Red lights dimmed but shine on in seamy Chengdu

THE big sign above the door labels the establishment, somewhat ambiguously, as an amusement centre. Step inside, and any uncertainty is quickly dispelled.

On the left, behind clapboard panels, are three sitting rooms with low-slung vinyl sofas and lotus bud-shaped table lights - all bathed in red light.

In the bar, karaoke music plays while a few couples dance and others sit laughing and chatting over drinks. The women, perhaps a score in all, are young, their faces powdered white like geishas.

The men are middle-aged and probably well-heeled, judging less from their attire than by the fact they do not flinch at the high tariffs charged here.

It is mid-winter, and there is no heating, so most people are keeping their overcoats on.

The proprietor, a woman in her fifties with permed hair, a long leather coat, leopard-skin leotards and fuzzy bunny slippers with droopy ears, hardly looks the part, but she is the mamasan. She ushers the men in and out, and helps them select female company.

''She is very good to us,'' a 19-year-old woman confides. ''She provides us with imported condoms.'' The business, in a small town near Chengdu, is flourishing despite numerous crackdowns on prostitution and the rest of the vice trade. The police use sometimes questionable means - when an anti-prostitution campaign is announced, they are often given quotas to fulfil, and arrest women on the flimsiest of evidence. Dating a foreign man, even being his fiancee, can be taken as an excuse for detention by over-zealous policemen.