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Using government records and women's testimonies archived in private institutions, this article studies brothel keeping as business and brothel keepers as business owners and managers. In nineteenth-century Hong Kong, a military outpost of the British Empire, a commercial center attracting men of all classes and all nationalities, and yet, a stronghold of Chinese patriarchal practices, prostitution and brothel keeping flourished. The brothel keeper, always a woman, was offered an unprecedented opportunity to develop personal and entrepreneurial skills. In the process she expanded her life aspirations and played new roles in society and at home.
"I am willing to go with Dai Yan Tong. He is a con-man, 29 years old. If he makes money I hope he will give some to me so that I can buy two or three girls and open a brothel and be the female boss [shitoupo]. This is what my heart really wants."1 Thus Liu Zhang, a prostitute working in Hong Kong in 1891, confessed her fervent desire and ambition to become a brothel keeper. This article studies brothel keeping as business and brothel keepers as business owners and managers. In Hong Kong, the brothel keeper was the person legally responsible to the government for keeping the brothel in good order and, in business terms, the one responsible for making the enterprise pay. The most noteworthy feature was that all keepers were women.2 Since few women in nineteenth-century Chinese society had the opportunity to operate businesses, brothel keeping in Hong Kong was one of the first arenas where they could realize and develop their entrepreneurial skills. More fundamentally, I explore the political, economic, social, and legal conditions in Hong Kong that not only created new opportunities for Chinese business people, men and women, but also transformed their social roles and life aspirations.
Studies of brothel keeping are rare, although there is no dearth of writing on Chinese prostitutes.3 Beautiful, heroic, virtuous, and talented, prostitutes have long been romanticized and immortalized in literature. Scholars-including historians, anthropologists, and sociologists-have recently examined the subject using an ever growing range of sources and in light of a variety of social theories.4 And in the midst of what appears to be excessive fascination with Shanghai, we find refreshing perspectives in historian James F. Warren's...