A woman is questioned by police at an entertainment center in Beijing. Prostitution is branching out onto college campuses and moving into private residential compounds. (China Photos Via Getty Images)
Posted on 08/04/2007 8:18:54 PM PDT by JACKRUSSELL
BEIJING -- The 22-year-old was a freelance prostitute. Henna-haired, eyebrows painted and dressed no differently than a college student, she moved from beauty salon to beauty salon, taking calls on her mobile phone from salon managers when they couldn't find enough girls for all their customers.
She said she wasn't as well paid as call girls in some of Beijing's toniest hotels. Nor was she as poor as the women on construction sites, who sometimes service scores of migrant workers a night for barely more than $1 per customer. Two years ago, when she worked in her native Shandong province, she charged $27 for a session.
By the time she came to Beijing last June, the market price for women like her was $20. With a couple of customers a day, she could make $1,350 a month, save most of her earnings and still send money home, she said. But now, because of increased competition from younger workers newly arrived from the countryside, her price has dropped to $13.
"I'm getting older," she said over a simple dinner of vegetables and spicy chicken in a Beijing suburb, a slim gold ring on each middle finger. "Though the price has gone down, the number of customers is up. I used to receive two visitors before, and now I have three to four a day. My income is the same, I just have to work a little harder."
No longer limited to well-known bars or a growing number of karaoke parlors, prostitutes are everywhere in China today, branching out onto college campuses, moving into private residential compounds and approaching customers on mobile phone networks.
Most are from the countryside: rural women placing all their hopes for the future in China's increasingly competitive urban centers. Some entering the trade are older than those......
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
A woman is questioned by police at an entertainment center in Beijing. Prostitution is branching out onto college campuses and moving into private residential compounds. (China Photos Via Getty Images)
A mission for Chinese Christians? They're growing by the day too. I'd bet by greater numbers.
The oldest profession is being God. Prostitution falls third or fourth on the list.
She must be kind to bill clintoon.
"Though the price has gone down, the number of customers is up. I used to receive two visitors before, and now I have three to four a day. My income is the same, I just have to work a little harder."
Kind=kin
I suspect this is related to drug-taking.
They have a gender imbalance - more males than females and thus more prostitution.
How about a little fortune nookie?
Truth or fiction? You decide...
Yeah, sure.
btfl
From the outside, we see the industrialisation in China as a positive with no negatives, but the reality is that the rapid industrialization also creates an unstable job market, with a lot of people finding they no longer have the skills or education to get jobs. Add in the new upper classes in China that do have money, plus foreign tourists with money, and its not surprising that prostitution is exploding.
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