Hong Kong Wan Chai Red Light District: Nightclubs and bars can be found everywhere

What is the situation in Wan Chai's red-light district like? In the daytime, the flags of countries such as Britain, Canada, and Australia flutter in the wind on Lockhart Road, and most of the bars along the road are closed. At this time, Lockhart Road is not colorful with neon lights, and it does not attract attention at all. Only the signboards on the street that read "Massage" and the tired women eating in Thai fast food restaurants hint at the unusualness of this place. At night, Lockhart Road begins to get restless, and adrenaline interweaves with the intoxication of feasting and revelry. Walking into a nightclub decorated with tropical rainforests, you can see a stage decorated with plastic banana leaves and smell the smell of alcohol and tobacco in the old-school rock music. There are many Southeast Asian female faces and Western male faces shuttling between them.



These girls, wearing heavy makeup, are mostly petite, with dark eyes and prominent cheekbones. They are mainly from Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand and Vietnam. The main force of consumption is white men, who are well-dressed, wear expensive watches, and have just finished a busy day. It must be mentioned that Hong Kong's "red-light district" has a unique form of existence, that is, "one floor, one prostitute", "floor" refers to the room, and "prostitute" refers to the sex workers in the room.



Fuji Building on Lockhart Road is a hotbed for this kind of business. 21 out of the 22 floors have "one prostitute per floor". According to reporters, there are all kinds of advertisements posted on the doors of every unit on every floor of Fuji Building. Most of the customers are white-collar workers in office buildings, both Chinese and foreign. In the eyes of Fengjie Cui'er, it is very easy to make a living in Fuji Building. The rent she has to pay every month is 9,000 yuan, and she can earn 40,000 to 50,000 yuan every month. Cui'er said: "The charges here are higher than other places. The basic service fee of Fuji Building is 500 yuan, and the price of additional services such as wearing uniforms and massage can be 100 to 200 yuan higher. In Sham Shui Po and Yau Ma Tei, only 300 yuan can be charged at a time. Moreover, the quality of the customers here is really high! There are very few uncles and three-line men (referring to coolie laborers). Our sisters in Fuji Building have always been of high quality!"



When it comes to the factors that determine whether a "red light district" exists or not, the economic system is the first choice. "Red light districts" have existed in China for a long time, and they have played an important role in promoting the ancient economy. For example, the Qinhuai River in Nanjing and the Eight Great Hutongs in Beijing are both places of entertainment and places of prosperity for the commodity economy. After the founding of New China, the government took drastic measures to ban the sex industry and clear the "red light district". This was a choice made under the background of implementing a planned economy and allocating resources by the government.

After all, the sex industry is a product of free trade, that is, the exchange between money resources and sexual resources. Without the market economy, it is like a tree without roots and water without a source. Hong Kong is different. Under the influence of capitalism, her business soul is highly mature. On the basis of a free port, Hong Kong has formed the key feature of Hong Kong's economy - a free market economy, which improves the efficiency of capital allocation through supply and demand mechanisms, competition mechanisms, and price mechanisms.



Hong Kong returned to the motherland in 1997, but China implemented the "one country, two systems" policy, granting Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy and still using the capitalist market economy as its economic system. Sex is an animal instinct, and it is normal for humans, as higher animals, to have physiological needs. Coincidentally, Wan Chai has the World Trade Center and shopping centers, the commodity economy is highly prosperous, and the market mechanism is becoming more perfect. Under the regulation of the "invisible hand" of the market, where there is demand there is supply, where there is profit there is capital injection, and where there is demand there is no interruption, the market will not be annihilated. The "red light district" in Wan Chai came into being on this basis and has remained standing. Sexual services belong to a high-risk gray area, and compared with most ordinary industries, they can create high profits.



In the economic academic community, Lina Edlund and Evelyn Cohen conducted in-depth research on the puzzle of "sex work has low technical content, is a labor-intensive industry, and most of the practitioners are women, but the salary is generous." In an article titled "Prostitution Theory", they used the "marriage market theory" to logically draw a conclusion: sex workers must earn higher income than other jobs. Only in this way can they make up for the opportunity cost of giving up the income in the marriage market. High incomes have attracted a group of girls who have nothing, such as Suzhou Fengjie Cui'er in Fuji Building, who can earn 40,000 to 50,000 yuan a month, and still have 30,000 to 40,000 yuan left after paying rent. It is much easier to make money than doing manual labor in her hometown; for example, Filipino girls, whose average monthly income in their motherland is only about 1,800 Hong Kong dollars, can earn 1,200-2,000 Hong Kong dollars a night in the Wan Chai "red light district", which is equivalent to a month's salary in their motherland.



It is worth mentioning that most inland girls and Southeast Asian girls did not come to Hong Kong for sexual services, but after coming from their hometowns to Hong Kong, where every inch of land is worth a lot of money, they have no skills and suffer from the cruel reality of high rents, so they have no choice but to choose the fastest way to make money. For the "red light district", in addition to the socio-economic system, the socio-economic order is equally important, and the latter can influence the situation of the "red light district" to a certain extent. If the social order is stable, the market operates healthily, and the upward flow is smooth, it will open up a good space for the development of the "red light district"; if the unemployment rate remains high for a long time, the cost of living increases dramatically, and the social class solidifies, it will bring many aspects of chaos to the "red light district". For example, in recent years, sex workers in Japan have been younger.