Late Imperial China

Late Imperial China 23.2 (2002) 1-32

Fleecing the Male Customer in Shanghai Brothels of the 1890s

Keith McMahon

[Glossary]

Late Qing novels abound in situations of transition, where classical antecedents coexist with modern departures. In this period of not-so-sure adjustment, we still encounter the love fantasy of the elite prostitute and her male patron, which has traditionally constituted a home away from the ritually defined home of marriage and family. In the 1892 novel Flowers of Shanghai (Haishanghua liezhuan), by Han Bangqing, this home away from home has now moved to the separate space of the foreign concessions of Shanghai, which is, in effect, a city away from the rest-of-China. ¹ There, where capitalism and foreign laws reign, the role of the traditional master—Confucian father, local magistrate, or the emperor himself—has weakened. Instead we have the vigorous and entrepreneurial prostitute and her male patron, the man whom she "fleeces" (qiao) as he searches for the woman with the most aura. It is the particular way Han Bangqing portrays this prostitute that makes the novel so singular. He begins by vilifying her in a manner that is common to other writings of the period, ² namely, that she wears beauty on the outside but is poisonous within, "The one before your eyes may be as beautiful as the legendary Xishi, but underneath she is more vicious than a yaksha" (1.1). Yet Flowers of Shanghai then quietly brackets that viewpoint as one belonging to the stymied male and instead goes on to foreground the reality of the business of the brothel, that is, the womens' often urgent problems of getting by, about which [End Page 1] male patrons are ignorant or cynical. The author features the prostitute's aptitude at adapting to the constantly shifting conditions of business in the foreign concessions of Shanghai. At the same time, he demonstrates that it is the foolishness of men which is one of the prostitute's greatest assets.

What I would like to do in this essay is first to evaluate the newness of Shanghai as it is fictionally presented, and then to juxtapose this portrayal with the description of the peculiar powers that the novel's "prostitute-yakshas" exercise over their male clients. My main theme will be to demonstrate how the male customer seeks self-definition through his relationship with the prostitute, and how he in fact finds pleasure in the aura of control that the prostitute exerts over him. What are then the particular elements of the prostitute-yaksha's aura? If, in other words, she is the entrepreneur at the forefront of change in the new city of Shanghai, then what actually constitutes her ability to do business? In Han Bangqing's portrayal, it is the appearance of control that the woman exerts over the man that determines how successful a prostitute she is. But such control has to be understood not merely in the obvious sense that the most successful prostitute is the one who can compel her customer to find yet more reasons to spend money in her brothel. Instead, to put it in terms of a kernel formula, the most successful prostitute is the one who constantly stays beyond the man's grasp, yet keeps him wanting to achieve that grasp. This elusive woman somehow understands and makes a living on the idea that the man defines himself through a certain image he has of her, and she therefore strives to become the one who perfectly fits that man's particular image. In the most general sense, she succeeds in doing so by making herself "unabandonable," that is, by becoming someone the man cannot bear to leave.

What, however, is so different about this otherwise rather commonly known situation in Chinese literature of a man's fascination with a prostitute? Flowers of Shanghai occupies a significant position in the history of Qing fiction by offering a crystallized portrait of historical transition in the late Qing, especially in terms of the relationship between courtesan and patron. My method...