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Whispers and Moans: Interviews with the Men and Women of Hong Kong's Sex Industry Paperback – November 16, 2010

by Yeeshan Yang (Author)
4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 17 ratings
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With glitzy nightclubs, saunas, karaoke lounges and brothels, Hong Kong's sex business is booming. But how do local prostitutes compete with an endless supply of girls from China? To find out, Yang spent a year with the city's hookers. The result is an eye-opening book which shows the human side of sex for sale - easy money, financial ruin and hopeless relationships - and first-hand insights into the huge but hidden sex industry.
Previous page
  1. Print length
    240 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Blacksmith Books
  4. Publication date
    November 16, 2010
  5. Dimensions
    5.61 x 0.48 x 8.69 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    9628673289
  7. ISBN-13
    978-9628673285
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

A year spent studying local sex workers taught Yang that there's no such thing as a happy Hong Kong hooker. -- South China Morning Post, August 17, 2006

The book may be more expensive than a cinema ticket... but it is still HK$60 cheaper than the price of street hookers in areas like Yaumatei. -- BC Magazine, May 2007

This is a book that will amuse and possibly amaze rather than arouse. -- Hemlock's Diary, July 2006

About the Author

Yeeshan Yang comes from a migratory family background. She spent her childhood years in Maoist China, where she saw her Indonesian-Chinese father politically persecuted as a spy; grew up in Hong Kong; studied Japanese in Tokyo; experienced migrant life again in Australia; then returned to Hong Kong. She has worked in journalism, filmmaking and publishing while conducting anthropological research. Whispers and Moans is her first non-fiction published in English.

Yeeshan also penned the screenplay for the movie adaptation of Whispers and Moans, which premiered at the Hong Kong International Film Festival in 2007.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Blacksmith Books (November 16, 2010)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9628673289
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-9628673285
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.4 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.61 x 0.48 x 8.69 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 17 ratings

Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
4 out of 5
17 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Michael Valdivielso
5.0 out of 5 stars A serious study...
Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2009
Verified Purchase
Before I start the review let me repeat - this is a serious study of the sex business in Hong Kong. There are no photos, no stories of the X-rated kind, no in-dept studies of positions. This is about the people who work the sex industry, why they joined the industry, and what happens to them. It is sad, sometimes ugly, and also amazing. Women, men, transsexuals, brothel owners and even boyfriends are interviewed. Are they telling the truth? Are they making up lies? Hard to say - how many people would tell the truth about their lives, about the drugs, and the pain, and the gambling and the heartbreak?
This is not a book about facts and figures. This is a book about people, about life and, sometimes, about death. This book will destroy any idea you may have of easy money and happiness coming from being a prostitute. I hear women talking about the freedoms of being a hooker, good time girl, or a spoiled dove in history, and in the modern world, and I am sure some people do great. This book shows us those who fail.
2 people found this helpful
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Isham Cook
4.0 out of 5 stars One of the better attempts at getting at a difficult topic
Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2012
There is nothing more difficult than finding out what goes on in the mind of a prostitute, even when one is genuinely curious and not afflicted by sanctimony. She won't give men an honest answer, since they are potential customers, and will claim she earns less than she actually does to gain sympathy. She won't give women an honest answer, since they are potential competitors or worse - moralists. Academics and sociologists have no better luck trying to interview the prostitute, even when offering to pay for her time; she will then be happy to cooperate and will tell them exactly what (she thinks) they want to hear, exaggerating her circumstances and stories for shock effect. It's a classic problem of circling around the truth without ever getting any closer to it. Perhaps the female ethnographer could penetrate more deeply into this world by becoming a prostitute herself for a spell, but this is usually precluded by ethics protocols in academia (not to mention that in most countries sex work is an illegal activity). Another potential source of valuable information is the men who regularly sleep with prostitutes, though the information and stories they have to offer are secondhand and bound to be deeply subjective and self-serving as well.

Yeeshan Yang does not shy away from these obstacles. She confronts them directly in the first chapter, laying out her informal methodology - a compromise between the social worker interviewer and partial participant observer. We never really find out why she herself is interested in the topic of prostitution, but it's enough to know that she is, as we all are. However, her honesty inevitably forces her to confront the ultimate question as a female researcher, why she doesn't engage in sex work herself to gain the priviest perspective, and her response is poignant in its blunt candor: "Even if I did try to prostitute myself, I would likely end up digging my own tiny, burning pit of shame." To compensate for her acknowledged "narrow vision," she works very hard, hanging out on the streets and hostess clubs over months and years trying to meet and befriend as many sex workers of all types as she can. The insights that emerge from this approach are numerous and startling. If you talk to enough people in the same occupation, you will begin to see patterns and truths, some that I have never quite understood myself, despite my own extensive acquaintance with numerous sex workers in mainland China, e.g.: "Prostitutes have a stronger desire for love than do average women."

The result is a flawed yet profound book (which is why I'm still giving it 5 stars). Yang lacks the academic's sense of structure, and there is a loose sense of organization to her chapter sequencing that may strike some as haphazard. She also lacks the novelist's conciseness of expression and dramatic propulsion. The stories pile up of initially colorful characters who descend one after another into the same sad degeneracy of their materialistic fetishes, abusive relationships with pimps or boyfriends, drug addiction, jail and the repeating of these cycles over and over until they either waste away in prison or disappear into obscurity. She seeks but fails to find the counterpoint to these tragic tales - the happy hooker. We are left wondering if this mythical creature could possibly exist anywhere or may very well exist but was missed because the author was hanging out with all the wrong people. One suspects that if another intrepid author set about writing the same sort of book, a whole different cast of characters might emerge that would still bring us no closer to the truth of the prostitute. On the other hand, I don't think I've read a non-fiction account of prostitution that goes as far as Yang's does in its sheer persistence in the attempt.
2 people found this helpful
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Susan Blumberg-Kason
5.0 out of 5 stars An in-depth look into Hong Kong's sex industry
Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2016
Verified Purchase
I really enjoyed this book and found it to be almost as much about Hong Kong marital cultural as it was about the sex industry there. Although it was written some years ago, it's still relevant today.
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J
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2015
Verified Purchase
EXCELLENT text on the realities of sex work in hk
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P. Spurrier
5.0 out of 5 stars Honest portrayal
Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2008
This book is a very honest portrayal of the lives of people involved in the sex trade in Hong Kong, primarily in the low-rent districts of Mong Kok and Sham Shui Po, based on extensive interviews. The author went to great lengths to befriend sex workers but she remains unsentimental and doesn't shy away from expressing exasperation with the way they run their lives: frittering their earnings away on drugs, gambling, and unreliable boyfriends. It's both a vicarious insight into an underworld economy which few fully understand, and a critique of human folly. The movie was quite good but couldn't delve into the subject in much depth. As usual, the book is better.
4 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Sarah
2.0 out of 5 stars Very hard to read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 11, 2015
Verified Purchase
This shocked me as not what I expected at all. Some of the talk I felt really didn't need to be put in other than for shock purposes. It just felt more like a backing to keep prostitution in business no matter what the dangers to women are! Only a little written on trafficking but as a problem to the other prostitutes not the women trafficked! It was very hard to read. But it highlighted the acceptance of prostitutes in Hong Kong and all the struggles they face (even if that was in a way of all about making money or not)
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