Red Lights: The Lives of Sex Workers in Postsocialist China

by Tiantian Zheng

In China today, sex work cannot be untangled from the phenomenon of rural-urban migration, the entertainment industry, and state power. In Red Lights, Tiantian Zheng highlights the urban karaoke bar as the locus at which these three factors intersect and provides a rich account of the lives of karaoke hostesses—a career whose name disguises the sex work and minimizes the surprising influence these women often have as power brokers.

Zheng embarked on two years of intensely embedded ethnographic fieldwork in her birthplace, Dalian, a large northeastern Chinese seaport of over six million people. During this time, Zheng lived and worked with a group of hostesses in a karaoke bar, facing many of the same dangers that they did and forming strong, intimate bonds with them. The result is an especially engaging, moving story of young, rural women struggling to find meaning, develop a modern and autonomous identity, and, ultimately, survive within an oppressively patriarchal state system.

Moving from her case studies to broader theories of sex, gender, and power, Zheng connects a growth in capitalist entrepreneurialism to the emergence of an urban sex industry, brilliantly illuminating the ways in which hostesses, their clients, and the state are mutually created in postsocialist China.

Genres: China, Anthropology, Nonfiction, Social Science, Sociology, Sexuality, History

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Sean · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was pretty fascinating and certainly gives you interesting first hand views about how people in this tough and dangerous industry think and live. The only reason I dropped a couple of stars was that from a purely entertainment, or should I say infotainment, point of view this book is, for the most part, extremely dry and sober. It is very much a technical work of nonfiction and due to this style of writing I almost quit this book several times out of boredom.

I soldiered on till the end though mostly due to the fascinating nuggets of information that kept arriving on almost every page.

I realise this review is contradictory: fascinating/boring

I should clarify by saying the facts and insights were interesting but the style of writing was at times mind numbing. Hence the 3 star rating. Perhaps with some better editing, particularly in the area of factual narrative and nonfiction story telling this book could become something more and gain 4-5 stars.

Anyway, probably worth a read if you have any interest in anthropology, sociology, Chinese/asian ethnography.

[Kimfu]

This book had real educational value, although at times it was extremely depressing. I came to understand how in the very short-term, working as a hostess / prostitute could actually help a woman who came from rural China survive and even thrive in the city. So many other options are simply closed to her.

However, the book also made clear that in the long-term, prostitution work is extremely harmful to women. This book solidified my thinking that prostitution should be considered a hate-crime, mostly against women, and the perpetrators of this crime, including customers as well as pimps, should be prosecuted accordingly.

How unfortunately that such thinking will probably never become accepted, let alone acted upon, in my lifetime.

二零一六年： 第十六本书

[Greta Babarskaite · Rating 4 out of 5]

In her ethnography of sex workers in the port city of Dalian in China, Zheng seeks to explore the connections between patriarchal values, urban-rural migration and state politics in the post-Mao period. Moved by personal revelations of the filial values rooted in her own upbringing, Zheng spends three years working alongside hostesses at three karaoke getting to know their motivations, as well as those of the clients that frequent the karaoke bars. Alongside the experiences of violence and difficulty, Zheng finds stories of perseverance and empowerment.

As a reader I would have benefited in knowing more about the history of China and its culture before reading the book.

[Jarda Kubalik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Or even 5, verz thorough but without a single graph, just the way it should be for me. Admirations for the author.. she had to sink deep but not in one sentence did she despise or look down on the girls. Great for language insight too.

[Aerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Similar to the other book I read by this author, I found this book very enlightening, specifically to explore these taboo aspects of society from an anthropological perspective. Of note, I am impressed at the extent to which the author integrated herself with the groups that she was studying to capture a more accurate representation of the complexities

[Annie Yang-Perez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and nuanced accounts of sex workers' lives in China, but at times the author overanalyses, probably because of the academic nature of the piece and the pressure to deliver new theories. It would have been more enjoyable if she had adopted a more journalistic approach.

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

i read this for a class. mind blowing. what it lacks in style it more than makes up for in demystifying a life that most people have no idea about.

[Kristi]

Thought it would be a story book but it turned out to be more of a research paper...or maybe I just did not have enough patience to get to the story part of the book.