{"id":6269,"date":"2012-08-24T04:39:13","date_gmt":"2012-08-24T09:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smithjan.com\/blog\/?p=6269"},"modified":"2012-08-31T03:20:40","modified_gmt":"2012-08-31T08:20:40","slug":"hong-kongs-one-woman-brothels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smithjan.com\/blog\/2012\/08\/24\/hong-kongs-one-woman-brothels\/","title":{"rendered":"Hong Kong’s One Woman Brothels"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Hong Kong’s Thousands of One Woman Brothels<\/span><\/h1>\n
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Reclamation Street Brothel Hong Kong – Jan Smith 2012<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Hong Kong\u2026a city where capitalism and laissez faire are so pure that even the brothels adhere to the tenants of a free economy. \u201cIf you want to see capitalism in action, go to Hong Kong,\u201d is how Milton Friedman described it.<\/p>\n
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Reclamation Street Brothel – Jan Smith 2012<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
A History of Prostitution<\/h2>\n
Long before the glitzy financial center and designer boutiques emerged and made Hong Kong a consumer mecca, there was already a vibrant sex trade. \u00a0Ostracized by the Cantonese, the local Tan-ka (boat people)\u00a0found easy monetary gain by renting their women to foreign sailors.\u00a0 The ham-shui-mui, or salt-water girls, rapidly became iconic symbols of the city\u2019s underbelly and vibrant port activities.<\/p>\n
Today, the salt water girls are most likely foreigners.\u00a0 Russian girls, described as \u201ccrazy, wild, monsters\u201d command a premium, at HK$500 for thirty minutes.\u00a0 Half an hour with a \u201cmild\u201d Malay girl fetches a mere HK$180 dollars in comparison. Local girls are the baseline at HK$250. \u00a0The rates are hand written on colorful signs outside building entrances in many neighborhoods. The general feeling is of an exchange market\u2014only that the merchandise in question is human.<\/p>\n
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Brothel Menu Hong Kong<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Legal Brothels<\/h2>\n
Prostitution in Hong Kong is itself legal, but “organized” prostitution\u00a0is not.\u00a0 Any room with two or more girls offering sex services is considered a brothel.\u00a0 Brothels, and living off the prostitution of others (i.e organized prostitution) is not permitted. \u00a0In effect this means that so long as prostitution stays out of the public eye, the government is mostly comfortable adopting a laissez-faire policy.\u00a0 This has lead to a unique way of avoiding the prohibition on brothels:\u00a0 the one-woman brothel.<\/p>\n
New Business Models for Brothels<\/strong><\/p>\n
Seemingly an oxymoron, the \u201cone-woman brothels\u201d changed the landscape of prostitution in Hong Kong from the 1980s onwards. \u00a0Back then, to get laid, it was cheaper to fly to Manila and stay in a five-star hotel for the weekend than have a single night out in Hong Kong. \u00a0According to retired Hong Kong police officer JS Lam, \u201cone-woman brothels became more in demand as this method of prostitution offered a more direct, no-frills way to clients. Besides, it was much cheaper than going to a sex shop, dance hall or\u00a0nightclub. A client need only go to the address, press the bell, state purpose, agree on the price and deal done.\u201d\u00a0 By the end of the mid-90s most of the classy ballrooms and big-spender nightclubs had disappeared.<\/p>\n
In it\u2019s purest commercial form this empowered girls to open their own business without the need for a middleman, and encouraged a wave of foreign Asian and Chinese girls to turn-up in Hong Kong on short term visas. \u00a0What they made in a month was often more than a year back home. \u00a0There is evidence that homespun operations were briefly a majority, but the triad gangs very quickly repossessed the business.<\/p>\n
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Reclamation Street Brothel Hong Kong – Jan Smith 2012<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
One Woman Brothels and Triad Gangs<\/h2>\n
The triad gangs own various karaoke bars and nightclubs, they often sponsor the working visas, and they also own the apartments where the girls conduct their business. The girls earn commissions on drinks and reach private arrangements with clients to meet outside of the establishments.\u00a0 Once a deal is reached, the client pays the club for the privilege of taking the girls out by buying the girls\u2019 time. The girl and the client then rendezvous at the apartment. \u00a0\u00a0In theory what the client and the girl establish as a price is for the girl, but the club often double dips by charging \u201crent\u201d to the girl.<\/p>\n
The fact is that a large number of girls work out of small apartments all over the territory.\u00a0 The girls usually work on the first or second floor, making it easy for customers to walk in from the street.\u00a0 It is common for the rest of the building to be occupied by families. Clusters of these girls can be found in many buildings, but nowhere as much as in the streets surrounding Portland Street, in Mongkok. \u201cEvery Hong Konger knows where it is. Get to Mongkok by MTR and you will see it. I believe it is at C 2 exit,\u201d explains a local resident.<\/p>\n
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Reclamation Street Brothel Hong Kong – Jan Smith 2012<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Brothels Online<\/h2>\n
The growth of the Internet yet again transformed the landscape of prostitution in Hong Kong.\u00a0 Advertising on local websites (of which sex141.com is the most popular) has allowed girls to interact directly with their clients, thereby reducing the role of karaoke bars and nightclubs.\u00a0 This contributes to an increase in the supply of sex services offered by new groups of girls, particularly mainlanders in the New Territories.\u00a0 The corresponding fall in prices has made it less lucrative for the triad gangs to continue their business as before, and made them more eager to divest.<\/p>\n
The second effect of the growth of Internet is an increase in \u201ccompensated dating\u201d, wherein girls of all socio-economic levels sell sex so they can buy consumer goods, such as cell phones and clothes.\u00a0 In the best of cases the proceeds of a self-run prostitution business can be quite lucrative.\u00a0 A recent National Geographic reporter interviewed a woman who proudly claims, \u201cAfter paying rent, I make over $100,000 a year.\u00a0 Since doing this work, I\u2019ve bought three apartments for my family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Money exchanged, investments made.\u00a0 Hong Kong continues to thrive as a free-market paradise that would make Adam Smith blush.<\/p>\n
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Reclamation Street Brothel Hong Kong – 2012<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Reclamation Street Brothel Hong Kong by Day – Courtesy Google Maps<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Hong Kong’s Thousands of One Woman Brothels Hong Kong\u2026a city where capitalism and laissez faire are so pure that even the brothels adhere to the tenants of a free economy. \u201cIf you want to see capitalism in action, go to Hong Kong,\u201d is how Milton Friedman described it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[477],"tags":[1057,49,1061,44,1059,1060,1058],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smithjan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6269"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smithjan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smithjan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smithjan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smithjan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6269"}],"version-history":[{"count":50,"href":"https:\/\/smithjan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6306,"href":"https:\/\/smithjan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6269\/revisions\/6306"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smithjan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smithjan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smithjan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smithjan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}