traditional china

Name

Professor

Subject

16 November 2007

Prostitutes in Southern Song

Prostitutes played an important and necessary role in Southern Song Society . Confucian scholars who dominated the civil service saw them as excesses and blights upon society 's morals . Buddhists also despised them for tempting men to live hedonistic lives . Other women considered them threats and rivals for the affection of their husbands . But for the most part Prostitutes gave sensual pleasure and companionship to those who worked hard for the good of the Empire . From the lowly urban workers

to the Celestial Emperor the Prostitute was a pleasurable fact of life

Prostitution , they say is the oldest profession , although not all prostitutes entered that service of their own free will . Many were driven to prostitution , as they are today , by poverty and hardship Chinese ethics of that time espoused having many children to help work in farms or in the family business . However , more children also meant more mouths to feed . Starving , poverty-stricken rural families were forced to sell their children to traveling merchants who would then sell them as maids , workers or more often then not prostitutes in the cities . Prostitutes spent most of their lives among other forms of worldly entertainment in pleasure grounds where places were moral and social mores were largely be ignored (Gernet 222-25 . However , in large cities such as Hangchow , the pleasure grounds appeared to have spread to the whole city . Virtually every public place , tavern , restaurant , hotel and market had become a pleasure ground . Even Marco Polo was so astonished at this when he arrived in China that he was led to record afterwards

Certain of the streets are occupied by the women of the town who are in such number that I dare not say what it is . They are found not only in the vicinity of the market places , where usually a quarter is assigned to them , but all over the city . They exhibit themselves splendidly attired and abundantly perfumed . In finely garnished houses , with trains of waiting women , these women are extremely accomplished in all the arts of allurement , and readily adapt their conversation to all sorts of persons , in so much that strangers who have once tasted their attractions seem to get so bewitched , and are so taken with their blandishments and their fascinating ways that they never can get these out of their heads . Hence it comes to pass that when they return home they say they have been to Kinsay or the City of Heaven , and their only desire is to get back thither as soon as possible

However , Prostitutes were not wholly just sex workers . Many were also talented singers , dancers and musicians . In fact , the youths and not so youthful who frequented them came as much for their company as for sex They are not the lowly streetwalker variety that comes to mind when the term prostitute is used . In fact , the term courtesan or concubine is more appropriate . Like Japanese Geisha many served an...