Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy in exchange of a review!

When I first saw this book listed on NetGalley, I knew I had to read it. I knew going it to it that it would be academic in nature but I felt like this could have been condensed a bit. There were so many statistics. This makes it clear that it is a thoroughly researched book, but it was sometimes very dry.

This is a tremendous piece of research and forms part of a post graduate study into this area and the interesting development into China’s changing society.
Initially the author was looking at working factory girls who were encouraged for various reasons to leave their rural homes and live in slave like conditions to earn money into the expanding cities. This related to worse than sweatshop conditions with little pay, long hours and few prospects for betterment. I found this a fascinating but an heartbreaking account of exploitation and I tried to relate it to early industrial population movements in say the U.K.
Her research then took her to seedy streets and establishments where sex was the commodity. This work was incredibly thorough and involved a great deal of personal sacrifice and danger. At times I thought I was reading the locational background to a crime thriller. Posing as a waitress Eileen was able to gain access to and form basic rapport with both the women engaged in the sex industry and the men looking for their pleasure with prostitutes and escorts.
The detail of the academic insight and cataloguing of the interview samples is staggering. The range of services and the step up each time at cost points is eye opening but the dangers these women face from pimps, punters and the police disgraceful. But it is generally an unlicensed and illegal activity. Yet, and here was a surprising insight the former factory girls now selling their bodies were better off financially, mentally and felt more in control of their lives.
A shocking piece of literature that informs beyond its simple methodology and sample group.

This book was very informative. Almost too much. I wish there were more personal stories to go with all the information. All of the authors background was very interesting. While it is a heavy topic I wish there was some sort of lightness added or perhaps just left statistics and such.

This book was quite interesting at parts and not so much in other parts. It is all about sex workers and human trafficking. Considering I find this topic very sad and compelling usually I did find this book a little dry. I thought it was going to be more about what these women went through and their own individual stories. This book however almost read like an informative book. It was just hard facts and statistics. While this book had lots of potential it didn't live up to my expectations. Not a bad read per say just not at all what I thought it was going to be based on the blurb. Not only that but I also felt that the wording in this book was more of a text book feeling to it than a novel. It made it a little hard to understand and gave a sort of cold and clinical feel to the book. Considering its such a short book it took me forever to finish because I kept putting it down. Not my favourite read. What I did enjoy however was how each chapter was all about one certain subject and it was almost like mini novels inside a larger novel. The subjects didn't connect very well but it was written in a way where you didn't want them to. A very informative read.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Thank you NetGalley.

I'm bummed i cannot download to kindle. and i do hope they'll change that.

this was a VERY interesting read. informative, unbiased, and interesting.

I was interested in this book not just because of its subject matter but because, as far as I can tell, the author is both trying to do scholarship that engages with well-known Western frameworks but also hoping to convince Chinese authorities to follow her suggestions by invoking Party ideals. It’s hard for me to say if the latter could be successful but it sure did make for different reading. Tsang studies female sex workers in a city known for its sweatshops, which draw in women from the countryside; some choose sex work instead, deeming it less bad than the alternatives. She argues that sex work improves their living conditions and also allows them to pursue the modern Chinese dream of individualization/success through being able to buy stuff. She also criticizes current police enforcement: while bribery keeps high-tier sex workers protected, arrested sex workers are sent to re-education centers that force them to produce goods, as in the sweatshops, but with even less control and more humiliation.

I was struck by Tsang’s findings that many women moved to the city to escape abusive husbands; she then says that “most of these women left their children with their parents to ensure a safe and stable environment,” though query how safe it is where physical abuse is otherwise acceptable.

Tsang also interviewed male clients, focusing on clients in low-end and mid-tier niche markets. She argues that such men—poor and unable to afford larger indicia of success, like owning property and marrying—are in crisis over their masculine identity; they buy sex as a way of asserting masculinity. Of course, the high-status, wealthy clients (including a number of foreigners) do that too, but they get more companionship out of it, because buying the intimate services of a charming, educated woman is even more desirable. The foreigners, unsurprisingly, tended to conceive of Chinese women as more traditionally feminine, flattering, and attentive than Western women, and the wealthy clients who developed long-term relationships with high-tier sex workers tended to tell themselves—and Tsang—that their partners weren’t really/inherently “dirty,” just nice girls who were looking for an authentic relationship.

Although Tsang expresses admiration for the sex workers’ gumption, she also ultimately treats sex work as a thing to be eliminated; her goals include helping policymakers “to decide how to provide retraining to the single-adult migrants and improve their working situation. This can provide time for the migrants to find a respectable partner and encourage them to get married. Subsequently, they will no longer pose a threat to society or participate in violence or disorder and so affect China’s stability and harmony.” Is this strategic, said to justify the research? It’s hard to say. When Tsang asks “why and how has China’s post-socialist transition reshaped women’s gender ideologies and contributed to a moral vacuum which is evidenced by sex work in high-end bars,” though, the missing information is: has prostitution actually increased? That’s plausible given increased mobility, but not shown—prostitution is known to many societies including ones that purport to place less emphasis on making money.

At the same time, Tsang identifies some reasons for sex work that go beyond the other choices being worse. “First, the work focuses on thrilling sexual desires. Second, the work involves pleasure and reciprocal relationships with their clients and their coworkers. Third, the commercial sex industry rewards creativity and new skills or techniques in the workplace. … Simply put, clients will pay exorbitant sums of money to experience the most extreme, taboo physical acts.” When she talks to former sex workers who married Hong Kong businessmen, some get alienated and feel isolated, even to the extent of resuming their former work.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing this book in exchange for an honest review.
Sex workers (and human trafficking and criminal justice) are interesting subjects. This book was fascinating and at times, very complex. A lot of research has been done for this book. The focus of this book was different than other books about sex workers that I have read.