Players from the House of Horus

The Ladies of Shenyang was the title of a column I wrote a couple of years back, noting the predominance of women from this Northeast China industrial city of Liaoning Province among our garment factory workers as well as the scented ladies of the night.

The Qing dynasty of the Manchus, the last of the Chinese rulers before the nationalist movement, made Shenyang their second capital. During the two-and-a-half centuries they ruled, they built an imperial palace smaller in size but just as equally elegant as the one built in the Forbidden City in Beijing.

Often referred to as the Golden Triangle, Liaoning is the closest region to the Korean Peninsula. With its rich natural resources and the movement of population between Russians (they built Harbin), Japanese (they built Changchun), Koreans, Manchurians and the Hans, Liaoning developed into an industrial-chemical region with Shenyang as its primary city. The port city of Dalian catered to Japanese and Russian ships.

It is, therefore, not a big surprise that a region, given a history of hosting visitors of varying ethnicities, and developing manufacturing complexes out of the Russo-Hanggul-Nippon axis, would send to the booming CNMI economy its mama-sans in the hospitality field and its experienced textile workers to the garment factories.

With the Liaoning region’s rich traditions of the xiao lao po (little wife as title for the Chinese concubine), the dedicated geisha (the consummate Japanese entertainer), and her Korean counterpart the kisaeng, the nature of the man-woman liaison outside the connubial canopy is more than just a commercial transaction but had deep political, economic and cultural implications.

It would be a mistake, of course, to try to compare the various karaoke bars on Saipan managed by Shenyang ladies to their forebears in bygone days, for what might have been rich in rites and rituals, symbols and style, studied gestures and stolen glimpses, do not apply to the current setting where the inflated cost of a bottle of beer or a glass of wine, and how fast one can consume either, has become the currency of transaction in our wailing parlors. Backroom transactions for massage services is extra and expected, and/or the offer of a ready bed elsewhere not uncommon, but are nevertheless not the advertised services in the music rooms, though it is understood that it is available to those who so desire to be waited upon.

Eradication of prostitution in Communist China since 1949 was an ideological goal, for prostitutes were thought to enter the business in order to survive. If everyone were cared for, there would not be any need for anyone to enter the profession. The CCP thought they succeeded so well that by 1964, they closed down 29 venereal disease institutes as no longer necessary.

The commerce, however, was widely practiced in urban centers like Shanghai, and the entry of favored and highly desired Russian practitioners into the field may not have been through organized and established efforts, but were known to occur as individual incidences; there were also occurrences of sexual favors tendered to cadre members and officers in exchange for privileges. The corrupting practices sent a few to rehabilitation camps.

Since the loosening of the political grip on the economy by Deng Xiao Ping, the return of pillow-talk among comrades for a monetary price returned. Where rapid urban development occurred in areas like Shenzhen in Guangdong, the provinces around the municipality of Shanghai, and the commercial centers of Tianjin and Wuhan, the commerce in sex flourished as well. Now, even the remote areas of Sichuan and Tibet advertise certain services at appointed rooms.

Let us look at the players on Saipan. Resident walk-ins, survivors, and earnest immigrants who had come to the island for a different purpose but have decided to stake a claim on the geography by all means necessary quickly replaced the original pros from the Philippines, HK, Taipei, Seoul and Shanghai.

Demographics for streetwalkers in Garapan in the late ’90s reportedly was at 50 percent Chinese. In less than a decade, the Chinese preponderance has become more than 95 percent. While there are still pros that trickle in from Shenyang and Shanghai, and other Asian cities, they have become the rare exceptions. They tend to settle in, along with the original pros, to managing the business.

The walk-ins are just folks who want more income. Unlike their Filipino counterparts who become birds who fly at low altitude (ibong mababa ang lipad) because of a heart rending story of misfortune, bad luck and/or someone else’s demonic exploitation, the walk-ins carry with them no emotional baggage or moral guilt feelings about commercial sex. They are young and their disciplined approach to the business is like performing a handshake, save that another part of the body is engaged. Sometimes they even have a nan pangyo (boyfriend) waiting in the wings while the girlfriend services a customer.

The survivors do worry about “face” and they tend to have an “unfortunate” story that deters them from ever considering returning home but they are resolved to earn enough for mama’s new house, the schooling for the child left behind, and the support for the husband who is keeping things together while rehearsing in his mind and public story a martyr of the wife who is sacrificially laboring at a garment factory elsewhere to earn enough for everyone.

The immigrants are looking for a husband, preferably a very mature one, though a merchant marine, a wayward sailor, even an aging teacher willing to be paid will do. Some even have permission from their husbands back home; they have willingly signed away their marriages, just so Ma Lee and her colleagues can marry themselves into a green card. All for the family, we understand.

Human trafficking remains a global issue and how prevalent it is on Saipan has gotten its share of press through the efforts of Sister Laurie and Sr. Stella but their cause notwithstanding, volitional practitioners from the House of Horus are alive and well, and their profession merit consideration for decriminalization. They are here to stay. Tomorrow, we visit where they live and where they play.