Lotus: a mirror of China's society - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

Sarah Mellors reviews for the LA Review of Books Zhang Lijia's Lotus: A Novel. The novel is a telling story of how China's society works, she says, and both main characters Lotus and Bing illustrate many issues: rural-urban divide, economic development without political liberalization, the post-Mao moral vacuum and money worshiping, and the tension between so-called traditional Chinese values and modern concerns.

LA Review of Books:

Within the hierarchy of Chinese prostitutes, Lotus is close to the bottom, working in a massage parlor that also offers erotic services. For most sex workers, the best they can hope for is a permanent position as an ernai (literally, second tit), a mistress whose housing and daily expenses are covered long term by a wealthy male patron. Though ernai rarely become wives, they can enjoy otherwise unattainable degrees of financial security and live in luxury. 

Yet, when multiple businessmen demand that Lotus become their ernai, she declines their offers. Instead, she falls for Bing, a photographer educated at Tsinghua University (one of China’s top schools) who is 16 years her senior, and who left his job in business to pursue a passion project of documenting the lives of Shenzhen’s sex workers. Through interactions among Lotus, Bing, and other characters, the book chronicles the changes in China since the period of reform and opening up that Deng Xiaoping initiated in 1978. 

Zhang’s lens zooms in and out, balancing Lotus and Bing’s personal lives with critiques of the sociopolitical climate as a whole. Lotus and Bing’s continual search for meaning and a sense of self beyond the quest for money mirrors the crisis of an entire generation of Chinese. Bing, highly educated and significantly older than Lotus, is representative of the generation of idealistic intellectuals who peacefully protested against government authoritarianism in 1989. Lotus, a generation younger, encounters a similar existential crisis but from the perspective of a poor migrant worker seeking to reconcile the hedonism of the city with her conservative rural upbringing and Buddhist faith. 

As in the LGBTQ novel Beijing Comrades, which I reviewed for this publication a year ago, readers of Lotus will encounter a vast array of topics related to modern China, including the growing rural-urban divide, economic development without political liberalization, the post-Mao moral vacuum and money worshiping, and the tension between so-called traditional Chinese values and modern concerns. These themes are effortlessly integrated into Lotus’s coming-of-age story. Against this backdrop, Zhang emphasizes the fortitude of her protagonist as much as Lotus’s vulnerability and suffering. The book highlights the ways in which sex work can lead to upward mobility for young women as well as abuse and social stigma. Well researched and deftly written, Lotus is at times cutting and raw, at other points delicate and poetic.

More in the LA Review of Books.

Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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When your stomach is full, you start thinking about sex - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia, author of Lotus: A Novel on prostitution in China discusses at TimeOut Shanghai her book, the growth of prostitution and how it relates to women's lives. "When your stomach is full, you start thinking about sex."

TimeOut Shanghai:

Is the character Lotus typical of these women’s experiences? 

'She’s not based on one person, but many of the small details are real. Of course, a prostitute’s life is not a fun life, but they are still three-dimensional women. Their lives are not complete misery either. There is a very famous book by Lao She called Yue Yar – the character Yue Yar is a prostitute – and oh my God, her life was totally, utterly miserable the whole time. The character was just not believable. 

'I spent lots of time listening to very funny anecdotes – these girls could be so much fun, and they really support each other and form strong relationships. Some of them had experienced sexual pleasure they had never had with their husbands, they received compliments and flattery they might not get elsewhere, sometimes even gifts and flowers. One woman said to me, "Flowers! Why didn’t he just give me more money!?". One even told me that a client wanted her to dress up like she was from The Red Detachment of Women, the ballet from the 1960s [laughs]. 

'I think these women were able to enjoy the power brought by money. I saw some who improved their position in the family, or with their husbands, because they were bringing in their own money. They often became more assertive. And their life is not all miserable.' 

Do you think prostitution is growing in China? 

'Definitely yes. China has been repressed for quite a long time, but there is now growing wealth, a relaxing of control, and a sexual revolution. STDs are growing fastest among older men – they often feel they’ve missed out on something and want to go to prostitutes who they believe are experienced and skilful. Their wives are in their 50s or 60s, and were brought up to believe that women shouldn’t be interested in sex, so tend to be quite conservative. The men don’t have knowledge about protecting themselves either. 

'It’s also a cultural thing – after all, my grandfather took my grandmother as a concubine. It’s an old way for men to show their wealth and prestige, and this old mentality is coming back with the ernai [mistresses] among rich men. We have a saying in China: When your stomach is full, you start thinking about sex.'

More at TimeOut Shanghai.

Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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Life of a prostitute - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia's book Lotus: A Novel got already much praise from reviewers. For the South China Morning Post she describes the life of Yong Gan, the main female character in her book, and how she ended, like 10 million other women, in prostitution in China.

Zhang Lijia:

Yong Gan went to the factory all the same, and life there turned out much as the woman had predicted. She quit the production line after just three months and headed to Tianjin to join the massage parlour, a middle-range establishment on the outskirts of the city. 

After a brief training period, she started working as a masseuse, usually for male clients. For a one-hour session, she would be paid 60 yuan (HK$68). Her colleagues, however, were making a lot more. Going slightly beyond her brief, so to say, would yield more than twice as much; offering full-fledged sexual services would earn 600 yuan – her monthly salary at the factory. 

Prostitution is illegal in China but is rampant in venues such as massage parlours, nightclubs, hair salons and karaoke bars. Some researchers believe there may be more than 10 million prostitutes in the country. The government has brought in more than a dozen laws to check prostitution in the past couple of decades, in the course of which it has shifted its emphasis from eradicating prostitution to containing it. As a result, shady parlours manage to operate without hindrance for the most part, even though raids are reported from time to time – last month in Beijing, three exclusive “nightclubs” were busted. 

Yong Gan’s slide down the slippery path to prostitution was as rapid as it was painful. At every step, she rationalised it was all for her daughter. The hours were long, starting at noon and dragging into the small hours. In between, she would usually fit in a couple of “small jobs” and a couple of “big jobs”. 

She would have to pretend to be cheerful in front of the clients, no matter how exhausted she was. Yet the worst part was the constant anxiety. When a client turned up, the girls would gather in the reception area, striking alluring poses and smiling invitingly. “If I failed to be picked, I would be disappointed and anxious. If I got picked, I felt anxious, worrying he might be difficult to please, or even violent.”

More in the South China Morning Post.

Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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The people behind my novel Lotus - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

After the first raving reviews of Zhang Lijia's book Lotus: A Novel on prostitution in China, interviewers dive into her research and how her novel relates to real people. At ChinaReadings Mike Cormack takes a look at (among others) the photographer Zhao Tienlin.

ChinaReadings:

Can you tell us the story of how you researched the novel? 

I interviewed many sex workers in Shenzhen, Dongguan, Beihai, Beijing and Tianjin. When you don’t know them well, they don’t always tell you the whole story. I tried to make friends with them, but it was hard to maintain a friendship with them, as their lives were often transient as they moved from one city to another, from one parlour to another, they changed their mobile or they simply vanished. What really helped me to gain insight was my experience of working for a NGO for female sex workers in a northern city in China. Lotus is a purely work of fiction (not another memoir based on personal experience) but many details, Lotus’s first handjob, for example, are real, and learned from the girls I befriended. 

The character Binbing is based on the real photographer Zhao Tielin, who photographed sex workers in Hainan. Did you meet Zhao in person? 

Yes, I indeed met him, quite a few times. But I never really had in-depth conversations with him, which would have allow me to find out the deeper reasons why he would live among the working girls and photographed them obsessively, beyond the grand reason of giving a voice to people with no voice. I was hoping to do so after I got to know him better. But he fell ill and passed away. I did read all of his books. The photographer character Hu Binbing in Lotus is inspired by Zhao. What’s Hu’s motivation? I hinted – perhaps too subtly – that photographing prostitutes serves Hu as a tool to achieve success, to prove to his ex-wife that she’s wrong about him, as well as to feed his own sexual fantasies.

More at ChinaReadings.

Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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China's sexual revolution - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

Author Zhang Lijia explored for her book Lotus: A Novel China's sex trade. The book is also an account of the sexual revolution the country is going through, she tells City Weekend. "Some women get more pleasure with clients than they experienced with their husbands."

City Weekend:

Lotus has conflicting ideas about sexual pleasure. How are attitudes towards sexuality changing?  

China is going through a sexual revolution. Studies show that a much higher number of people are having sex before marriage than previously. In sociologist Li Yinhe’s 1989 study, 85 percent of people claimed they had no sexual experience before marriage. Among the sexually active 15 percent, some were already engaged, which means that they are already a couple by Chinese standards. 

According to 2012 statistics, 71.4 percent of people were sexually active before marriage.* This means more prostitutes, more pornography, more sex before marriage, more sexual partners, and a higher divorce rate. A woman can divorce her husband if he cannot satisfy her. Women will not stand for second-best because they don’t have to any more. 

Having a mistress to show status started with the Emperor, who would have many concubines. Maoist reforms changed that, even though Mao himself was doing all sorts of things with young women behind closed doors! For some time prostitution was uncommon in China. Now, men have mistresses to prove they have a lot of money and a high status. Ernais are just glorified prostitutes; that relationship is primarily economic, not about love. 

I met a woman who was empowered by her increased earning power and relative liberation since becoming a sex worker. People don’t get into the trade for sexual pleasure, but some women get more pleasure with clients than they experienced with their husbands.

More at City Weekend.

Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

Are you looking for more experts on cultural change at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

Why and how should prostitution be decriminalized - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

In China most women enter the prostitution on their own free will. The government is criminalizing them, forcing them into a submissive position. What can be done? Author Zhang Lijia of Lotus: A Novel on prostitution researched the sex trade in China, and possible solutions and discusses government approaches.

Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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Prostitution: a career move in an unequal society - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

Author Zhang Lijia of the much-acclaimed book Lotus: A Novel on prostitution in China discusses with Eric Fish on the weblog of the Asia Society how Chinese women end up in this trade. While triggered off by inequality, it is a way to improve their lives, she says.

The Asia Society:

How had the women you met usually ended up getting into sex work? 

Quite a few women I interviewed worked very hard on production lines in factories for very little money. Then they talked among their friends and found out about jobs in massage parlors. In the beginning, the line is often blurred — some places offer legitimate massages and also sexual services, so women will start off doing normal massages and gradually start adding on sexual services when they see how much more money they can make. 

Most women are migrant workers from rural areas, some are laid off workers from small towns, especially in Dongbei (China’s struggling northeastern region that’s now often referred to as a rust belt). There are also quite a few older women who are divorced or left abusive husbands and cannot otherwise support themselves. When they leave the countryside for the city, very few plan to get into sex work. It’s a hard decision in most cases. Sometimes it’s because of tragic personal circumstances. 

Almost all of the women I knew sent money back to their families — it is out filial duty. One woman I met told me her brother was sent to prison so she supported her sister-in-law and her children for years. I think many of the women need something like that to feel good about themselves and the work they’re doing, so they send a lot of money home. I'm sure they struggle to come to terms with the work, especially since most rural Chinese women grew up with a very conservative upbringing. 

I spoke with one woman who said in the beginning that she always used the phrase chi kui (to get the short end of the bargain) when talking about getting paid for sleeping with men. But then an older more experienced women told her, “Don't think like that, we're making use of them.” So she came to terms with it and now tells other women the same thing. 

What role do you think gender inequality plays in fueling China’s sex trade? 

In my book, Lotus has to stop her schooling because the family thinks they'll just end up marrying her off. Since she’s a girl, there's no point in wasting money on her education. Save the resources for the boy — that’s a common attitude in rural China, especially in the poorest areas. So rural women are generally much worse off than boys in terms of education. The political system, of course, is another problem. Because of the hukou residency system, rural residents still cannot apply for certain jobs. Economic reforms brought a lot of opportunities, but uneducated rural women really missed out. 

Ultimately, that’s part of why prostitution is such a big industry in China. With growing wealth and gender income inequality, I think concubine culture plays big a role. Men used to keep concubines and mistresses as a way to show prestige, and they still do the same. The growing wealth gap between urban men and rural women really magnifies this.

More at the Asia Society.

Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form.

Are you looking for more experts on cultural change at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

An uplifting book on a sad subject: review of Lotus by Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

Commentator Dan Southerland of Radio Free Asia is clearly touched by the moving book Lotus: A Novel by journalist Zhang Lijia on the life of prostitutes in China. "An uplifting book on a sad subject," he says about the book.

Radio Free Asia:

A second book, titled simply Lotus, is a novel that provides deep insights into the lives of the migrant Chinese workers whose cheap labor has created China’s economic miracle. 

Among those workers, thousands of women who feel crushed by assembly-line factory work in the big cities have turned to prostitution.  A character named Lotus is one of them. 

Author Lijia Zhang creates a sympathetic portrait of this young prostitute, at the same time shedding light on the plight of China’s migrant workers. 

As journalist and writer Ian Johnson says in a review, Zhang's book opens a window into “a land of underground sex trade, corrupt police, desperate migrants, and flawed characters trying to make the right decisions.”... 

Her sympathetic portrayal of the life of a prostitute named Lotus working at a massage parlor in the economically booming city of Shenzhen also turns out to be a love story and a testament to one woman’s strength. 

Lotus’s story begins as a typical one for many migrant workers, the unsung heroes of China’s economic rise. 

Her massage parlor in Shenzhen lies hundreds of miles to the southeast of her rural village in Sichuan Province, and she can rarely afford to make a trip home. 

Her main aim in life is to send money home to assist her family and ultimately to help her brother Shadan realize his dream of entering a university.  He would be the first in his poor village to achieve this goal. 

Her family has been told that Lotus is working in a Sichuan restaurant in Shenzhen and not as prostitute. 

Like so many migrant workers, she had arrived in Shenzhen to work in a factory outside the city. Her cousin, nicknamed “Little Red,” had talked her into taking the job. But after her cousin died in a fire at the factory, she decided to find work in the city. 

When her lack of a high school diploma disqualified her from the best jobs, she turned to prostitution, first as a street walker and later in a massage parlor, often fronts for prostitution. 

While officially illegal, prostitution has become an industry in China that would appear to be hard to eliminate, though police do launch periodic campaigns against it.  One of the most dramatic scenes in the novel describes a raid on her massage parlor in which some of Lotus’s friends are beaten. 

The camaraderie among the girls while under detention, their jokes about their plight, and the offer of one to share what little money she has to pay off the police becomes one of the most touching moments in the book. 

It’s hard to imagine that a book on this sad subject could be uplifting, but this one is.

More at Radio Free Asia.

Zhang Lijia is a speaker on the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form.

Are you looking for more experts on cultural change at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

NPR: The underbelly of contemporary China, review Lotus by Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

More reviews are coming in of author Zhang Lijia´s Lotus: A Novel, about prostitution in China, this time from the NPR. The reviewer is rightfully impressed. "We can count ourselves lucky to get this glimpse into the fascinating world of Lotus."

NPR:

The author has a light touch, even when delineating the underbelly of contemporary Chinese culture. She conducted research in the red light districts of Shenzhen, Dongguan, Beihai, Tianjin and Beijing, so there is a documentary verity to the telling, giving starch to fiction that might otherwise be flabby. Zhang also brings a personal stake to the book, dedicating it to her grandmother, who was sold to a brothel as a euphemistically-termed "flower girl," or courtesan. 

Some first novels, especially those birthed in creative writing classes (Zhang, a former rocket factory worker in China, studied at the University of Iowa), go heavy on self-consciously poetic language. The author tries too hard and the reader suffers. The images Zhang gives us, in contrast, are uncomplicated, concise and touching. Young Lotus's "pencil was homemade, simply the broken end of a pencil's lead discarded by her classmates, stabbed into a piece of soft wood." Concerning Bing's emotions, Zhang writes, "He had been like an ant on a hot pan ever since the girls' visit." 

Book groups be advised: Readers will learn quite specific tricks of the trade. Lotus is undeniably earthy but thankfully spare, letting its characters, and its proverbs, do the talking. When Bing wants to get serious with Lotus, we hear about the development a proverbial way: "What luck, this offer. A pancake fallen from the sky, as her grandma would say." We can count ourselves lucky to get this glimpse into the fascinating world of Lotus.

More at NPR. 

Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form.

She will be at a book presentation in New York at February 1, Barnes & Noble on 82nd Street and Broadway, at 7 PM.

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