Red lights : the lives of sex workers in postsocialist China / Tiantian Zheng.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Zheng, Tiantian.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Prostitution--China--History.

Prostitution.

Sex industry--China.

Sex industry.

China--Social conditions.

China.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, c2009.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Introduction: Masculinity, power, and the Chinese state

Patriarchy, prostitution, and masculinity in Dalian

From banquets to karaoke bars : a new sexual awakening

Fierce rivalries, unstable bonds : class in the karaoke bars

Turning the grain : sex and the modern man

The return of the prodigal daughter

Clothes make the woman

Performing love : the commodification of intimacy and romance

Afterword: From entertainer to prostitute.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 253-279) and index.

ISBN:

0-8166-6820-5

OCLC:

435970402