bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

sponsorType

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

Kate Whitehead

The wizened woman crouching in the dirty street kneading her hands looks like an ageing arthritis sufferer, but after six months researching her book on Hong Kong's sex industry, Kate Whitehead recognises a prostitute in need of a heroin fix.

 The smartly designed, black matt-covered book is called After Suzie - Sex in South China, referring to the famous Suzie Wong, the pretty, ponytailed 'tart with a virgin heart' who put Wan Chai on the world map.

 But this woman's drawn, hardened features are the modern face of Hong Kong's sex industry.

 The fictional Cinderella World Of Suzie Wong, the book by Richard Mason that became a film, caught the colour of 1950s Wan Chai when swaggering matelots roamed the bars looking for rest and recuperation (known as R&R), love and laughter.

 But it failed to capture the harsh realities of a life of serving sex.

 'There have been many changes since Suzie Wong's days,' says Whitehead, who has lived in Hong Kong for 17 years.

 'But one thing hasn't changed - the bottom line is the women do it for money. The Asian prostitutes might pretend to enjoy it more than their Western counterparts but they don't do it for the love of sex or the clients.

 'There's no pleasure in sitting in a bucket of disinfectant at the end of each day after servicing up to 20 men.'  Whitehead decided to investigate the world of sex for sale when it dawned on her that despite a worldwide 'reputation', she had never seen a book specifically on Hong Kong's scene.

 'It's one of the biggest industries here but you're more likely to find a book on Jardines than you are on sex,' she says.

 After spending hours in libraries and bookshops and only finding books written and published by Americans or Britons (mainly former prostitutes), Whitehead became determined to write a book covering the 'many layers' of the industry - from the street-walkers, to villas and massage parlours, right up to top-class agencies where each client is charged thousands of dollars and the women, mainly Western, can make small fortunes.

 Here we carry an extract from Whitehead's book about 'fishball stalls', so called because the movements the women use to masturbate their customers are like those of making fishballs.

 Whitehead gave up her reporter's job on the Hong Kong Standard and started what would often be a depressing task talking to teenagers through to 70-year-olds, who have no choice but to make a living lying on their backs. 'I began by sitting on my bed and reading and cataloguing every Hong Kong newspaper cutting written about prostitution in the past 50 years,' Whitehead says.

 'That took me three weeks and then I started to make contacts. I went to Wan Chai which I thought was the main sex centre and spoke to people I know - many of them journalists - who frequent the bars there.'  As the introductions grew, so a picture formed of how the industry has changed since Suzie's days.

 The most obvious difference is one of geography.

 Wan Chai's neon-lit streets were home to hundreds of brothels, dance halls and massage parlours in Suzie's days. But now the centre of the sex industry is Mongkok. First, as Hong Kong flourished, businesses were pushed out of Central into surrounding suburbs, sending Wan Chai rents sky-high.

 Then in 1967 the United States Navy scrapped R&R jaunts to Hong Kong, which switched the main client base back to locals and visiting businessmen and forced the bar owners to think up new ways of enticing customers.

 The change is clear in the faces along Lockhart Road too.

 Whereas Suzie and her sisters were usually mainlanders, the modern-day Suzie Wong is a Filipina or Thai girl who came after hearing of the relative riches that can be earned.

 Behind the velvet curtains of the girlie bars is the common Wan Chai scene - a Southeast Asian girl or two clad in little more than bra and knickers dancing disinterestedly with a silver pole, staring at their image in the mirrors lining the walls.

 'There are frequently so few people you have to wonder how the bars stay open,' says Whitehead. 'From what I am told many of them are money-laundering operations.'  Being a woman helped Whitehead penetrate the scene and talk to the people who mattered, including the working women, pimps and mamasans (or madams).

 'When it was explained what I was doing and that I was not an undercover cop, the women were less suspicious and more open than they would have been talking to a man.'  Whitehead also received help from other quarters, including the police, who let her accompany them on raids.

 As a result, her book is a colourful, anecdotal, chatty read, each chapter covering one subject from 'fishball stalls' (where a grope in a crusty, roach-infested blackened room can cost as little as $50) to clubbing with the big bosses (where a computer detailing service is installed at each table and tampering with it automatically means $50,000 is added to the customer's bill).

 The police connection not only revealed the way in which the industry works, it also threw up revealing examples of who some of the customers are.

 There was the Crown Counsel who was found sitting in the dark during a raid on a filthy fishball stall, his robes stuffed into a carrier bag; he claimed he had gone in for a drink thinking it was a bar.

 Then there was the corruption scandal that rocked the police force in 1985 when the Independent Commission Against Corruption revealed police had given as many as 660 vice dens immunity from prosecution in return for bribes and other forms of payment.

 But most importantly, the book is about women who through debt, disillusionment or disaster are forced to make money from their bodies.

 By coincidence, the woman kneading her bony joints in the street is called Mei-ling and has a son - just like Suzie. But her story is very different.

 The 46-year-old has worked as a Yau Ma Tei street-walker for 14 years, since the boy's birth. Her hair is streaked with grey and there are dark rings beneath her eyes.

 'I have no choice, I can't get out. I have a big debt with the loan sharks. If I try to run away they [the triads] will find me. They have never beaten me but they will bring me back to the street to work.'  Mei-ling's debt has accumulated from years of gambling and taking drugs supplied by her triad creditors.

 Inevitably, the women are worried that the industry will change under China's sovereignty.

 Co-author Nury Vittachi was involved in various parts of the book, including looking at the industry over the border in Shenzhen and in Macau.

 One street-walker said: 'I've heard about what the police in Shenzhen have done - trying to stop prostitution.

 'I'm afraid after the handover they will try to stop us working and then what will I do?  'I don't know what will happen but I know I can't get out of this.

 'It's the only way I know of making money.' 



Sex after Suzie Wong