Selling Sex Overseas: Chinese Women and the Realities of Prostitution and Global Sex Trafficking

5. The Sex Markets

118 > 119 • On the street. In this venue, a woman solicits business on the street, and then provides sexual services in her apartment, or a nearby hotel, or at the customer ’s place. A Chinese woman working overseas is unlikely to engage in specific sexual transactions in a public place, a car, or outdoors because of the fear of detection and arrest. Although being a streetwalker is by definition being publicly exposed, a woman must be very careful and subtle in soliciting customers so as not to attract unwanted attention. We found streetwalkers to be most likely in the streets of old residential areas of Hong Kong and Macau, and in the Chinatowns of Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. • Restaurants and other public places. Here a woman solicits customers in a restaurant, a tea shop, a bar, or a food court by approaching men and asking them if they want her companionship. While drinking or eating, the woman plays the role of a hostess and tries to create a lively and pleasant atmosphere. Paid sex after the drink or the meal may or may not follow, but the woman receives or expects to receive a tip in any event. This form of approach occurs especially in the restaurants and tea shops in the red-light district of Singapore, at a food court in Kuala Lumpur, and in the Chinatown of Bangkok. • Hotels. A woman rents a hotel room, solicits business in the hotel lobby, and then sells sex in her room. Neither the women nor the hotel management advertise the availability of sex services. Instead, through word of mouth, local people (and in some places repeat foreign visitors) know which hotels to go to if they want to buy sex. This is the kind of street knowledge (knowing where commercial sex is available) to which we referred earlier, and it is a critical link in the demand/supply chain. In this type of arrangement, there are no formal agreements between the hotel management and the women. In essence, hotel management cares only that the women pay for their room; beyond that the women are free to work as they please. Although somewhat similar to the home-based women (to be discussed later), the hotelbased women do not have as much autonomy. This particular kind of hotelbased commercial sex is particularly prevalent in certain hotels in Macau and Malaysia. • At home. A woman rents a place (an apartment, a townhouse, or a singlefamily house), advertises her business in a newspaper or on the internet, answers the phone herself, and provides sexual services in her home. Unlike the independent street prostitutes mentioned above, she does not venture out of her place to seek clients. She takes care of every aspect of her business herself , and her only major expense is the rent and advertisement fee. This type of business is called a “one-woman apartment” in Hong Kong, a “house” in Los Angeles, and an “apartment” in New York. 120 > 121 services. Chinese women are most likely to work in this fashion in nightclubs in Malaysia and Indonesia, in nightclubs and KTV lounges in Singapore, and in the flower halls in Thailand. The saunas or spas are places where men go to have a bath, a sauna, and a massage; but most men want to buy sex as well. The size of the establishment and the prices they charge vary significantly. Some massage parlors in New York may have only two female workers at any given time, whereas the saunas in Macau and the spas in Jakarta might have more than a hundred. Prices can range from $50 to $250 per visit. The massage parlors are actually usually a simpler and smaller version of the sauna or spa. A customer can take a bath and have a massage in one of these parlors, but he can also buy sex if he wants. The massage parlors have only a few women, and the facilities are usually sparsely decorated and furnished. The brothels, apartments, or houses, unlike the venues described above, do not provide any entertainment or massages. Their only commodity is sex. And unlike the self-employed, home-based brothels, these locations normally have two or more women working at any given time. This particular form is called a malan (horse barn) or brothel in Hong Kong and Macau, an apartment in New York, a house in Los Angeles, and a falang...