Supply And Demand

Starting from the right-hand side of the picture above and working left along the storefront billboards, there are some characters that you may benefit from knowing:
休闲: These two characters mean ‘to be at ease,’ or ‘leisure.’
婚: This character, depending on context, can act as a noun or a verb; marriage, or to marry.
性: Here, this character means ‘sex.’
保健: Again, these two characters are often found paired together. 保 means to protect, keep, or ensure, and 健 means ‘healthy,’ or ‘to strengthen.’
The leftmost storefront in this picture is a print shop for making posters, name-cards, etc.

Anyway, you get the idea of what kind of shops these are, right? Well, there is a reason that along this random stretch of road near my home there are at least a dozen “massage parlors,” (not pictured above, but they can be found in the same area) each employing enough girls to fill an entire handball team roster (no pun intended). While some provide more comprehensive service than others, each shop shares the same purpose, i.e., fill the demand for unattached, cheap sex, or sexual contact. In China, this type of man/woman encounter - as has been expressed to me both implicitly and explicitly - is, apart from inside massage parlors, very hard to come by. Often times even within a marriage, I have learned, physical intimacy is the exception, not the rule. Cramped living conditions, demands/sacrifices of migrant labor, and relationships based on considerations other than true love may account for this phenomenon.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I made friends with one of the security guards that used to work at the complex where I live (he has since moved to Shenzhen in the name of increased economic opportunity). We bumped into each other one afternoon as he was coming off of his shift. He invited me to go for a cruise on the back of his motorcycle. “With pleasure,” I responded. It was about 2:00 in the afternoon, with the sun shining bright, and neither of us had any place to be. Just as an old bus driving in front of us spat out a cloud of hot, black exhaust, my friend pulled over to the side of the road. “Wow! How considerate,” I thought. “This guy really read my mind.” Within 10 seconds, however, we were off the bike and inside a huge room with dozens of curious, yet bashful looking teenage girls. “Ok, maybe he didn’t read my mind,” I said to myself. He instructed me to 随便挑一个, or, “choose whichever one you want.” Two o’clock on a weekday, inside a dank building, with a girl probably 10 years my junior, on a bed that’s been used who knows how many times, for about $5 USD; all the while being stared at and talked about as an oddity. Something about that proposition didn’t seem very appealing to me. To ensure that I didn’t make my friend lose face by sneering at his suggestion or inadvertently deriding his behavior, I just told him that I had a long night the night before and that I was too tired for another girl at the moment. He seemed satisfied with that.

As we left the shop and drove back to my house (I conveniently remembered at that point that I was in fact quite busy that afternoon), I asked him if he frequented the place he had just brought me. “Unfortunately not,” he admitted. “I only make 40 RMB a day, and it costs 40 RMB per visit. If I went there all the time, I wouldn’t have any money to eat. Plus, I’m married.” I was curious whether or not he could find the companionship he needed from his wife. “Well,” he countered, “I like to go there with my friends. It’s fun. And it’s our culture.” I wasn’t sure whether he was referring to the culture of his group of friends, or his impression of Chinese culture, but given the supply of massage parlors around, I can take a guess.