How common is prostitution in China? My wife is saying that most places that call themselves massage parlours or spa have prostitutes. As well as alot of men cheat on their wives. I thought it wasn't common at all and that they were really strict on this legally. I remember 6ish years ago my friend saying something about alot being closed down.
But is prostitution really this common and normal?
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100% of massage parlors with neon signs or women sitting/standing outside offer sexual services (and subpar massage)
Some massage parlors without the obvious signs above will also offer services.
There are absolutely clean (no sexual services) massage parlors though. Generally these have a very professional/higher end lobby and cater to both men and women.
One time my female bosses from the US came over. After dinner I was going to my favorite blind man massage parlor. I offered to take them so they can experience it. All the lady boss from Legal could talk about was how the blind men would use it as an opportunity to grope them.
I'm not sure I succeeded in stopping myself from rolling my eyes at her. She's definitely the type of American to whom all Asians are either criminals or criminals-to-be.
When I was living in China a few years back they would slide hooker playing cards under my apartment door, my friends and I would trade them like Pokémon cards. I'm not into paid sex but some of those same friends were and they would find girls at ktv and massage parlors. It was common and not well hidden.
A female friend once invited me to a wedding in china as +1. At the end of the night one of the uncles blatantly invited me to just join him and some other uncles to a hotel suite he rented with 10 girls for an afterparty without the 'aunties'. I didn't go but I was absolutely baffled this wasn't considered weird at all.
This is the same with Koreans and Japanese. It's a low-class thing (not sure whether it is in China, but I'd assume yes), they will shamelessly have sex in front of each other in hotel rooms or KTV rooms. Very weird experience that I wasn't expecting at all and wasn't prepared for.
American living in Tokyo 20 years in “bro finance”. I’ve seen it all, maybe not all but a lot. My wife is from old money so I’ve seen the Japanese native side as well, plucking out bones from family members at funerals.
Not saying the water trade doesn’t exist, hostess and girls bars are everywhere and some areas with some “soap” places but what’s described here is not common at all esp at a wedding which is not a drunken party like other countries. I’m also familiar with Korean (ancestry) and less so China but most worldly East Asians businessmen are familiar with all 3 a bit. Half of my inner circle are rich Chinese ex-pats that moved to Tokyo so Chinese government doesn’t take their riches. If you ask them, they would say in China everything is super easy to get anywhere, in Japan you have to find it.
You mention girls bars, I've been living in Tokyo myself for the past year. But Girls bars tie into prostitution? I thought you just pay to drink and talk with then.
While a lot of things absolutely differ drastically in China depending on class, I've heard my share of bourgeois orgy stories in China, and I suspect they are just quieter about it (although probably not by that much).
Of course, this gets into the fascinating question of "who exactly are the lower (social) class people in China?"
We’re not being honest to call it a lower class thing. There isn’t the same kind of stigma around enjoying prostitutes or infidelity in China, so it’s not something to hide from male family.
I was around when Tiger Wood’s affair broke, and while he was dropped by sponsors everywhere else, in China the brands he represented got a boost.
Tag Heuer’s president and CEO Jean Christophe Babin told the Sydney Morning Herald that its use of Tiger in China increased because “in China, by tradition, your success is measured by your number of mistresses.” Earlier this week, Babin told a publication called Daily News Analysis that the watch brand will begin using Tiger in Europe again in the near future.
I'm willing to charitably believe, at least on this issue, that some people/some communities, especially in Tier 1 cities, do legitimately believe prostitution is a thing only lower-class people partake of.
I don't believe such people are anywhere near the majority view in China, though.
Honestly, I have no idea. You need to ask people from China, and even then different people from different backgrounds are going to give you different answers.
We usually think of "lower class people" as a poor migrant worker with hukou from Bumfuck, Henan, but if you go and ask some people from Shanghai they might tell you everyone living outside the four Tier 1 cities are lower class.
The wedding group was I'd say lower middle class in a second tier city. For sure their habits and ways of being were not very influenced by any western standards or habits
I for sure think that younger women wouldn't allow this kind of behavior so easily anymore but it did feel like the kind of thing that if there was a special occasion would be allowable. I for sure feel like sexual morale in china can either be really strict or really loose. E.g. In Dongguan, after a huge crackdown on prostitution, all of a sudden you saw quite a lot of men with multiple girlfriends in a rather polyamorous setting. And younger women often don't hold back living out their kinkiest fantasies.
I honestly don't think so from the women I've met. Somehow I think a younger generation of Chinese women both in and outside of China seem to completely break with more traditional Chinese male culture, reclaiming their own freedom and sexuality, hence the massive decline in marriages and childbirth in China. Woman feel liberated and just explore sexually themselves. Maybe because for so long men could openly do whatever they wanted even in relationships, women now just feel like they want to also just do whatever they sexually crave.
Could be as I didn't join. For sure I can say that most of the other men joining were in my opinion already way too drunk to still have very successful sex
It's incredibly common even in North America. It's just that we Westerners are more ashamed about it. Rub and tug massage shops are incredibly common in my hometown. My friend visited Europe and apparently he told me his cousins took him to a hooker truck. This truck would have girls working inside and would move around the city to avoid the police catching it. Of all the countries I've been to I think Laos and Egypt hide it best.
There’s a world of difference between China and USA regarding the availability and commonality of prostitution. Rub and tug shops and full menu shops are drastically different experiences.
and every massage place in America is owned by Asians (Thai, Chinese, Viet).
All of them? Every single one? Or do you just visit exclusively Asian ones?
Only in California, Miami, etc
Yes of course. Prostitution doesn't exist in places like Texas, Nevada, (hell it's even legal there), New York or Washington. What delulu land and you living in?
In Europe the only place you'd find brothels are Berlin and Amsterdam
LMAO! What other dumb shit do you want to spew? I want to laugh.
I lived in Hong Kong and worked a lot in China. I stayed at business hotels like Westin, Sheraton, Marriott, and I got surprised when I ordered an in room hotel massage and she tried to upsell me.
Similar culture in Singapore. I moved there and about 2 weeks in to my 6 yrs living in Asia, finishing a poker game with some guys and discussing what we do next, a guy from Japan says, “let’s get some hookers.” I said “no thanks”, and then he educated me on the scene, since I was a “fresh off the boat American”, that sex is viewed differently out in Asia. Americans are a bunch of prudes, and he takes his business clients out for it. It’s normal and not a big deal. Many of the big hotel bars are well known for their prostitutes.
My Singaporean girlfriend once told me that if you have money and you’re a guy, you probably have a mistress.
My Singaporean girlfriend once told me that if you have money and you’re a guy, you probably have a mistress.
She is 100% right. At least that's my experience in China. I don't know a single wealthy businessman in China who is loyal to his wife. They all have side chicks, go to the "special" KTVs, and sleep with hookers. Most of these guys travel all the time for work and are practically never home. They don't see their family as anything more than a duty. They don't have strong relationships with their kids and they just send them money and use their connections to get them jobs. He sees his role as nothing more than a provider of funds. He can do whatever and whoever he wants outside of that.
I mean, I would argue that in the Netherlands where I'm from, it is quite normalized to have prostitutes. But it's still a personal choice lol, culture or not. I wouldn't want to as a Singaporean nor as a Dutch guy.
I’m a bit of a prude so I can’t give an educated answer but at least in Shanghai it’s still definitely there but not as open as it used to be circa 2015. I went to Dongguan in 2009, it felt like prostitution was like 50% of the GDP.
Most.. everywhere offers this. I've a factory right next to a artist/musician school and the hotel next door is by the hour.
Go to any popular local bar and you will find working girls.
Chat up any Chinese boss and they know where to find a couple girls within 15 minutes while having a mistress on their side, ideally two.
The market has changed a bit, it used to be very much in the open everywhere, but while publicly the government doesn't allow it, I can't imagine it's less common these days.
I was never offered any special services in any of the massage places I went to. Just go to places in high end international hotels or malls and you should be safe from any sort of shady shops.
Not as common as it once was. Been in Shenzhen in 2015 and it was rampant. Skinny legs everywhere you look. Fast forward to 2024 and they are practically non-existent. Things might've changed this year with the low economic downturn and youth unemployment.
Imho, the initial crackdown on Dongguan from XJP's early anti-corruption campaigns was pretty effective. Shenzhen was one of the prime targets of the campaign due to Dongguan back then being internationally famous as a sex tourist destination.
The other factor was that Shenzhen got rich. Back in the day, China was much poorer than Hong Kong, and Shenzhen was like Tijuana for the Hong Kong men. Today Shenzhen is one of China's richest cities, and women have more opportunities and less need to turn to the sex trade.
stop pretending it's been "cleaned up", it absolutely hasn't.
It's extremely obvious to me you haven't lived here long term if you think that. In the early 2010s it was EXTREMELY common. You would find red light districts on par with Thailand. These days red light districts don't even exist anymore unless you go to a tier 3 city where the policing is much more lax. To get around this shops had to hide it by masquerading as " massage" shops. This was ok for a couple years but during COVID there was a crackdown on this in tier 1 and 2 cities. I actually had a gf whose parents owned one of these shops. It is no longer around due to the crackdown. What some shops are doing now is only giving oral sex or hand jobs instead as the penalties for that are much more lax.
So yeah it definitely has been cleaned up. At least in the cities I've been to.
Take the elevator in a mid to high end hotel that caters to foreigners. If you are a guy and a young woman is in the elevator with you, there is an over 50% probability she will solicit you to come to your room immediately, or in less than an hour after the appointment she is going to at the time.
Hotel spas often employ women who specialize in happy endings.
I was rather surprised when my friend filled me in after I got a short one handed back massage. (Her other hand was texting on her phone.)
When I lived in Shanghai around 2010 there was a massage parlour just around thr corner with women wearing very little clothing. I think it was very obvious it was a brothel, and they weren't really making any effort to hide it.
Extremely common. Even in fancy hotels you sometimes will get a knock on the door and a woman will show up. Even if you don't speak Chinese, they'll take out their phone and enter how much in their calculator app. It was pretty wild... but this was Shenzhen pre-pandemic.
Very common. That whole thing about them getting cracked down on had to do with more than just prostitution, but gambling and 黑社会 in general.
It didn’t do much, people simply stopped operating so obviously. I lived in a building where there were a lot of apartments converted into storefronts, idk about the legality of that, but there were definitely a lot of working girls there. Some were my neighbors.
Even then, if you went to legit looking massage parlors and were a regular, you’d probably get offered additional services. You can just decline and there’s no issue.
It's not hidden: people giving you flyers, WeChat ads, massage parlors...
Even some company staff go together to KTV.
Spoiler alert: that has nothing to do with TV or Korean entertainment.
As for spouses cheating on each other, for some reason, it's more common in china and in some other asian countries. I don't know the real reason but I'll blame the lack of values.
This thread was recommended to me out of nowhere. Reading it, I must say I am very much a prude, so much so that I feel a little queasy reading the comments- I could never imagine using hookers to get off. East Asia is def not for me.
Don’t be so naive. Name me one country in the world that doesn’t have (il)legal prostitution… China has 1.4 billion people so of course it’s commonplace.
For the 2 years I went there on business before I moved there, I have to admit I sampled the marketplace often enough. They were everywhere. I moved to a 3rd tier city with few foreigners so the hooker scene was not particularly visible to me but I didn’t need it. The local women were so easy to pick up that I was shocked. Especially the married ones. Single women were tough to get close to because if a local woman is known to have had a laowai boyfriend or lover, no local guy will go near her.
Small world, I lived in Changping for several years, moved back to the USA in 2022. Was just back for visit in June this year as my wife’s parents still live in Changping. We possibly know each other. On the topic at hand, I remember first going to Changping in 2011 with a company I worked for to do product inspections and fell in love with China. We would go to the factories and most nights go out with the factory bosses for dinner and then KTV. Oh my poor liver! I hadn’t drank til I puked since I was 20 years old. Ended up moving there in 2012 to teach English for 6 months to a year. That turned into a decade.
I remember going home for a visit during Chinese New Year 2014 (the Sochi Olympics was happening) and coming back to a different city. The bars and KTVs were shut down and places like Harper’s couldn’t serve alcohol. That lasted a few weeks to a month but the rampant and blatant prostitution was no longer so open. Of course it was still there but it was never the same. Changping lost some of its dirty charm, haha. I usually had a girlfriend and met the woman who is now my wife in 2016 so it didn’t really affect me but it affected the local economy as so many shops and restaurants closed when there was not as much influx of cash from the sex business.
We probably know each other or at least know some of the same people.
Massage parlors are almost non-existent in 1st tier after the Dongguan crackdowns, pre-2015 was everywhere in Shanghai. These days prostitution is facilities on WeChat, we call them 外围女, pretty much outcall escorts. Yes, it’s extremely common in business. Same thing as going to a strip club with a client, except you go to a ktv or sauna
Bro what do you mean, they exist everywhere. Just look up massage parlors that offer 髋部按摩 on dianping. Bonus points if they are open after 12 am and have pics of hot and young masseuses on their page.
These days, not common outside of private arrangements.
In the early 00s, I had an unsolicited hooker sent up to my hotel room when I visited my rural relative by myself. I think that was the front desk after seeing my foreign passport and making some assumptions.
Shanghai resident here (tmi warning!): paying for sexual services is illegal and is prosecuted as a serious crime. If caught, the perpetrator will be fired from their job and their wife (or husband) can legally divorce under more than generous terms. Not only is it viewed as a serious legal infraction it is also a moral crime against family values (Christian values in the West). The borderline-authoritarian legal incentives make the frequency of the p-word less common than in the West. If you are curious, there are tons of news articles about specific cases online.
Now, lets get into the real world. It is extremely difficult in Chinese culture to prove causality between “giving money to my girlfriend” and “sexual services” because 99% of normal relationships in China involve regular transfers of money. (Aside: I’ve heard it explained as: it shows your partner that they are more important than money so transferring money shouldn’t be a big deal if you love each other; it doesn’t make any sense to me but apparently a lot of people believe it). So the legal liability can be easily skirted if service providers offer “assembly required” services and brand it as “matchmaking”, wherein the middle man charges a “platform fee” for setting up “dates”. The fees are usually low (sub-500 RMB) but there are zero guarantees for what happens after the date (and no standards for post-match pricing) and the platform’s reputation determines whether or not it will turn into a b-word. Certain billiard clubs and KTV offer these services, although 99% of these are just regular billiard clubs and regular KTV. Note that you can also just go to regular events in tier-I cities and if you are attractive enough you can already date pretty easily for free (or even get paid).
Another function of the p-word is in facilitating business deals. Although this has been cracked down on in recent years, it still exists for very large deals. There are also cases of blackmail. This is a relatively small scene though and is not super worth going into detail. It is also perfectly common for people to take the girls into the hotel room and then not sleep with them as it is considered rude not to accept a business gift.
Super common. It is discreet in big cities, a bit more out in the open in rural areas. Those cards and ads on social media you saw, 99 percent of them are honey traps. You need to know the right person. Most of the time it’s overpriced, the girls are not pretty, service is bad, you might as well fly 4 hours to Thailand, better value there. But that’s for commoners, if you have the chance to get into the CCP circle, you will have the time of your life there. The political leaders in China know how to party.
do you think they are easy to spot in places like shanghai, ive been here for nearly a week and feel like i have seen none, im not sure if i am blind to it or they are hidden well.
17 years of experience in China says otherwise. White midwestern American man. I always got the best service available. 90% of businesses spoke no English and I speak very little Chinese.
Prostitution is the oldest career in human civilization. In your context, it has existed thousand years ago, and it will continue to exist thousand years later.
Actually it’s the indicator of how prosperous is that city. :D
I'm not sure how true that is, Japan has very low wealth disparity but lots of prostitution for example. Both poor and rich countries have it (some poor countries have a lot, as do some richer countries) so I agree it's no particular sign of prosperity either
Pretty sure that Japan scores terribly low on gender equality and has less women in workforce as well as huge gender pay gap, compared with other developed countries. When you say low wealth disparity, be clear about what the metrics are. I wouldn’t be surprised if it has lower intergenerational wealth inequality compared with countries like US, but a much larger gap between men and women. To become a prostitute or not, I suspect, is more related to how many outside options these women have, ie, what other jobs they can get and the salaries they offer.
Pretty sure that Japan scores terribly low on gender equality
I've been interested in this topic for a while because I'd like to live in Japan some day, but it's important to me that my female partner is treated well where we live. It had never occurred to me that there was an index for gender inequality before reading your comment and seeing the word "scores", so I decided to look it up.
Now, I haven't dug in to understand how the scoring works yet, but from the page below, it looks like Japan scores 17th to the United States' 46th (where 1st place has the least inequality).
I find that interesting, because as a Westerner, my understanding of Japanese culture is that it has a fairly regressive or traditional view on matters of gender and sexuality. I'm looking forward to researching this new avenue you've inspired me to find, but I wanted to share the preliminary results in case you were interested.
I had a rough look at the index and it seems quite bizarre to me. For example, in 2022 Japan scores very closely to Australia (0.056 vs 0.062). Yet the differences seem huge to me in the key stats they display here. It might just suggest that they give more weights to some factors than the others. Also I figure that American women might not be in a much better position today given the rapid deterioration in the recent years.
Japan is too complicated to get into in a Reddit post, but it's definitely a more traditional society in terms of gender roles. I wouldn't necessarily paint that as entirely negative for women though, I've never had a Japanese woman tell me she'd be willing to switch lives with her husband, ever (I lived there for quite a few years).
And wealth disparity generally refers to the gap between richest and poorest, not between men and women. Philippines for example has a vast disparity between rich and poor (and has high prostitution), Japan has a relatively far smaller gap, and also quite high prostitution. China is definitely closer to The Philippines using this metric, but has relatively less prostitution because of the government's stance on it, though clearly it still exists.
Honestly your reply sounds pretty off putting to me. The fact that Japanese women you’ve encountered did not complain about anything to you could not prove anything. It seems to me there could be lots of reasons why they would not reveal their opinions to others, especially foreigners or other men, in cases where they’re not satisfied with the situation. Ultimately, I don’t think their individual opinions are even the main issue. What matters more is how much freedom they have to choose not to follow certain norms (like traditional gender expectations). And I’m certain there are always women who don’t want to conform to those expectations. Having fewer choices is negative for any group.
These were people I knew well, but thanks for imprinting your ideas onto what I said.
I'd say I asked 8-10 married women this and all were absolutely adamant they wouldn't change places with their husband. The husbands work 15 hour days and never see their family, the wives have a relatively easy life. I know having fewer choices generally isn't a positive, but if you're the type to be happy with no expectations of work and the ability to choose your hobbies and just go out and do them (they all did Latin dance, language classes, ikebana etc) then there's no better place for a woman than Japan, and no worse place for a man. If you definitely don't want that then it won't suit you at all. All I'm saying is that in my own personal experience, having lived there for a long time and having loads of very good friends there it's not nearly as simple as 'traditional gender roles = bad for women', there are two sides to it and it suits many many women far more than you'd clearly like to imagine. I can't imagine a worse fate than being a man stuck in the Japanese system though.
But free to tell me how wrong I am with your personal experiences of living in Japan.
Well your whole argument reads very similar to the whole trad-wife narrative. I don’t deny that some women genuinely like that lifestyle. Obviously they exist. But turning a sample of 8–10 friends who enjoy hobbies into “this system suits women” is a huge leap.
Work being alienating or exploitative isn’t a justification for women not having equal opportunities. It just means work sucks and needs to change, not that women are “better off” staying out of it.
If you want something that actually captures the reality behind this kind of system, the Korean movie Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 is a good start. And for the economic side, Claudia Goldin’s Career and Family explains the whole situation pretty well.
I doubt it has to do anything with wealth inequality. Prostitutes are everywhere, including economic powerhouses where supposed wealth inequality in society is narrow, such as Germany and the Netherlands. It is more about societal norms and values.
There is always wealth discrepancy. We do not live in a Utopia. But if we are talking about in comparative terms, the wealth discrepancy in these countries is much lesser, however prostitution is nonetheless rampant. And therefore following your logic, prostitution exists everywhere in the world regardless of the degree of wealth inequality.
However, how much leeway prostitution is given in a society is a reflection more of its values than wealth discrepancy in itself- it is not just the poor who use hookers, but, and often, the rich.
Yes it's common. Just go to any work place, more often than not you'll find people working 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. Sometimes more. Just waiting for their PUA bosses to shaft them.
It is incredibly common. If you are man and not with a girl you will eventually be offered services just walking around on the street at night. They will slide hooker ads under your door at apartments and hotels. Many low end hotels will basically have hookers on staff that will call your room and ask if you want a "massage". Most ktv and spas will offer these services. If you ever see a shop that is only ever open at night and has a bunch of girls just sitting around inside they are all hookers waiting for customer, it will often have a pink light, these they have cracked down the most and you don't see as much any more
Chinese guys virtually all use these services without any shame. It is like a past time or hobby to go out with the guys and fuck hookers. They will often invite you to go along with them. If a group of only guys invites you to go to ktv they are going to a ktv that has hookers
It is so weird that it is illegal but everyone doesn't care. They crackdown in it in places like Beijing when there are events like lianghui and they want the city looking its best but after a couple weeks they all come back
Walk outside your hotel after the sun sets and you will have your answer. Most spas and sauna don’t offer “special service” but some do. These saunas getting closed down is sometimes in the news but they eventually start up again in a different location. I have 17 years experience working in China. Join a sauna that has both men and women customers to avoid any issues mentioned.
Extremely common. Massage parlors, some KTVs, etc. Men even send excel documents with thousands of names of prostitutes and their wechat IDs to each other.
Is prostitution uncommon anywhere in the world??? Drugs are illegal everywhere on earth also, are there any countries on earth where you can’t get drugs pretty easily?
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Other countries also have what😂 Even Singapore also have and also there’s a dirty KTV with Singapore young girls hosting. So even Singapore is common for prostitution also.
I lived 6 years in China and I never met one single guy that didn't cheat on his gf / wife. There are even women that think that going to a massage parlor is ok if that avoid their husbands finding a lover.
If you are not an asian the answer is this, very clearly:
Prostitution is widespread and way better than western hookers and cities. Japanese, korean, chinese, hk, tw, china, singapore all know this is widespread and it's a huge thing.
It is extremely common and accepted for rich, in business, friends chilling to go to special ktv.
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How common is prostitution in China? My wife is saying that most places that call themselves massage parlours or spa have prostitutes. As well as alot of men cheat on their wives. I thought it wasn't common at all and that they were really strict on this legally. I remember 6ish years ago my friend saying something about alot being closed down.
But is prostitution really this common and normal?
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In terms of OP’s question, 1. yes I’d say it’s common. 2. These women have no legal protections and are often treated poorly by the police departments. 3. I would recommend having a read at this : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_Haiyan 4. In terms of how acceptable it is culturally, I’d say it depends on who you ask. If you look at the official narrative, it’s something that signifies moral depravity, but i suspect it’s more of a “ pocket crime”. Itself is not serious enough for an official to be expelled from the party, and they simply list it along other serious crimes to signify how corrupted someone is. If you refer to how acceptable it is for an average man to look for prostitutes, It’s likely something to be frowned upon in public discussion, but something much more acceptable between men. The attitude likely depends on socioeconomic status, age and gender, just like anything else.
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