Prostitution and Sexuality in Shanghai: A Social History, 1849–1949
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 7/5/2001
EAN 9780521571654, ISBN10: 0521571650
Hardcover, 486 pages, 23.5 x 15.9 x 2.5 cm
Language: English
Originally published in French, translated by Noel Castelino
Shanghai's nightlife, from the mid-nineteenth century until the victory of the Communist Party in 1949, was dominated by the world of prostitution. Henriot portrays the Chinese sex trade, from the sophisticated life of the courtesan to the common life of street prostitution. He examines the extent to which these worlds were integral to Chinese social life, commercial trends, and Chinese mores and sexuality. Henriot draws a picture of a sector that was sensitive to economic and social change, and thus a good reflection of Shanghai's changing social structure, societal attitudes, and commercial development. This is the most comprehensive treatment available of a social phenomenon that has been much discussed in studies of Chinese culture, but largely neglected as a subject of serious historical concern. At the crossroads of social and intellectual history, this study gets beyond the curtain of exoticism for a realistic look at a vibrant sector of Shanghai's economic and cultural life.
Introduction
prostitution and sexuality
a historiographical review
1. The courtesans from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries
the end of a world
2. Lives of splendor and wretchedness
3. From the high class brothel to mass sexuality
the explosion of common prostitution from 1849 to 1949
4. The ancillary forms of prostitution
5. The prostitutes in the twentieth century
an essay in social anthropology
6. Sex, suffering and violence
7. The female market in Shanghai and China
8. The houses of prostitution in the urban space
9. The organization and management of the houses of prostitution
10.The economy of sex
11. Disease prevention and the policing of morality
12. The abolitionist movement in Shanghai (1915–1925)
13. The Nationalists and regulationism Chinese style (1927–1949)
14. The institutions for the rescue of the prostitutes (1880–1949)
Conclusion.