Sex work in China’s Pearl River Delta: Accumulating sexual capital as a life-advancement strategy

Abstract

We develop the concept of sexual capital through examining cases of female sex workers (referred to as xiaojies in Chinese) in the Pearl River Delta, a highly industrialized region of south China. We explore the properties of sexual capital and the conditions that allow them to function. Xiaojies employ sexual and body practices to develop different ‘currencies’: those of bodily beauty; sexual values, knowledge, practices and skills; performance (entertainment and gender performance); and sexual and emotional sophistication – in exchange for economic, social and cultural capital. However, even if sexual capital fails to be converted to the social and economic capital needed for achieving desired goals, these women experience a self-transformation, from rural country girls into sexy, modern and urban women. Such sexual capital is essential for xiaojies who do not have many other resources and are constantly subject to regulations concerning rural migrants and prostitution. This is not only about ‘guanxi’ (social capital, social connections with others) and social network, which were considered essential in earlier studies, but also about self-esteem, emotional capacity, cognitive understanding of life and so on. Sexual capital involves the capacity for sexual expression and developing a new relationship with oneself, and has emotional significance, in addition to its potential for acquiring social and economic capital.

Keywords

Agency desire emotional domain of gender studies sexual capital sex worker

Introduction

This article is based on ethnographic research with 23 xiaojies from 2005 to 2008 in the Pearl River Delta area (PRD), South China. It discusses how the women develop and mobilize their sexual capital, using their bodies and sexual practices to constitute themselves as erotic/sexual, urban and modern subjects. Most are rural migrants to a highly industrialized and developed region, who possess very few resources and have low social status.

In mainland China today, the rapid economic development, the growing gaps within China, and unprecedented inland–coastal migration have created a social milieu that sustains and promotes prostitution. The prohibition policy triggers constant police ‘crackdowns’, causing prostitution to become more concealed and diversified. However, increasing popular tolerance of prostitution and advocates for decriminalization/legalization have emerged, creating new spaces for, and new forms of, prostitution.

We identify four major ‘clusters’ of viewpoints in Chinese prostitution literature, informed by different ideological stances: (1) moralistic viewpoints that regard these women as immoral and prostitution as a ‘residue of capitalism’ (XC Huang, 2001) (2) medical-centred viewpoints that treat the women as either sexually promiscuous or health research subjects in need of education (Mo et al., 2005: 228); (3) first-wave feminist and sociological viewpoints that consider them victims of Chinese patriarchal culture and gender inequality, and prostitution a form of oppression (YQ Huang, 2001); and (4) the liberal feminist ‘sex work’ standpoint that advocates decriminalization of prostitution and legal rights for ‘sex workers’ (Li, 2003; Pan, et al., 2005a, 2005b, 2005c).

There have always been academic tensions regarding whether prostitution is a kind of work. For scholars with an elimination view, prostitution is capitalist decay; for those who advocate ‘sex work’ it is just another form of wage labour, driven by material need. The ‘sex work’ standpoint, taken by scholars such as Li Yinhe and Pan Suiming, permits us to respect the women’s free will and to advocate their right to labour and legal identity. However, there is a gap between academic efforts and the women’s own understandings – while the former open up an avenue that will (hopefully) lead to social recognition and legal rights, the women do not see this as the most relevant means to improve their lives. The women in our study did not want to be considered, or to consider themselves, immoral, or sexual victims, but neither did they want to be called ‘sex workers’. They preferred the term ‘xiaojie’, a respectful way to address wealthy young unmarried women since ancient times in China (Cihai, 1985: 1108¹) that remained appropriate for addressing urban women after China’s economic reform, although the term is now used mainly to refer to prostitute women. According to their narratives, there are multiple dimensions to what they do, and so ‘sex worker’ is too stigmatizing, as prostitution is illegal in China. ‘Xiaojie’ has the connotations of ‘youthfulness’ and ‘urbanity’ that the women desire. We identify this as their de-stigmatizing gender strategy, as does Kong (2009) in his study on male sex workers in Hong Kong.

Most previous literature neglects the multiple realities of women involved in prostitution, ignoring (1) how they identify themselves and perform their identities; (2) other motivations besides economic ones for entering the industry, including desires for escape from rural boredom and marital relationships, pleasure, urban lifestyle, broader social networks, social advancement and so forth; (3) the stigma attached to ‘sex worker’ and the women’s own attitudes towards what they do; and (4) how the naming issue may reflect rural women’s desires to be sexual, modern and urban subjects. The many facets of these women’s lives intertwine to affect their self-perception and their ideas of work, and these facets should be related to China’s rural–urban migration and to the changing nature of commercial sexual markets in the PRD. We found that accepting prostitution as a kind of work may misrepresent the women’s needs and desires (Ding and Ho, 2008; Jeffreys, 2004).

Kong suggests going beyond ‘sex worker’ and ‘sexual victim’ debates and viewing sex workers as ‘persons’ first (2006: 413). His ‘women-centred lived-experience feminist approach’ draws attention to their everyday lives and self-practices, where ‘micro resistance’ (2006: 428) takes place. Pan and his colleagues hold a similar view, depicting the women as ‘troubled young women’, counteracting heavily moralistic popular and official views in China (Huang and Pan, 2003). This is an important start for returning to everyday life experience, as the women have ‘little intention to confront the law directly or to organize any kind of visible and confrontational labour movement’ (Kong, 2006: 426), for exploring how agency is expressed in specific contexts and life spaces, and for understanding how the women as agents understand their life paths and choices.

Many scholars studying Chinese prostitution take agency as a key issue (YY Huang, 2004; Kong, 2006, 2009; Pan, et al., 2005a; Zheng, 2003, 2007). However, it is important to contextualize the issue within China’s unprecedented population migration and sharp urban–rural divide (Zheng, 2003, 2007), in order to better understand the material and non-material aspects of the women’s desires. Zheng‘s point about bar hostesses ‘converting economic power and guanxi with clients to cultural legitimacy and first-class citizenship’ (Zheng, 2007: 112) is relevant for this article. Zheng presents stories of bar hostesses gaining ‘cultural legitimacy’ – travel opportunities, marriage, further education, business investment and job opportunities, physical mobility and first-class citizenship (2007: 112–114). She thus illustrates what bar hostesses may gain, but does not explain how the conversion process works – how and what they exchange, and to what extent they can achieve their goals. As our cases show, direct exchange of sex for money is not easy in the highly developed sex industry in south China. The conversion requires ‘currencies’. How does the exchange for clients’ resources (2007) take place? The process is not always smooth and successful under China’s prostitution-unfriendly policy and stringent household registration system that creates difficult barriers for rural migrants.

What women desire is important, because the way they imagine and strategize the desirable affects their exercise of agency. Here we explore xiaojies’ desire and agency in their everyday lives, employing the concept of sexual capital (Farrer, 2010) and the language of desire (Cameron and Kulick, 2003; Rofel, 2007; Tsang and Ho, 2007). Earning money is not the xiaojies’ only concern. With very limited economic, social and cultural capital, sexual capital is essential for their self-relocation. New gender images, femininities and self-evaluations are produced through the accumulation of sexual capital. Even if exchanges are unsuccessful and the women do not achieve substantial citizenship rights (urban residency, social and medical insurance, etc.), as is usually the case, they experience self-constitution and self-sufficiency in the attempt. Sexual capital is not only about guanxi (Bian, 2006; Lin, 2001; Zheng, 2007) and capacity for exchange (Farrer, 2010), but also about the capacity for sexual expression, cognitive understanding of life, self-esteem and so on. It involves a relationship with oneself, has emotional significance, and has practical implications, as it can enable women to develop the social and economic capital they need. This accumulation of sexual capital involves agency. We attempt to map the properties of sexual capital, and how the xiaojies utilize them for life advancement.

Female migrants and prostitution in the Pearl River Delta

Our research took place in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Dongguan, the core of the PRD, south coastal China, where the post-1978 economic opening-up was first implemented. These cities and Hong Kong are connected by high speed trains and highways. Their proximity to Macau, Taiwan and parts of Southeast Asia, together with preferential government policies, have brought them unique economic development. Today the PRD is the most affluent area of China, attracting 32.82 million rural migrant workers (nongmin gong) to work in its factories and service industry according to the 2009 statistics (Report on Rural Migrant Workers, 2009). More than 60% of these migrants were women (Xia, 2007). Female migrants are more popular in the PRD than male workers because they are strong, hard-working and obedient. They enter factories producing consumer goods or the service industry in Guangdong through labour recruitment, personal or kinship networks, or word-of-mouth.

Although female migrants have supplied the main labour force driving Guangdong’s economic development, they are more marginalized than their male counterparts. Many enterprises regulate workers’ identities, sexuality and labour, making workers cheap and disposable (Pan, et al., 2005c; Pun, 2005). Many women are concentrated in unskilled, labour-intensive, low-paying factories and service industries, for monthly salaries of 600–700 yuan, which has remained largely unchanged since 1990 (Zhang, 2001). Migrant workers are thus ‘stuck’ between their own lives and modern China, neither attached to traditional rural values nor able to fully embrace the ‘individualistic and consumerist romance in capitalism’ (Ma and Cheng, 2005: 310). The ‘work hard and be successful’ discourse comes from the state’s developmentalist propaganda more than from the perspectives of the migrants themselves, thus making their experience ‘subterranean’. This propaganda suppresses migrants’ voices and becomes hegemonic.

Apart from employment-related disadvantages, rural migrants experience institutional discrimination caused by China’s complex household registration system (hukou in Chinese). The hukou system was introduced in 1958, to control population movement between rural and urban areas because of resource shortages and the ideology of the planned economy. Every family’s hukou booklet contains all information about the family members. The system categorizes people according to place of origin – people born in urban areas have urban hukou, those born in rural areas hold rural hukou. Rural and urban residents are subject to different arrangements regarding health care, retirement, education, employment, child care and so on. Until 1978, people were, basically, to stay in the area where they were born. Although they could travel, they generally had no access to jobs, public services, health services, education, or even food in other places – for example, even with money to buy food, one was not able to do so without a local hukou. To move hukou from one place to another was difficult, and especially to move hukou from a rural place to a city. Since 1978 the hukou system has been criticized for severely hindering regional development and violating citizenship rights, so that hukou restrictions are not enforced as strictly as before, making it possible for many migrants to leave rural villages and go to cities to seek jobs. However, there are still many restrictions on welfare and citizen rights for people holding rural hukou who live in the cities (Chen and Qiao, 2002; YQ Huang, 2001). Without local hukou, migrants are deprived of medical insurance and many job opportunities. Usually their children must stay in their rural hometowns, since very few schools will accept migrant children without local hukou. Migrants must hold Temporary Living Permits to live in the cities, and are subject to constant checks and sometimes insults by the police.

Despite these difficulties, rural people go to the cities to try their luck, since their rural lives are difficult and perhaps even desperate. Among our 23 interviewees, 21 were migrants from less-developed provinces; one was from suburban Shanghai and one from north Guangdong. Only two held urban hukou from small towns; the others were from rural areas. Most had finished, or dropped out of, middle school at 14 or 15. When they came to the cities their families’ annual incomes were mostly under 3000 RMB (approximately $US 400), and some were too poor even to pay electricity bills of just a few RMB.

The cities fail to provide migrants with safe, stable and rewarding working and living environments, and limit the substantial citizenship rights and welfare benefits that they desire. Their desires to be urban and modern largely fail under this employment regimen. With few skills and little education, they find it hard to compete with those who have such resources.

The sex industry employs many otherwise unemployed females, including those disillusioned with factory work, for whom entering the sex industry seems a reasonable option. Such self-employment is popular. Many women enter the industry to satisfy various desires – to acquire bodily beauty, establish social relations, have sexual and romantic encounters and become sexually and emotionally sophisticated, attain urban lifestyles, see ‘the outside world’ and so forth.

Prostitution in the contemporary PRD is a product of the intensive economic development, market economy, cultural exchange with Hong Kong and Taiwan, and inter-city migration since the opening-up reform (Ziteng, 2000). The sex market is highly developed and complex. Hotels, massage parlours, leisure centres, saunas, karaokes, hair salons, nightclubs, restaurants and bars may provide sexual services, in different forms. The hierarchy of sex work according to income, working conditions and work stability ranges from street women at the bottom; through home-workers/freelancers, hair-salon girls, call girls, massage girls, hotel sex providers, leisure centre/karaoke bar girls; to nightclub girls at the top. ‘Red-light districts’ in Shenzhen and Dongguan provide all sorts of entertainment sites which operate around the clock, following the pace of the people working and living in the districts.

Xiaojies are usually recruited through informal networks among people from the same villages. Pimps and mamasans² bring in new girls regularly. In Shazui, a notorious ‘erotic centre’ (yin wo) or ‘human flesh market’ (renrou shichang) in Shenzhen, at the time of fieldwork, there were almost 1000 night entertainment businesses, which regularly attracted several thousand Hong Kongese to cross the border nightly. More than 20,000 xiaojies, mamasans, pimps, gang members and drug dealers were living there, forming a closely-knit network. Local police and officials, together with criminal organizations, formed a protective umbrella for this entertainment industry (Zhang and Chin, 2008).

Many sex businesses, especially indoor sites such as nightclubs, hair salons, massage parlours and leisure centres, have strict requirements concerning the women’s ages, physical appearance and skills, as there are many candidates and fierce competition. Xiaojies cannot earn money simply by providing sex, but must integrate non-sexual practices into their services, and these sometimes constitute the major part of what they do. These include chatting, ‘rent-a-girlfriend’ services, performance and entertainment for customers (e.g. singing, dancing, gambling), drinking, smoking and frequent drug use. They rely on different personal abilities to stand out among the others, many of whom possess youth, beauty and physical vigour.

However, as prostitution is illegal, it stigmatizes those involved as immoral (Pan, 2005a). Large-scale police raids have been conducted, rendering the women jobless, homeless and even criminal. Constant police crackdowns since the Asian Games have forced some xiaojies to do business in a concealed way. Xiaojies have few resources generated by formal work experiences and are without job-related identities, and so are identified as prostitutes. In addition, they are stigmatized as rural–urban migrant women, without resources of social class, education, social network or economic background, and are often without basic residency rights to such things as health care, retirement, housing, child care and children’s education.

Sexual capital: Resource of power

In his recent article, Farrer constructs the sexual field in contemporary China as an independent arena partly autonomous from other social fields (2010: 76) that deserves new attention concerning the capital it yields. Discussions of sexual capital usually centre around two perspectives – the sociological perspective based on Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory, and the economistic perspective based on Gary Becker’s human capital theory (Farrer, 2010). Farrer combined these two perspectives to construct a Bourdieuian sexual field within which individual actors make strategic choices to invest in different forms of human capital to maximize returns (2010: 76). He adopts the sociological definition of sexual capital as ‘a person’s resources, competencies and endowments that provide status as sexual agents within a field’ (2010: 75). Focusing on political economy, Farrer argues that sexual capital yielded in the ‘ethnosexual frontier’ between white western men and Chinese women in contemporary Shanghai is ‘alien’ – not only because it is ‘foreign and racialized’, but also because of its psychologically and socially estranging nature (Farrer, 2010: 75–76). This is especially represented in those ‘compulsive and instrumental sexual activities’, which in a Marxian sense resemble the alienating capitalist production and consumption process (2010).

Farrer focuses on the historical process that yields a specific form of sexual capital – that which involves western men and Chinese women’s sexual experiences in relation to the men’s changing social and cultural status, and in relation to China’s changing field of interracial relations since the beginning of the opening and reforming years. How the people involved are motivated to participate in these sexual activities, what they invest and gain from such relationships, and how they are satisfied/fulfilled, are still not quite clear. In this article we try to elaborate on these questions, looking at the ‘properties’ or elements of sexual capital and how people utilize it to achieve their dreams.

There have been numerous stereotypes of, and prejudices against, Chinese rural women (Zheng, 2007: 94–101), who are seen as conservative, passive, old fashioned, ugly, oversized, ignorant of the world – and at the same time as sexually dangerous, promiscuous, fertile, unreasonable and stubborn. In the face of multiple layers of discrimination and subjection, xiaojies find it difficult to anchor themselves in urban life, catch up with urbanites in life quality and realize desires to be sexual, urban and modern through factory work and marriage. Class differences are related to this urban–rural discrepancy.

The xiaojies in our study relied heavily on their bodies, gender performances and sex skills developed in their sex industry jobs to build clienteles, accumulate other resources needed for survival and social mobility, and to constitute themselves as urban, modern and sexual subjects. For them, sexual status, informed by social stratification, is closely related to economic, social and cultural status. This shows some differences from the construction of interracial sexual capital, where sexual status is rather independent of other status (Farrer, 2010).

Exchanging sexual capital for other types of capital is rendered difficult by class differences. Material or other substantial benefits like social welfare and recognition seem less important to them than emotional satisfaction and self-indulgence. Sexuality can yield self-esteem and pleasure, as well as have symbolic and practical value. It reflects one’s relationship with oneself, and is important especially for those with lower-middle-class backgrounds who have nothing but themselves as capital. Our analysis of sexual capital thus concerns ‘other resources of power’ (Jankowiak, 2006: 314) – the aesthetics of emotion, desire, future aspiration, love, eroticism, self-indulgence, self-fulfilment and so on – and not just the social power often discussed in the post-structuralist/identity/cultural hegemony framework in most literature on Chinese gender and sexuality, and especially in research on female sex workers.

Sexual capital: The ‘currencies’

The currencies of xiaojies’ sexual capital include: (1) bodily beauty, including dress and style; (2) sexual values, knowledge, practices and skills; (3) entertaining skills and gender performance; and (4) sexual and emotional sophistication. These currencies are exchanged for broader social connections, the benefits of urban life, and self-esteem, emotional capacity and cognitive understanding of life. In the women’s everyday practices, these currencies are mixed, as they combine different currencies to create desired gender images.

Bodily beauty as currency

Xiaojies pay much attention to their bodies and appearance, especially those working in nightclubs, hotels and karaoke bars. Appearance management is common for urban young women, but for xiaojies it has greater symbolic meaning. Skin and clothes are symbols of modernity and urbanity, or the lack of it, as they indicate class and social differences (Zheng, 2003: 157–158).

Fair complexion is a near-universal preference of Asian women, and a stereotypical indicator of youth, preferred by most clients. The favourite skin and body care products for xiaojies in our study are whitening moisturizer, facial and body mask, and body scrub. Other basic beautification items include fake eyelashes, fake nails, wonder-bra/bra accessories, high heels, trendy wigs, mini-skirts and revealing tops. Some of these items are stereotypical of prostitutes’ sartorial style, but xiaojies consider them part of the proper work outfit at entertainment sites.

One of us, Ding, visited a xiaojies’ apartment one evening wearing a cute floral dress. One xiaojie suggested she go to the nightclub with them. They dressed up and applied makeup, exchanging ideas of what to wear and the images they would present that night. After an hour, they had turned into sexy xiaojies. Together they set off to the nightclub. Ding was brought into the waiting lounge, which is not open to outsiders. There the xiaojies told her many nightclub rules concerning one’s appearance and body. For example, they were not allowed to wear jeans and would be fined if they did so, as jeans were not ‘proper’. The taller and prettier xiaojies were categorized as ‘models’ and could earn more money.

Ding, before the mamasan saw her, followed the xiaojies into a private room for clients. They lined up in front of two male clients to be ‘picked up’. Ding was much shorter than the others. She felt her face must look pale in the dim light, which made the heavy makeup on the other girls’ faces appear attractive and natural. She felt ‘defeated’ because the others had larger breasts and shapely hips. Although her floral dress looked good in everyday settings, it did not earn her any credit at the nightclub. She had no idea that handbags were not allowed in these private rooms, and one of the male clients joked that she was ‘the one collecting tips’ (with the handbag). Soon she was driven out of the room by the mamasan. She realized that she lacked three things – high heels, wonder-bra and makeup – and these and the handbag indicated her ignorance of the nightclub’s rules. With these essential items the xiaojies appeared sexy and feminine, and more likely to be chosen by clients.

Xiaojies spend a lot on clothes and cosmetics. For women working in indoor settings, this investment, plus their rent, usually takes up most of their monthly incomes. Wen, a 23-year-old nightclub xiaojie from rural Sichuan, spent over 10,000 RMB in her first three months of work on clothes and cosmetics – more than three years’ income for the average person in her village. Xiaojies consider this expenditure necessary, as it may bring them incomes as high as 10,000 a month.³ However, xiaojies not only purchase for work but also to make themselves pretty, happy and confident, counteracting the negative emotions caused by discrimination. Appearance management brings pleasant feelings and aesthetic satisfaction at symbolically entering modernity.

Sexual values, knowledge, practices and skills as currency

Zhenjie, 41, was the oldest of our informants. Her marital and extramarital experience is typical of the married xiaojies in our study. She married a fellow villager at 19, and then faced many difficulties and extreme poverty, and could never gain support from her husband and in-law family. At one point they could not even pay their electricity bill. A female friend persuaded her to go to Guangdong and begin life as a xiaojie. This was not an easy decision for a 26-year-old wife in a traditional Chinese rural village, but life had taught her to grasp any chance to try different things. She had ‘been doing this for 15 years and (had) never taken up other jobs’. She was quite clear about what she wanted to do – to earn more money and to ‘know whether [she] could have some fun’. She thinks of herself as ‘clever and nice’, and not to be ‘wasted in such a relationship with a not-so-desirable husband’.

Zhenjie sent money, decorations and new appliances home regularly to build the family house, but her husband and in-law family expected still more. Once she returned home with 6000 RMB, but her husband only cooked hot pepper soup for her without any chicken or meat. She complained,

So long as you bring money home, he won’t say anything. He stays at home playing mahjong, playing cards, and playing with women … He didn’t recognize my work and my efforts, didn’t think about my raising the two children and letting them go to school, didn’t mention the pretty house I built, didn’t say that I treat his parents well … He didn’t give me any confirmation and recognition … Money, money, money!! They never speak of gratitude, never mention the emotional bond we have, and even the efforts I’ve made!

Although she hadn’t divorced her husband, thinking it unnecessary, she was lightening her role as wife and family breadwinner. She started to ‘enjoy life’ by drinking, smoking, betting on horse races and going to nightclubs. Occasionally she bought sex from young male prostitutes and enjoyed their ‘new sexual tricks’. It is very unusual and bold for a rural migrant xiaojie to express sexual desire, as she does in the following:

Whoever is good, whoever can let me feel happy and feel high, whoever can let me feel comfortable, I can pay him double price, I can play with him. I am also playful! You think only men can play with women? Who says that women cannot fool around with men?!

According to sex industry standards, she is ‘old’, but she is said to be very skilful and to know some tricks, like opening bottles and smoking with her vulva. Good interpersonal and sexual skills win her opportunities to perform, and bring her regular clients. She became a trainer for newcomers and earned a reputation across the region. Now a sexy urban whore, she said she was ‘having the second spring (di er chun)’⁴ and had ‘regain[ed] a kind of energy’, having released herself from the tough life in her rural village with her husband. For older xiaojies like her, sexual experience and skills become essential, as sexual sophistication is a strong capital that can sometimes win over youth.

In this case, the ‘good woman’ image was subverted by the ‘playful xiaojie’ tactic. Married xiaojies in our study resisted the stereotypes that women should marry early, be subdued and faithful wives, care for their children, be passive in sex, be monogamous and so forth. A playful xiaojie, since she is ‘playful and loose’, can take pride in her sexual skills, unconcerned that she may be regarded as promiscuous. Some such older xiaojies do not mind calling this ‘throwing a broken pot (po guanzi po shuai)’.⁵

Other married women’s stories suggest that extra-marital sex is not only the result of unhappy marriages, but may have to do with desires to explore the possibilities of intimacy, and to make life fresher and more interesting. These women claim that extra-marital sex usually brings them ‘youthfulness’, making them ‘feel virginal again’. In their ‘second spring’, their world becomes more open and fun. Some also think having an urban boyfriend, lover or male intimate is an urban, modern practice.

There were 17 single women in our research. Their outlooks on marriage varied. Some wanted to remain single; a few accepted marriage as an ultimate goal; the majority were uncertain whether or not to marry.

Ming, a 38-year-old mamasan from Hunan working for a Guangzhou nightclub, was in the ‘no marriage’ cohort. She had been a xiaojie since she was 20 and had worked in the nightclub business for over 15 years, on and off. She spoke Cantonese like a local. She was cheerful and lively, and her male clients were very fond of her. She and her clients were good friends and sometimes had casual sex. They might call each other ‘boyfriend’ and ‘girlfriend’, but they never had serious relationships. She liked to keep a certain distance from them, as involvement in any long-term relations with them would be too ‘troublesome and time consuming’.

Choosing to be single needs considerable courage and determination in contemporary China, although the traditional marriage culture is being challenged. Unmarried women in their late 20s are called ‘left-over women’ (sheng nv), and trigger off waves of discussion on the present marriage market. The word ‘left-over’ (sheng) implies a mainstream moral standard and portrays the women as incapable of managing lives and relations. Rural migrant xiaojies suffering from class, gender and occupational discriminations may find it more difficult to challenge marriage as the only proper/normative source of intimacy, and the priority in life. Most women in our study wanted to find honest and loving life-long companions, but found this difficult. Their jobs as xiaojies simultaneously encouraged and discouraged their pursuits of marriage. They were sceptical about long-term relationships through their insights from their jobs.

A change in women’s values and attitudes about intimate relationships is going on in China. News of multiple relations, extra-marital relations, enjoyable singlehood and other arrangements is spread by the mass media and gives them new ideas. These women feel that intimate relations should be built on solid ground, including such qualities as economic opportunity, future development, security – things not necessarily related to love and affection. Their experiences tell them that marriage may not be the best choice, making them more aware of what they can do with their own bodies and sexuality. This study finds that the female sex workers’ ‘instrumental purposes’ to commodify body and romance described by Zheng (2008) should often include a desire for self-security and independence, as Wen comments:

This is a ‘sense of self-security’ (ziwo anquan gan). It is not brought by a man who may be able to provide you with a house, or a period of comfortable life, or rewards in other forms, but comes from financial capacity, motherhood, the sense of self-achievement, and self-love.

We see intimate relationships as a ‘project of the self’ for the women. They have different understandings of intimate relationships at different stages of their lives. They are sexual/erotic subjects trying to transform themselves through intimate relationships and erotic practices. Not all xiaojies migrate for money – economic drive is, of course, a major factor, but our informants revealed other desires – to escape rural villages, familial and marital bonds; and become modern, young, sexy, urban and ‘virginal’; and to find greater personal opportunities. Although these longings sometimes seem more like fantasies than realizable futures, they nevertheless motivate them.

Entertaining, performance and sophistication as currency

Entertaining and performance skills are important value-adding possessions for xiaojies. Performance includes presenting different gender images to attract clients. However, they perform not only for clients, but also to embody the urban ideal – yet their status as xiaojies stigmatizes them. As rural migrants, they are discriminated against, yet some are able to make use of their migrant status to present innocent, obedient and persevering images that conform to the general ideas of rural women, to facilitate commercial exchange.

Bernstein has raised the concept of ‘bounded authenticity’ to describe the diverse services and experiences of sex workers in the new sex market. What the women sell is an integration of physical and emotional work (Bernstein, 2007). She found that the women manufacture and deliver a sense of pleasure and desire to their clients, making them feel good and even loved, but within a clear boundary. This bounded authenticity involves a process of ‘meditation’ and ‘magic arts’, and is an ‘expression of self meanings’ for middle-class sex workers (2007: 485–486), who ‘play upon’ genuine feelings and emotions to satisfy clients and themselves, and tend to aspire to a ‘single self’ (2007: 486).

The women in our study are not middle class, however. In their performances they play upon the non-sexual aspects of their jobs in catering to their clients’ needs, and to stand out from other xiaojies. We need to understand how they utilize different aspects of their lives to construct different ‘bounded-authentic’ femininities and self-images, to attract clients, and maximize their power and freedom sexually, socially, culturally and economically.

Miss He, our youngest informant, was 18, a call girl working in a big residential Guangzhou suburb. She went to clients’ houses in response to phone calls and provided massage and sex services. She gradually learned that acting shy and timid at the beginning of a transaction was good for negotiating prices and developing clients:

They like me being shy, especially when they ask whether I provide extra services. If I answer yes they may talk about price right away, and usually they set the price without letting me negotiate too much … But if I hesitate and pretend to be shy, they will be more interested in me. They will treat me as a little girl fresh out from the rural village. Some of them asked how old I am, what I did before coming here, how much I will ask for, and some asked me to call again if I had anything that needed their help. It’s so different!

In presenting herself as a shy and modest rural girl, Miss He would imply that she had had little or no sexual experience, but that she had a young, energetic body, and a pure, simple, obedient and passive character, thus making the stereotype of young rural women work as an advantage. Miss He had gained help from men to buy cell phones, see doctors and fix her apartment.

Chen Mei, 20, employed a different strategy. After breaking up with her boyfriend, she entered a nightclub in Shenzhen. She dyed her hair red, purple and blue; learned to smoke, drink, and use nightclub language within 10 days; and soon learned ‘basic sexual skills’, such as to take sexy postures and various sexual positions, perform blow jobs and so on. She thinks a club girl should be licentious. Although these are not seen as good or normal in general popular opinion, she took them as a way to ‘fit into the reality’. Her mamasan and the nightclub consider her proactive and introduce many clients to her.

Some xiaojies present themselves as rural–urban Januses, packaging themselves according to what can bring them benefits. Kong made a similar observation when he studied money boys who are rural migrants to cities in mainland China (Kong, 2010: 181). Although xiaojies look to the future and acquire urban knowledge and lifestyle, they may turn to their rural pasts to produce images of perseverance, adaptability and hard-working natures, thereby combining urbanity and rural ‘purity’ to produce attractive woman images.

Sometimes xiaojies may make violent scenes to gain respect from clients or self-esteem. Jing and Mei once fought with a client after Jing insisted the man follow the rules of the nightclub and take her out for any transactions beyond flirting, but he did not want to pay to do so. He kissed her and reached his hands to Jing’s lower body. Jing pushed him away, but he insulted her as ‘low class’ and ‘shameless’. Mei was there, and she called another mamasan. Together they pushed the man to the ground, punched his face and kicked him in the groin. Jing recalled the incident and said:

He said I am shameless, then I’ll let him know how shameless I am! He said I am low class, then I’ll show him I can fight! … Sometimes we need to show them how fierce we are to let them know we are not weak and not to be bullied!

Thus performing according to the xiaojie stereotype can be a way to exert power and gain respect, self-esteem, protection, status or material benefits.

Most xiaojies are in their early to mid 20s, especially those working indoors, yet they speak and think in more sophisticated ways than their age might suggest. ‘Dongshi’ (literally, ‘knowing things’ – knowing how to deal with various complicated relationships and recognizing one’s responsibilities) becomes an important quality. In the city, they develop new understandings of man–woman relationships, and to ‘keep some distance’, ‘position yourself at the right place’, ‘never try to love them (clients) too much’ and so forth. They consider openness in discussing sex part of ‘being sophisticated’ and ‘knowing more’. Sex, as connected with income, stability, personal development and opportunities, is ‘not something shameful and dirty’ to talk about. They must weigh things before making decisions, and need to ‘dongshi’ in order to establish their positions in the city.

Symbolic recognition and psychological satisfaction

With their resources of sexual capital, xiaojies may be able to make economic, cultural or social advances that are difficult or impossible for working-class women in factories or service industries as dagongmei. They live in apartments in the city centres, thereby enjoying symbolic urban membership, whereas dagongmei stay in crowded factory dorms in suburban areas. Their schedules are flexible, giving them greater autonomy than dagongmei, who may have to ask for permission to use the toilets. Earning at least five times as much as female migrant factory workers or waitresses, who earn around 1000 RMB monthly, makes them proud, especially when remitting money back home. They maintain urban lifestyle and wear fashionable clothes and make-up, and their relations and networks, new ideas on love and sex, and greater involvement with new technologies such as cell phones and the internet are all sources of satisfaction. However, desires to be sexualized, urban and modern are not explicit in their minds as life plans, but may only appear as vague dreams, subtle longings, unconscious motives, or simply wilful decisions.

Although the possibility of gaining urban hukou or social recognition is slim, the xiaojies think it worthwhile to see the urban world and experience its life, even superficially. To others, what they get by leaving home and family and entering the sex industry may seem superficial, irrational and economically unsound, and unworthy of pursuit. However, their move has symbolic significance for them. Although attaining social and legal recognition is difficult, symbolically recognizing themselves as ‘urban’ brings a kind of vanity or self-esteem that is pleasant.

There are negative factors in the xiaojies’ lives. The ‘stage’ on which they perform requires certain rituals like smoking, drinking and/or taking drugs. They inevitably encounter difficulties and dangers, such as irregular incomes, police checks, insults, robbery or even rape. They may alienate themselves from others because of their particular social milieu. Spending too much, becoming materialistic, being ‘loose’, ‘playful’ and ‘greedy’, are challenges to accepted social norms. They are exposed to male clients’ gazes and criticisms, and they appear promiscuous to outsiders. They hope to convert sexual capital into social, cultural and economic capital, but may not be able to lose their confining identity as rural migrants without social welfare or formal urban residency, and their identity as xiaojies without legal protection. The public may see them as both immoral and brainless (sacrificing too much for nothing). Thus their individual agency meets the structural constraints of the larger society, and if they cannot escape them they may become deeply entrenched in their unstable predicament. Thus their sexual capital is both enabling and alienating.

Conclusion: The domain of emotion and the language of desire

We have developed the concept of sexual capital among xiaojies to highlight the importance of the capacity for sexual expression, and argue that xiaojies employ sexual, bodily and other practices as ‘currencies’ to exchange for economic, cultural and social goods. This sexual capital is essential for actualizing their desires and for self-relocation within a changing Chinese society. It is created and accumulated (1) through xiaojies’ relationships within a particular social space; (2) through their relationships with others (clients, mamasans, husbands, boyfriends, etc.); and (3) by their relationships with themselves. The exchange of sexual capital helps to construct new social scripts by providing new narrative resources for identity construction.

When discussing agency, scholars mainly focus on people’s use of social resources accessed from certain social positions. Imagination, future aspiration and dreams are often neglected (Mahler and Pessar, 2001: 447). These latter resources may lead to ‘intangible actions’ that do not directly or necessarily lead to later actions (2001: 447). Yet they are important for explaining xiaojies’ choices to leave school, husbands and the mainstream employment regime in order to stay in the cities. How the emotional domain asserts great, often unnoticed, influence on people’s life choices is highly relevant in gender and sexuality research (Jankowiak, 2006: 319), and not to probe it leaves such research incomplete. It is important that we consider the non-material satisfactions that help xiaojies make sense of their choices to engage in sex work.

Women’s desires are influenced by the standards of society in general, and what they see as possible in their immediate environment. Modern accounting systems devote far more attention to money than to the other ‘currencies’ discussed in this article. Women may have different ‘takes’ on value, utility, and purchase and/or exchange in making life livable. We thus need to develop a logic of emotion to supplement economic logic in order to understand our life choices. We need to catch the ‘unconscious’, ‘irrational’ and ‘imaginative’ aspects of women’s desires, which reflect subtle relations between individual longings and social contexts that might be ignored in other frameworks. Future studies of women’s life experiences should look at different forms and aspects of desire as part of a sophisticated framework, in order to understand women’s behaviours and practices.

Footnotes

Notes

Yu Ding is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Work at the Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China. Her research interests include women’s work and employment, everyday lives and desires especially under China’s modernization and globalization, and rural–urban discrepancy, sex industry and sex workers in China, women’s social work, marriage and family, social and cultural studies, e.g. popular culture, sex values and behaviours under social change and other fields. She has spent several years in the Pearl River Delta, south China, which is also where her hometown is situated, doing fieldwork on female sex workers and night entertainment. Her current work focuses on marriage, family and sexualities of female university/college teachers, trying to look at different cohorts of women from the same framework and language of desire.

Petula Sik Ying Ho is Associate Professor at the Department of Social Work and Social Administration, University of Hong Kong. Dr Ho's main research and teaching interests are in the area of homosexuality, gender and sexuality issues. She has published numerous articles in leading international journals in sexuality and gender studies, including Sex Roles: A Journal of Sex Research, Journal of Sex Research, Violence Against Women, Sexualities, Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work, and Women’s Studies International Forum, making important contributions to the development of a dynamic theory of gender and sexuality in the international arena that will help to problematize feminist theories and resist western hegemonies through empirical case studies that make connections between discourses, cultural practices, political economy, and social change. She also uses documentary films to explore the integration of arts and scholarship.

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