November 25, 1929: 7). A woman's entry into prostitution thus usually was marked by family crisis and sometimes accomplished by outright violence, which removed her from whatever protection her family could offer. Women who were sold or pawned, and those who were cut off by traffickers from the protection of family or native-place networks, had very little control over the circumstances of their working lives. Their owners had claims on them that far exceeded the boundaries of employer-employee relationships. They more closely resembled the claims that shopowners had on their apprentices or labor bosses on their contracted laborers.

Most brothels were run by madams (laobao). Some were sole proprietors; others merely trained and managed the prostitutes, while a male "boss" (laoban) wielded ultimate authority. To open a brothel in Shanghai, a madam needed not only money but also "background": marriage or a liaison with a local hoodlum, con- nections to the neighborhood police or to gang bosses. Some- times, the madam's money and "background" had been acquired in a previous career as a prostitute (Henderson, 1871: 12). In other cases, madams had begun their careers as brothel servants. If a

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Hershatter / SHANGHAI PROSTITUTION, 1870-1949 479

madam owned the establishment, she took charge of renting the house, meeting police regulations, and recruiting women (Wiley, 1929: 59). Brothels had anywhere from one to several hundred women, but most apparently had five or fewer (for a sample list, see Wang Houzhe, 1925). After they opened their brothels, madams had to cultivate connections with the local police, usually through the payment of quasi-legal taxes such as the "street-standing tax" (zhanjie juan) and the "politeness tax" (heqi juan). Prompt payment of these fees ensured that when the police came to inspect an establishment there would be no trouble, and if a madam became embroiled in a court case the local police would intercede. These police connections could be invoked by the madam in conflicts with the neighbors or used to bring an unruly prostitute into line (Lu Wei, 1938: 14-15).

In the upper-class brothels, the harshness of the madam-prostitute relationship was obscured by the language of kinship. Most pros- titutes in the redlight district of Daqing Li, for instance, were addressed by terms used for adopted daughters and were taught to address the madams as "mama." The "family" consisted of a "father" (the owner or the madam's paramour), a "mother" (the madam), five or six adopted "daughters," and servants to do the housework. Larger brothels had a complete complement of cooks, bookkeepers, runners, and rickshaw pullers, but the Daqing Li establishments were more modest in scale. The madams played majiang with the neighbors, who were careful to avoid epithets such as "madam" or "prostitute" when a conflict broke out, because such an insult could not be easily repaired. In general, the madams treated these young women well, gave them enough to eat and wear, and made sure that they were strictly supervised by female servants. The more beautiful prostitutes-in-training were educated in chess, poetry, and music, just like young women being groomed for marriage. During the day, "daughters" of the madams dressed like any other girl on the lane. Only their habit of sleeping until noon, and their resplendent dress after 5 PM, distinguished them from the neighbors (Sun Liqi et al., 1986; "Demi-monde," 1923: 785).

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Relationships in the brothels mimicked familial relationships in less benign ways as well. Daughters in most Chinese families had little to say about the choice of their marriage partner or the timing of the match. At marriage, they passed from the control of their natal families to the control of their husbands, who had claims upon their labor and sexual and reproductive services. Similarly, prostitutes exercised no autonomy over when and to whom they would begin to sell their sexual services. A "daughter" in one of these houses was carefully groomed for her first night with a customer, which usually happened sometime after she turned 14. In changsan houses, first-night rituals might include a solemn ceremony to mark the woman's loss of virginity (pogua, "breaking the melon") (Yu Muxia, 1935: shang, 20-21). Like a marriage rite, the festivities included lighting candles, bowing to images, and hiring musicians. The patron then hosted a banquet for his friends at the brothel. In addition to the banquet fee, he would pay the madam additional money for his night with the virgin prostitute (Sun Liqi et al., 1986). The privilege of deflora- tion (kaibao) was expensive, and the madam would do her best to locate a wealthy businessman or industrialist whose first-night fee would repay the cost of raising the girl. In spite of the expense, such customers were not rare, because many businessmen be- lieved that if they slept with a virgin prostitute and "struck the red" (zhuang hong, perhaps referring to the blood of defloration), then they would become rich. Entrepreneurs who had suffered business losses could be found in the brothels trying to reverse their luck (Yu Muxia, 1935: shang, 20-21). The man who could afford it was permitted to take the young woman to a rented room for the night; the entire defloration fee went to the madam (Sun Liqi et al., 1986).

Because first-night fees brought in so much money, enterpris- ing madams often attempted to sell a young woman's virginity as many times as possible. A virgin prostitute was known as a xiao xiansheng, or "small teacher;" a pretender, however, was called a jian xiansheng, "clever teacher." This was a visual pun: The character jian is written with the character for "small" on top of that for "big," implying that such a woman was not what she

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Hershatter / SHANGHAI PROSTITUTION, 1870-1949 481

seemed. Thanks to the artifice of the madam, one guidebook warned, when a customer spent the night with a "clever teacher" she would "flow red a full measure of drops" just like a virgin, and the "muddled" customer would be no wiser (Yu Muxia, 1935: shang, 20-21). If a madam was caught in the deception, however, the angry patron might lead his friends to vandalize the brothel (Sun Liqi et al., 1986). Similarly, a woman who had been sold to a house as a virgin might suffer physical abuse from both custo- mer and madam if the claim turned out to be false (Zhang and Sang, 1987: 32.)

Even after a prostitute had spent her first night with a man, the madam continued to exercise a great deal of control over the sale of her services (what kind, when, how often, to whom, and for how much money). Sexual relations with a high-class prostitute were attainable only after a period of courtship and negotiation with her madam. As mentioned earlier, providing sexual services was a minor part of an upper-class prostitute's duties. The first step in winning her attentions (and the favor of the madam) was to invite her to join a group of diners or theatergoers, with whom she would engage in light conversation, drinking, and music- making (Wei, 1930: 13). A prostitute was summoned to such an occasion by a patron who filled out a ticket (jupiao) and sent it to the brothel; normally, women responded only to invitations from customers they knew (Liu Peiqian, 1936: 137). In the 1920s and 1930s, a woman was paid 1 yuan for each call, even if it was only several minutes in duration, and might make dozens of such stops in the course of a working evening, either alone or accompanied by a servant (Lemiere, 1923: 131; Wiley, 1929: 72; Liu Peiqian, 1936: 137).

The second step in making the acquaintance of a prostitute was to pay a social call at the brothel, where the women would provide cigarettes, tea and perhaps opium. This was called da chayuan or da chawei. There was no charge for this service, because the madam hoped that customers would return to the brothel to give lucrative banquets. These social calls conformed to a strict code of etiquette. Would-be patrons were advised to visit in the after- noon, when the women were not out on calls; not to linger long;

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and above all, never to interfere with a banquet in progress. They were also cautioned against paying many calls if they had no intention of giving a banquet themselves (Liu Peiqian, 1936: 137; Wang Dingjiu, 1932: "Piao," 3).

Finally, no customer could hope to spend the night with a high-class prostitute if he did not give at least one banquet in the brothel (zuo huatou). These banquets were occasions for the patrons to display their wealth by inviting friends to eat, drink, and play majiang. Patrons hosted these banquets in order to honor their friends, celebrate birthdays and business openings, and establish themselves as favored customers in a particular house. "After you have given a banquet," said a 1930s guide entitled Key to Whoring, "you are considered a regular guest of the brothel. They will curry favor with you, and you can gradually have a taste of unimaginable fascination" (Wang Dingjiu, 1932: "Piao," 4).

All of these procedures, and the ultimate goal of access to a famed prostitute, were facilitated if the would-be patron was a liberal spender. Gifts to the prostitute herself were important, but just as crucial was the man's ability to bring business to the house. If he dropped by frequently with his friends to drink "flower wine" (that is, wine poured by the prostitutes), if he hosted a banquet for his associates and paid without complaint for the food and the company of the women, then he could request a night with the prostitute he favored. The patron then took the woman to a nearby hotel (in the best houses, customers did not actually spend the night in the brothel) (Sun Liqi et al., 1986).

But there were exceptions to the ironclad control of the mad- ams. Very famous or very beautiful prostitutes had some control over their own sexual services. And money was not the only variable; as one guidebook lamented, "Many are those who spend ten thousand pieces of gold, and never get to touch her" (Tu Shipin, 1968: xia, 76). A 1932 guide to Shanghai elaborated on this theme. It explained that some patrons could not "get into the water" even after hosting several expensive banquets, while oth- ers "tasted the flavor" without hosting even one. The key, ex- plained the author, lay in the behavior of the patron. He should be careful to exhibit not only wealth but also good taste in dress and

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Hershatter / SHANGHAI PROSTITUTION, 1870-1949 483

choice of male companions. If he was "foolish when appropriate and serious when appropriate," then even the most popular pros- titute would eventually become a "prisoner of war at [his] feet" (Wang Dingjiu, 1932: "Piao," 6). Success was not assured, how- ever, if the customer had a serious rival. A term from majiang, "white board faceoff' (baiban duisha), described a situation in which a woman had two admirers who were waiting for her to choose between them (Yu Muxia, 1935: ji,35). Accounts of this kind never mentioned the madam as arbiter of such encounters; the woman was portrayed as having a degree of autonomy in her choice of customers.

As one moved down the hierarchy of prostitution, women apparently had even less control over the sale of their sexual services. In the yao'er houses, customers were accepted readily whether they were regulars or strangers (Tu Shipin, 1968: xia, 77). Prostitutes in the "salt pork shops" and even lower-grade establishments received customers in cubicles called "pigeon sheds" (gezi peng), each one just big enough for a bed. The women spent a certain amount of time with each customer, depending on the size of the fee, then went on to the next one (Sun Liqi et al. 1986; Zhang and Sang, 1987: 32). The pheasants, too, remained under surveillance by brothel servants even when soliciting on the streets. Neither their freedom from the physical confines of the brothel nor their somewhat older age guaranteed them greater control over their working lives. In addition, women who had been sold outright to a brothel apparently had less freedom to refuse customers than "free prostitutes" (Zhang and Sang, 1987: 33).

In 1948, a survey of 500 prostitutes found that most women had 10 to 30 sexual encounters each month, with some women report- ing as many as 60 (Yu Wei, 1948: 13). But even the higher figure may not accurately reflect the experience of lower-class prosti- tutes. Madams reportedly forced these women to have sexual relations with anywhere from 4 to 20 men a night, while saltwater sisters sometimes serviced 20 to 30 customers a night (Luo Qiong, 1935: 36; Zhang and Sang, 1987: 32; Tang Youfeng, 1931: 153). Such accounts are indirectly supported by the complaint of re- formers that lower-class prostitutes were the chief cause of vene-

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real disease, because they spread it more widely and quickly than did others (Yu Wei, 1948: 13; "Demi-monde," 1932: 786).

In some brothels, women were expected to continue work even if they were menstruating or in the second trimester of pregnancy; such practices led to disorders ranging from menorrhagia of the uterus to frequent miscarriage. After a miscarriage, a prostitute was put to work as quickly as possible (Zhang and Sang, 1987: 32; Luo Qiong, 1935: 36). To prevent pregnancy, madams gave their prostitutes live tadpoles to eat, on the theory that the "cold element" in tadpoles would counteract the "heat" of pregnancy. The same remedy was applied as an abortifacient. Prolonged periods of tadpole consumption apparently contributed to infer- tility (Sun Liqi et al., 1986).7 Venereal disease was also a cause of infertility, stillbirth, and miscarriage. For all these reasons, a 1948 survey found that the rate of pregnancy among a sample of 500 prostitutes was very low (Yu Wei, 1948: 13).

The actual incidence of venereal disease among prostitutes is impossible to determine. A 1931 guidebook, its author intent on advertising the pleasures of Shanghai's entertainment quarters, estimated that only 1% or 2% of all prostitutes were infected (Tang Youfeng, 1931: 154). But soon after the Japanese occupa- tion, an investigative committee organized by women reformers under the auspices of the city government found that all of the "pheasants" rounded up in one relief effort (a total of 30) had syphilis, and many suffered gonorrhea as well (Chen Luwei, 1938: 21-22). A 1948 government report commented that most women contracted venereal disease within a year or two of begin- ning work as prostitutes. Of 1,420 working prostitutes examined by the municipal health authorities in 1946, 66% had venereal disease; the percentage was 62% for 3,550 women examined the following year. Most of these were cases of tertiary syphilis; the report noted that the numbers would have been still higher if a more reliable test for gonorrhea had been included (Yu Wei, 1948: 11, 13). Women who were examined and treated in government clinics were a tiny percentage of all prostitutes, most of whom had no contact with the medical system. Many who contracted syphilis were treated in the brothels with crude home remedies;

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some madams used scissors to lance the sores of their employees, or had them wash the genital area with salt water and then go back to work. Venereal disease was concealed from the customers whenever possible. For licensed prostitutes, it could lead to revo- cation of the work permit issued by the municipal government- unless, that is, the "madam" had good connections with local police (Sun Liqi et al., 1986).

Although upper-class prostitutes often commanded high fees, they had little or no direct control over the income they earned. Direct fees for a woman's services were usually paid to the brothel staff, not to the prostitute. The more elegant brothels "had their shroffs and they sent their customers chits at the end of the month, like any other business establishment" (Hauser, 1940: 268). A house made money not only on its women but also on its banquet facilities and domino games; the madams rather than the prosti- tutes received this income (Wiley, 1929: 60). When a changsan prostitute went out on a social call, accompanied by her atten- dants, she was expected to divide the money she received with servants, musicians, and the brothel owner (Lemiere, 1923: 131). A woman who received valuable presents from her customers handed them over to her "owner" - either the madam or the person who had pawned her (Henderson, 1871: 12-13). Even the minority of "free" prostitutes kept less than half of their income, paying the rest to a madam for use of the house facilities (Luo Qiong, 1935: 36). Under these circumstances, only a prostitute who ran her own house could hope to see, much less control, the fees she earned.

An examination of violence in the brothels makes clear the lack of control that prostitutes had over their working lives. Accounts of violence used by madams and brothel servants against prostitutes filled the Shanghai press during the Republican period. These reports usually concerned practices in lower-class brothels, where the madams beat their prostitutes for failure to bring cus- tomers home, for refusing to receive customers, for infractions of brothel rules, and for stealing or being careless enough to let customers steal from them ("Demi-monde," 1923: 786-787; Shibao, April 8, May 29, June 10, July 6, July 18, November 16,

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1929: 7; January 28, 1928: 7). When prostitutes fled to escape this kind of treatment, they found scant refuge on the streets of Shanghai. The lucky ones were picked up by the police and remanded by the courts to the Door of Hope or another relief organization, with the ultimate expectation that they would find a spouse (songtang zepei) (Shibao, February 23, July 6, July 15, 1929: 7). The unlucky ones got no help from local patrolmen, who were often receiving regular payoffs from the madam. If a pros- titute complained directly to police headquarters, the brothel owner might be fined a few dollars. But with no other way to make a living, the woman would have to return to work anyway (Chen Luwei, 1938: 22).

Very little is known about how the prostitutes regarded their work or themselves. Certainly, beautiful prostitutes in prestigious houses led a comfortable life, compared to what they might have expected in their families of origin. They ate well, dressed beau- tifully, and enjoyed the glamour surrounding their occupation. Women in the upper echelons of prostitution held social positions somewhat akin to that of movie starlets. They were feted in contests like the one sponsored in 1920 by the Qimei Milk Candy Company, which held a highly publicized "flower election" for the positions of president, vice-president, and premier. The pros- titutes who won received elegant sets of furniture; the first-place winner was henceforth known throughout Shanghai as the "milk president," after the main ingredient in the sponsor's product (Yu Muxia, 1935: ji, 37-38.) It is highly unlikely, however, that such fame or fortune were ever within the reach of the vast majority of Shanghai prostitutes.

An intriguing glimpse of beliefs shared throughout the hierar- chy of prostitution is provided by the women's patronage of a local deity, known as "the pissing Bodhisattva" because his shrine was next to a public urinal in the Xiao Dongmenwai area. The Bodhisattva was said to be a former brothel customer who had spent his fortune on tips to singers and then hung himself because he was too ashamed to return home.

After he died, several prostitutes who had received money from him remembered the Boddhisattva with fond regret. He tired

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himself out in official duties, with no release until death, and they all mourned their lost friend. Together they carved a wall temple for him in the corner of a wall as a memorial. Now most fashion- able prostitutes (hong guan ren), on the first and fifteenth day of the lunar month, come together to burn incense. They say that if they burn incense then the sex business (yin ye) will be good. Low-class prostitutes, if they have no customers on a given day, will come the following day to burn incense and pray silently. It may sound strange, but after they pray and return home, customers will appear. Because of this the incense in front of the pissing Boddhisattva has flourished until now, with no decline [Yu Muxia, 1935: shang, 40-41].

This account indicates that prostitutes of all ranks hoped that their patrons would be many and prosperous, but it tells us nothing about their perceptions of self or society. Undoubtedly, their outlook varied depending upon whether the madam was cruel or kind, whether they had to entertain many guests, and whether they became ill or pregnant. Of the 500 prostitutes of all grades surveyed in 1948, 56% declared themselves satisfied with their occupation, mainly because it provided them with a relatively secure livelihood in a period of economic uncertainty. Less than a quarter were unhappy with their current circumstances (Yu Wei, 1948: 12).

Nevertheless, social workers reported a variety of less sanguine attitudes on the part of prostitutes. Some, they found, articulated feelings of depression, inferiority, and suspicion (Yu Wei, 1948: 12-13). Relief workers who interviewed such women reported that they were "as though anesthetized . . . . numbed to the conditions of their existence." Unfortunately for the reformers, such emotional numbness did not translate into docility or will- ingness to reform. Given literacy training, the women in one program tore up their books and asked, "Why should we 'chew yellow beansprouts' here when in our 'own homes' servants will address us as 'Miss'?" In despair, the social workers responsible for this program commented that "prostitutes are not ordinary women; they have deeply rooted vulgar practices, know no shame in their behavior, assume airs of importance, are lazy and full of ailments, like to sleep and cry, and are especially good at trickery"

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(Chen Luwei, 1938: 21-22). A former prostitute interviewed in the 1980s recalled the strategies women used to justify their existence to themselves: "You've got to have some idea in your head to keep you going. Otherwise you just couldn't take it, going with all those men. At first I just felt it was my fate and nothing could be done about it. Later I believed some of the things the other girls said. The craziest idea was it wasn't men having fun with us, but us having fun with them and they still had to pay good money" (Zhang and Sang, 1987: 33).

For these women, as for the prostitutes rounded up by the municipal government in the 1950s campaign to eradicate prosti- tution, it was no longer possible to imagine life outside the brothel system. Women dragged fro-m the brothels in police raids during the 1950s often clung to their madams, weeping piteously and shouting "Don't take me away from my 'mama"' (Cao Manzhi, 1986). Although the madams might be oppressive and the effects of venereal disease debilitating, the fictive kinship networks of the brothels represented the only stable family many of these women knew, and they were loathe to leave it for an uncertain future.

EXIT

When prostitutes imagined life outside the brothel system at all, they imagined becoming the wives or concubines of rich men. A quarter of the prostitutes surveyed in 1948 wanted to leave the life and marry a rich husband (Yu Wei, 1948: 12). A prostitute hoped to find someone who was willing to pay off her "mortgage" or, if she had been sold outright, to reimburse the madam for her purchase price plus interest and expenses. In the late nineteenth century, reported a British official in the International Settlement, Chinese officials frequently paid high prices for these women, even though it was forbidden by law for them to do so. He noted that the occupation of prostitute was not generally considered an impediment to marriage (Henderson, 1871: 10). In the 1920s, newspaper reports indicate that prostitutes who were still young

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Hershatter / SHANGHAI PROSTITUTION, 1870-1949 489

and attractive left "the life" by this route (Shibao, April 8, 1929: 7), although such reports may have been exaggerated for their value in selling papers.8 If the madam was unusually cruel or unwilling to let the woman go, she might simply flee with her lover (Shibao, July 10, 1929: 7). Madams were not always unal- terably opposed to selling their prostitutes as concubines, how- ever. The profits on such a transaction could be considerable: "the whole amount in case the girl is owned, and a commission in case she is rented" (Wiley, 1929: 60).

For many women, an interim arrangement that might lead to a more permanent union was to be "rented" by a single patron. The man would pay a monthly fee to the madam, and either visit the woman regularly or take up residence in the brothel. Alterna- tively, he might install the woman in quarters of her own. Men who could not yet afford to redeem a prostitute's pawn pledge or buy her outright made use of this arrangement. In the late 1920s, monthly rental fees could run as much as 50 yuan (Wei, 1930: 14; Shibao July 31, 1929: 7).

In their search for a secure future, prostitutes used sexual strategies, particularly their capacity to bear children, to obtain social goals. Just as married women consolidated their positions in their husbands' families in this way, so some prostitutes used pregnancy as a way out of prostitution and a ticket to marriage or at least concubinage. Qiaonan, a young prostitute in Daqing Li, had a patron who was the scion of a wealthy family. Because she was beautiful, her madam treated her well and guarded her care- fully, and was reluctant to allow the young man to buy her out of the brothel. When Qiaonan became pregnant, she and her lover agreed that she would not have an abortion. She refused the required doses of tadpoles, and when her pregnancy became so far advanced that there was no hope of her continuing to attract customers, the madam finally permitted her lover to purchase her (Sun Liqi et al., 1986). In cases like this, pregnancy was the occasion for struggle between prostitutes and owners over who controlled disposition of sexual services and fertility decisions.

Many prostitutes did not cross over into marriage, instead remaining in the sexual service business. If their looks declined

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before they had accumulated private money or connections, they became servants in the brothels. Some of the more beautiful prostitutes worked until they were relatively old, because their madams were unwilling to let them buy themselves out. The more fortunate ones opened their own establishments and became mad- ams. In Huile Li, the only madams who actually resided in the lane were those who had just crossed over from prostitution into sexual service management. After they made some money as madams, they moved elsewhere, returning to the lane only during working hours (Sun Liqi et al., 1986). Life as a madam afforded a woman a rare degree of autonomy. Although a madam, as noted earlier, needed to cultivate protection from men who might also threaten her, she was able to operate as a petty entrepreneur with the opportunity to amass considerable personal wealth.

The type of crossover strategy most frequently reported in the press, however, involved neither marriage nor becoming a madam, but flight. Women who could no longer tolerate the conditions of their employment, particularly in lower-class broth- els, simply slipped out of the houses and sought refuge on the streets. One story reported in detail in the press involved a 17- year-old woman whose professional name was Red Cloud. Her madam was exceptionally cruel; Red Cloud was compelled to solicit customers on the street until 4 AM. If she failed to bring in business, she was forced to kneel on broken tiles with a pan of water on her head, forbidden to sleep. Driven beyond endurance, Red Cloud fled the brothel early one morning and leaped into a rickshaw parked at the end of the lane. Upset to the point of incoherence, she could not tell the puller where to go, so she directed him by means of hand motions. After nine hours of running through almost every district in Shanghai, the hapless puller lost patience and asked her where she wanted to go. At this point she realized that she had no money to pay him, so she offered to marry him instead. Delighted, the puller told her that he might be too old for her (he was 36), but that he had three younger brothers at home, all unmarried. He took her to his house in the Zhabei district, whereupon his brothers immediately began to argue over who should have her as a wife. The tumult alerted some

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inquisitive neighbors, who suspected that the woman had been kidnapped, and turned her and all the brothers in to the police (Shibao, May 29, 1929: 7).

It was not easy for prostitutes to free themselves from the control of the brothel system. Brothel owners employed both legal and illegal forms of coercion to keep women in their employ, particularly if the women had been mortgaged to them and the term had not yet expired. When one such case went to court, the judge agreed that a prostitute named Ma and her mother were contractually bound to work for the madam; he ordered the mother to work as a maidservant in the brothel, while Ma was permitted to work outside as a maid. In this way, she could pay off her debt while avoiding work as a prostitute. Only after the debt was cleared could she and her mother hope to return to the countryside district where Ma had grown up. State power thus intervened to legitimize and perpetuate the conditions of servitude in the broth- els (Lu Wei, 1938: 14-15).

Only a woman who could prove that she had been forced into prostitution could hope to get legal help in fleeing the brothel system. Many cases that came before the courts in the Republican period thus centered around the contention, made by a prostitute or her relatives, that she had not voluntarily entered the brothel and they had not voluntarily sold her there. Madams routinely contested these assertions, saying that women had been sold to them as foster daughters or pawned as prostitutes. Because pawn- ing or sale was a contractual transaction, madams frequently produced the signed contracts in court as proof that all parties had agreed to the arrangement. Brothel owners who had acquired women by irregular means were not above forging such contracts or tricking women into signing them after the fact. The prosti- tutes, in turn, often contended that such documents had been signed under duress (Shibao, April 8, 12, July 15, November 16, 1929: 7).

The many efforts made by parents and other relatives of pros- titutes to find and free them testify to the continuing ties between prostitutes and their kin, particularly in cases where the women had been kidnapped or tricked rather than sold. One peasant man

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brought a complaint against a madam after he came to Shanghai on business and saw his daughter soliciting customers at an amusement hall (Shibao, June 10, 1929: 7). Another peasant told the court that his younger brother's wife had been kidnapped and sold by her own relatives; the wife corroborated his testimony and asked to be released in his custody. (Interestingly, the madam argued that the woman had been sold by her own father and that she could produce a contract to that effect, implying that this would make the sale legal and irrevocable [Shibao, June 17, 1929: 7].) In a third case, a man from the rural hinterland of Shanghai discovered his fiancee working in a brothel four years after she had disappeared from their home county. He bought her from the madam (negotiating the asking price of 1,000 yuan down to 800) and married her (Shibao, November 25, 1929: 7).

But if a woman testified that she had become a prostitute of her own free will, then not even the protests of her relatives could free her. In a 1929 case, for instance, the mother of Sun Fengying peti- tioned the municipal court, saying that her married daugh- ter had been kidnapped and pawned into a French Concession brothel. But Sun herself testified that she had volunteered to become a prostitute to help pay the debts incurred by her husband's family when her sister-in-law became ill. The court dismissed the mother's complaint (Shibao, April 19, 1929: 7). On the other hand, a woman who did not wish to become a prostitute but was forced into it by relatives did have legal recourse. One woman retained a lawyer to petition the court to enjoin her mother from harassing her; the mother had forced her to engage in prostitution from age 14 to 29 (Shibao, May 23, 1929: 7). Both types of cases were exceedingly rare; usually the interests of the woman and her family were arrayed together against those of the brothel owners. In fact, it would appear that it was virtually impossible for a woman to leave the brothel system for a secure future unless she had either a rich patron or a loyal family (natal or marital) that was willing to testify for her in court.

Many prostitutes must have grown old in the system without finding a rich patron or accumulating enough money to open their own establishment. Not much is known about their fate. One

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strategy employed by some upper-class prostitutes was to adopt daughters who could care for them in their old age or yield a hefty brideprice when married off. However, for those prostitutes who had neither the means nor the foresight to invest in this arrange- ment, age brought a descent into less prestigious brothels, then into the ranks of Shanghai beggars and itinerant entertainers (Shibao, September 4, 1929: 7; Wiley, 1929: 51-52).

CONCLUSION

Although life as a prostitute could be insecure and harsh, it was probably not the worst of all possibilities for impoverished women in Shanghai. Prostitutes at the very top of the hierarchy sometimes had a great deal of control over their own working conditions, and were often able to move from the brothels into marriages with powerful men. They were seldom autonomous, because at every point their power derived from associations with powerful male patrons. Nevertheless, with skill and luck they could achieve a standard of living and a degree of mobility that compared favorably with both women workers and most wives.

At the bottom of the hierarchy, prostitution was not a rigidly segregated occupation, but a form of casual labor that enabled women in critical economic circumstances to survive. Here prosti- tution was often combined both with other work and with marriage. As a social category, it was both permeable and imper- manent.

Those with the least autonomy and mobility, whether their customers were of high class or low, were the women most entangled with the brothel system. Madams or bosses controlled their labor and their persons, and in some respects their status resembled that of slaves.9 But acknowledging that they were often treated as commodities should not divert attention from the com- plex struggle they waged, as active agents, to assert some control over their own working lives.

As Shanghai became a major economic, political, and cultural center during the first half of the twentieth century, the market in

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prostitutes grew and changed in nature. What had been essentially a luxury market in courtesans became a market primarily geared to supplying sexual services for the growing numbers of unattached (although not necessarily unmarried) commercial and working-class men of the city. The increase in demand was apparently accom- panied by a boom in supply, fed by a burgeoning population of refugees and peasants in distress with daughters they could not support. We cannot yet trace the fluctuating value of women on this larger market as brides, maidservants, concubines, or prosti- tutes. But it certainly appears that the "popularization" of prosti- tution was accompanied by degenerating conditions of work for the individual prostitutes, or at least that more and more women participated in the less privileged and more vulnerable sectors of the trade, including unlicensed prostitution of all types and the "modern" forms of disguised prostitution. This trend, combined with the growth of various distinct reform currents among for- eigners and Chinese in Shanghai, led to a series of loud, although largely ineffective, calls for the regulation or abolition of prosti- tution. The prostitute, in all her guises, became recognized as a social category and a social problem. But not until the early 1950s did the municipal government succeed in abolishing this particu- lar market in women.

NOTES

1. For a brief overview of changes in the city, see Honig (1986: 9-40). Pan Ling (1983) provides a useful synthesis of Shanghai guidebooks that deal primarily with the Repub- lican period.

2. Population of Greater Shanghai (includes foreign settlements)

1910 1,185,859 1930 3,112,250 1945 3,370,230 1946 3,830,039 1947 4,494,390

SOURCES: 1910, 1930: Luo Zhiru (1932: 21, Table 29). 1945-1947: Shanghai shi wenxian weiyuanhui (1948: 14, 16, 18).

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Hershatter / SHANGHAI PROSTITUTION, 18 70-1949 495

3. Available statistics on the occupational structure of Shanghai do not permit a complete portrait of the sexual division of labor. According to statistics collected by the municipal government of Greater Shanghai (that is, excluding the foreign settlements), Shanghai's population went from 1.7 million in 1930 to 1.8 million in 1931 to almost 1.6 million in 1932. Of these residents, approximately one-fifth were classified as industrial workers. Another one-fifth were in household service. The unemployed ac- counted for about 17-18%, farmers 11%, merchants 10%, and laborers some 6%. Of the remainder, approximately 10% were apprentices, servants, or miscellaneous, and the rest worked in education, government, the military, communications, the police, and various professions (Shanghai Civic Association, 1933: Population, 5, Table 6). It is not clear where (if anywhere) prostitutes were registered in these statistics; nor is it clear how different the configuration of occupations was in the International Settlement and the French Concession (Shanghai Civic Association, 1933: 5, Table 6).

Only in industry do we have comprehensive information on the position of women. Most women industrial workers were employed in the textile industry:

Adult Women Factory Laborers in Shanghai, 1928-1930

1928 1929 1930 1946

Total no. women in factories 126,795 173,432 148,188 54,508 Total no. women in textiles 113,540 152,340 145,117 46,350 Textile % as % of total women workers 90% 88% 98% 85% Total women as % of total workers 57% 61% 47% 66%

SOURCE: 1928-1930, Shanghai Civic Association (1933: Labor, 1, Table 1); for 1929, also see Shanghai Bureau of Social Affairs (1929); 1946, derived from Shanghai shehuiju (1946), cited in Honig (1986: 24-25).

4. Honig (1986: 24-25) gives the total number of female industrial workers in Shanghai as 173,432 in 1929. Of these, the largest number (84,270) were employed in cotton spinning. Of 54,508 women workers counted in 1946, 35,306 were cotton spinners.

5. Foreign prostitutes in Shanghai are the subject of a vast literature, including the 1932 League of Nations Report on Traffic in Women and Children in the Far East and an array of accounts by travelers and reformers. See, for instance, Champly (1934), De Leeuw (1933: 114-145), Crad (1940: 134-145) (an account cribbed from De Leeuw), and, for a modern summary, Chou (1971: 104-105, 112-113). Although these women were an important part of the sexual service market in Shanghai, their experience is beyond the scope of this essay's analysis.

6. The language of respectability is used with caution here. Virtually nothing is known about twentieth-century peasant attitudes toward selling female family members into prostitution. Was it regarded as shameful? If the women, or their families, felt shame, was it because selling a daughter to a brothel was a sign of poverty or because moral considerations intervened? This question prompts others: Did peasant communities re- gard such a sale as a practical decision made under economic duress with no stigma attached? Did the fact that one daughter had been sold into prostitution prejudice the marriage prospects of other daughters, or of sons? If morality figured into the decision, then what sort of moral discourse was created? How did it differ from elite moral discourse, and from the discourse of social purity being generated by Western reformers in the treaty ports? Although these questions are currently unanswerable, Susan Mann's research on pariah communities in Qing society reminds us that the descendants of

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debased (jian) people, including prostitutes, were legally discriminated against as late as 1821 (Mann, 1988). How these legal proscriptions affected poor peasant life and thought remains to be investigated.

7. Research on the effectiveness of tadpoles as an oral contraceptive was conducted in China in 1957. In one Zhejiang study, women swallowed 24 and 20 live tadpoles on two successive days shortly after their periods. The experiment was not a success; within four months, 43% of the women became pregnant, while the consumption of tadpoles may have exposed them to parasitic diseases. In 1958, tadpoles were "officially declared to have no contraceptive value" (Tien, 1973: 249-251).

8. As one former prostitute mused bitterly, "No, there was never one who wanted to buy me out and marry me. That only happened in novels.... I was riddled with disease. I had syphilis and I was a heroin addict. No one would have wanted me for a wife" (Zhang and Sang, 1987: 32).

9. For a fuller discussion of Shanghai prostitutes and the language of commodifica- tion, see Gail Hershatter, "Prostitution and the Market in Women in Early Twentieth- Century Shanghai," in Watson and Ebrey (forthcoming).

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