Police Raid Entertainment Center In Beijing (Photo : Getty Images)
Even if her grandmother was sold as a young girl to a brothel to be a prostitute, Chinese author Lijia Zhang favors the legalization of China’s sex trade. Her grandmother, before she died, shared her story of being treated as a commodity as a “flower girl.”
While all brothels were shuttered and prostitutes were reformed after the Communists seized power in China in 1949, the sex trade returned during the reform era. Women once more were used as bribes for the wheels of business negotiation to move forward, Caixin reported.
Grandmother’s Story
Inspired by her grandmother’s account, Lijia Zhang, who used to be a worker in a munitions factory but secretly studied English to rise in life, wrote the novel “Lotus.” The novel follows the Sichuan woman Lotus who works as sex trade worker in a Shenzhen massage parlor.
To write her book, Lijia Zhang interviewed a lot of Chinese prostitutes whom she insisted are real people. She wants reader to be exposed to the reality about the sex trade in China that many women enter the profession by personal choice, although like other careers, the sex trade has drawbacks. She cited the case of a sex trade worker who was killed and when authorities searched her house, they discovered 200,000 yuan ($29,000) cash hidden in her apartment.
Wealth & Prostitution in China
She explained the growth of the sex trade industry in China to the increasing wealth, the relaxed social control and individual personal freedom, and China’s mobile population. Lijia Zhang added that China’s concubine culture has a big role in why the sex trade industry is a big industry in China.
“Men used to keep concubines and mistresses as a way to show prestige, and they still do the same. The growing wealth gap between urban men and rural women really magnifies this,” she pointed out, Asia Society reported.
