I started rambling on about how much this city’s changed
over the past two years, then I got bored and figured if I get bored writing it
then the poor reader is is gonna be falling asleep. So how did I get from a city’s development to
the title above you ask?
It is worth noting that this tiny town has changed
enormously since I’ve been here. Certain things I expected; like more apartment
blocks and schools with the ever increasing population. Then there’s a few more
western shops and restaurants due to the influx of international business men
who stay here for a day or two. Then
there’s a few things that I didn’t really expect; the rise in brothels being
one of them.
In a previous post I stated that I wasn’t aware of any
brothels in Tongling, as the deeds are done in KTV instead. I retract that
statement.
I live a full 100m from my school, just around the corner
are seven hair salons which become brothels as the streetlights turn on. This
is one of the busiest roads in the school area, so I walk it almost every day
and hadn’t really noticed anything particularly strange (by Chinese standards)
about the hair salons. Until I got taken for a banquet in the red light district,
as you do.
This was the banquet in which I got compared to Margaret
Thatcher, while getting spewed upon by a teenager. It was in a dingy sidestreet
with women sitting in the windows of numerous salons. In any other country I
would have guessed this was the naughty district, but this is China, the same
rules don’t apply. This is the country where middle aged women sell certain
battery operated, pleasure inducing devices from a boxes placed between a few
dozen boxes of tomatoes. Where cucumbers are injected with contraceptive drugs
to make sure they stay green. I quit trying to get my head around this nation a
long time ago.
Back to the point. Baijiu>tongues start
loosening>”hairdressers are brothels”
Over time I started becoming more aware of said establishments
and realised that they’re dotted all around this city. I once pointed out that
I was surprised at how many male hairdressers there were in China, because of
the stereotype we attach to male hairdressers in the UK. My colleague replied
with “boys cut good people’s hair, women cut bad men’s hair”.
This next part is deeper than I intended, but I’m midway
through a rant. Skip it if you don’t want to slit your wrists.
Brothels are vile. I hate the thought of disgusting old men
paying for sex (or having sex at all for that matter), I hate the fact that
women from poor rural areas are driven to spread their legs for cash by their
family’s financial situation, in a country which boasts about its booming
economy. I hate the fact that their family allows them to do this. I hate the
fact that these “customers” essentially own these women for an allotted amount
of time and can do anything they please to these women. I have seen so many
women dragged out of these brothels by their elbows and pushed into a car, with
policemen sitting on their motorbikes watching the whole thing. I’ve seen a
policeman leaving a brothel, he didn’t seem too distressed so I’m gonna go
ahead and assume that his handcuffs weren’t used to make an arrest.
What I hate most is that many of these women aren’t actually
women (this isn’t Thailand, they are all female), they’re teenage girls whose
parents can’t afford to send them to high school, instead they send them to a
city to make a bit of cash. I got taken to KTV a few months ago and one of the
“princesses” started speaking English to me. With my broken Chinese and her
broken English I learnt that she was 15 years old, from a village in a nearby
province, who gave her parents all the money to look after her younger brother.
She sees her family for 1 week once a year. Boast about that China!
Rant over.
These brothels would explain why there are so many men with
god awful haircuts around the city. “I’ll have a number 2 on top, 1 on the
sides and a 69 in the back when you’re done”.
High/low lights of the week:
Saw a kid eat his own excrement.
Got serenaded by a guy and his guitar in a coffee shop, then
watched the guy get escorted out by the boss.
Nailed a racism lesson and finally got a student to say he
hated Obama for a reason other than “because he’s black”
Ate this:
