1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910824462003321

Autore

Zheng Tiantian

Titolo

Red lights : the lives of sex workers in postsocialist China / / Tiantian Zheng

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Minneapolis, : University of Minnesota Press, c2009

ISBN

0-8166-6820-5

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource

Disciplina

306.74095109049--dc22

Soggetti

Prostitution - China - History

Sex-oriented businesses - China

China Social conditions

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 253-279) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction: Masculinity, power, and the Chinese state -- Patriarchy, prostitution, and masculinity in Dalian -- From banquets to karaoke bars : a new sexual awakening -- Fierce rivalries, unstable bonds : class in the karaoke bars -- Turning the grain : sex and the modern man -- The return of the prodigal daughter -- Clothes make the woman -- Performing love : the commodification of intimacy and romance -- Afterword: From entertainer to prostitute.

Sommario/riassunto

In China today, sex work cannot be untangled from the phenomenon of rural-urban migration, the entertainment industry, and state power. In Red Lights, Tiantian Zheng highlights the urban karaoke bar as the locus at which these three factors intersect and provides a rich account of the lives of karaoke hostesses-a career whose name disguises the sex work and minimizes the surprising influence these women often have as power brokers. Zheng embarked on two years of intensely embedded ethnographic fieldwork in her birthplace, Dalian, a large northeastern Chinese seaport of over six million people.