by Roseann Lake
There are significant “social compensation fees” for having a child out of wedlock in China, where the progeny of unmarried parents are so frowned upon that they’re not even entitled to a hukou, or residence permit. Without a hukou, a child can’t attend school, access basic social services, or even apply for an identity card. These limitations fuel a black market for fake hukou, which is usually how the children of men and their mistresses become legitimized—unless Wujun is able to intervene beforehand. Over the course of his career, he admits to having participated in at least one high-speed chase to a maternity ward, in a bid to blow the cover of a man and his mistress on the way to give birth.
Mistresses who don’t secure a financial link through childbirth often open businesses, explains Wujun. “They open beauty salons, luxury boutiques—all territory they’re very familiar with,” he says. However, if they haven’t invested well or if they don’t have a good head for business, as they age and lose market value, many retire with much less than they’re accustomed to. “They end up lonely and living day to day,” he says, just before adding, “I think the happiest ones are those who eventually get married.”
Costly Cavorting
If marriage was a part of Ivy’s master plan, she was certainly in no rush to complete it.
Though she is only twenty-seven, one gets the impression that she has lived well beyond her years. The first time I met her in person, she had a Cartier watch encircling her wrist, a Dior bag dangling from her forearm, Chanel earrings illuminating her ears, a cashmere Burberry coat cinched at her waist, and LV patent pumps with small golden bows adorning her feet. She was a veritable pageant of luxury branding, and yet somehow—shockingly—she made it all work.
“In the eyes of many Chinese men, a beautiful girl can only be beautiful so long as she’s useless and completely lost and destroyed without a man supporting her,” she said as we sat down to Hong Kong–style sweets at a small café near her apartment. We were surrounded by royal-purple velvet furniture, endless mirrors, and swirling tentacular chandeliers—a decorative theme that I sensed has somehow become the coat of arms of China’s nouveau riche. “And a smart girl can only be smart so long as she isn’t too beautiful to be taken seriously or to be perceived as too much of a threat,” she added.
As for a smart, beautiful woman? That, Ivy proudly proclaimed, is a mistress.
Shortly before meeting Ivy, I came across a report in Chinese media of a busted “mistress ring” run by a Shanghai Finance University student surnamed Ding. He had allegedly recruited female students from fourteen leading mainland universities, including Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Renmin University, and was charging a premium (between 400,000 RMB and 600,000 RMB or US $60,000–$90,000 a year) for their services. As part of the deal, he even promised prospective sponsors copies of the female students’ academic achievement certificates and English proficiency tests. This news struck me as surprising—all along I’d been under the impression that Chinese men shied away from intelligent women. It turns out they do—when it comes to finding a wife. But where mistresses are concerned, as Dr. X hinted, it seems brains and beauty pack an extra-special punch.
There’s a historical explanation for this preference. In China as recently as the early 1900s, the brothel, courtesan house, or otherwise designated location where a man might procure what in modern terms would be defined as a “mistress,” was a place of extreme social importance. Here, a client’s masculinity was either validated or denigrated by the women he frequented, as courtesans were the arbiters of a man’s sophistication, class, and refinement. There were even guidebooks instructing male callers on how to behave when in the company of a courtesan. If a man failed to comport himself appropriately, he risked shame, ridicule, and ran the danger of being perceived as a “country bumpkin” by other customers.
This was equally true for prostitutes, who, although of lesser standing than courtesans, were still among the most elite women in society and the social equals of aristocrats, scholars, government officials, and the like. More than carnal pleasure, they provided the pleasure of their company through music, poetry, singing, and dancing, as conveyed by the Chinese character for prostitute, , which means “female performer.”
During the Tang dynasty (618–907), even a special governmental institution called the jiaofang was founded, where prostitutes trained in music, dancing, literature, calligraphy, chess, and literary drinking games. Considered a conservatory or high-end finishing school of sorts, it existed at a time when women were otherwise completely deprived of education, which made courtesans and prostitutes a scintillating and welcome escape from innocent and homely wives. Their worldliness and prestige made them privy to situations and conversations that “virtuous” women would never have access to, and their talents and charms made them the darlings of respected men and poets. As noted by Ginger Huang in The World of Chinese, of the 49,000 poems in The Complete Poetry of the Tang, 4,000 are related to prostitutes and 136 are written by prostitutes themselves.
Even in modern China, politics and extramarital activity remain intertwined. Known in some circles as China’s unofficial “Queen of Mistresses,” Li Wei was born into an impoverished family in war-torn Vietnam and has since become a billionaire thanks to her clever and strategic conquests. Much like Wendi Deng—the former wife of Rupert Murdoch who is largely seen as a hero in her native China—Wei used powerful men as stepping-stones to even more powerful men. Yet whereas Deng is admired for having skillfully manipulated herself out of poverty (and out of China) by seducing a married American man—to whom she was briefly married before wedding Murdoch—Wei’s story has an extra pinch of drama. In addition to amassing an enviable fortune through her escapades, Wei also put several of her paramours behind bars.
As reported in a searing cover story by Caijing Magazine—one of China’s most respected publications—Wei started small. In the late ’80s, as a modest tobacco trader keen to build a network of business connections, Wei first became the mistress of the man who would help her—and her sisters—obtain the residency papers and fake IDs they needed to facilitate business travel between Hong Kong and the mainland. She then upgraded by marrying a local government official working in China’s tobacco bureau, and through him she met her next victim: Li Jiating, the governor of Yunnan, a Chinese province that produces a prodigious volume of tobacco. He was jailed in 2001 for taking millions of dollars in bribes, and although Li Wei was also arrested for exploiting her husband’s contacts to bring in backhanders, she was eventually released. Following their divorce, she became mistress to the crown jewel of her collection: Du Shicheng, then the Communist Party secretary of Qingdao, a coastal city in the northeast that is something like China’s answer to Atlantic City, minus the casinos.† Through Shicheng, Wei gained access to huge plots of land at bargain-basement prices in Qingdao, which at the time was gearing up to host the water sports events at the 2008 Olympics. Wei won numerous contracts to develop prime seafront locations, including a luxury marina, an upscale shopping mall, and an opulent mansion, the latter of which she used to host legendary parties for party members. As reported in the Daily Mail, “Fine wines flowed. Obscene sums of money changed hands. Multi-million-pound deals were agreed. Flirtations were initiated and future lovers seduced. And in every encounter, Li Wei reigned supreme.”
Unfortunately for Shicheng, he made the mistake of introducing his mistress to Chen Tonghai, then chairman of Sinopec; the Chinese oil and gas goliath. Sensing the opportunity to diversify her portfolio, Wei became his lover and pumped him for gas-station rights and Sinopec shares worth millions of pounds.
Perhaps most intriguing in Wei’s never-ending game of “man monopoly” is the fact that while virtually all of her pawns served time for corruption charges, despite a few slaps on the wrist and brief stints behind bars, she remains free. She has testified in court against many of her former lovers and, by extension, has toppled a portentous list of powerful men. Du, the party secreta
ry of Qingdao, died in jail. Chen, the former chairman of Sinopec, is still in jail, as are other men to whom Wei has been connected, including the former deputy of the supreme court, the former deputy governor of the China Development Bank, and the former vice mayor of Beijing, as far as can be known. It is impossible to say for sure, but Wei may have been spared much jail time for her own misdemeanors because, like a catfish, she sucked details (and money) out of greedy, high-level men and made the work of the Chinese graft-busting police infinitely easier by keeping all the information in a journal.
A police official associated with one of the corruption cases told the Daily Mail, “It showed that behind every successful woman, there are many bad men.”
Though a superlative example, Wei is not an exception. A survey of Chinese corruption cases conducted in 2000 and reported in John Osburg’s book Engendering Wealth: China’s New Rich and the Rise of an Elite Masculinity, found that 93 out of 100 cases involved mistresses and often the sticky fingers of these convicted men were revealed through testimonies from their extramarital female companions. “In this world, only the kiss of a woman will send you to your doom,” noted Li Zhen, a former party secretary and tax bureau chief from Hebei province. While he was in hiding, his mistress, whom he referred to as a “little lamb turned poisonous snake,” leaked his whereabouts to the police, a revelation that led to his execution for graft in 2003.
Thinking back to Empress Wu Zetian, the actions of China’s modern mistresses are not so different from those of their concubine sisters of yore, who used their feminine charms and privileged proximity to men in power as a means of gaining access to sensitive business information and networks they would not otherwise have had. While this doesn’t say much for equality between the sexes, it underscores the curious persistence of a system that has been in place for centuries. It also highlights the importance of its female protagonists, who, consciously or not, may have redressed prevalent gender inequalities in their society by obtaining sizable sums of wealth and power, while simultaneously reinforcing these inequalities at the expense of other women—namely, the wives.
Still, for better or for worse—and until a corruption scandal do it part—mistress culture is so embedded in Chinese culture at large that March 3 is known in some circles as “Mistress Day.” The date was coyly chosen because in Chinese, one of the two most common ways to say mistress is xiao san or “little three.” March 3 (3/3), therefore, was considered the most opportune day for a group of third wheels called the Association for the Care of Little Threes, to publish an open letter on its now defunct (presumably censored) website, Xeixe.com, establishing March 3 as a day of respect and awareness for the third wheels of the world.‡
Though the site was full of tutorials and friendly forums where “little threes” discussed the gifts they received, the going rate for monthly allowances, and shared tips for taking revenge on dishonest men, some of the most interesting entries attempted a more metaphysical approach to mistressing.
According to SuXiaoman.com, another now defunct site that I was redirected to from Xeixe.com, there is a very critical difference between a xiao san and an er nai, the other common term used to reference a mistress, which literally translates as “second breast.” Er nai, it’s generally acknowledged, are the more self-interested breed of mistress. The primary objective of their relationships is generally understood to be money, whereas for xiao san, feelings trump finances.
As explained on the site:
•A xiao san treats the affair as a real emotional relationship, whereas an er nai is just looking to make money
•A xiao san is with a man because she wants to be, an er nai is with a man because it’s her occupation
•A xiao san needs to hear the words “wo ai ni” (I love you), whereas an er nai needs to hear the words “wo yang ni” (I’ll pay for you)
It concludes: In today’s modern society, wives are the ones who manage money, er nai are the ones who require money, and xiao san are the ones who just want love.
I ran these definitions by Dr. X, who I am not surprised to discover is friends with Wei, whom he affectionately and cheerfully refers to as Wei Jie, or “sister Jie.” (She must have spared him in her chain of conquests in favor of a bigger fish.) Dr. X didn’t dispute the definitions, and decided to build on them. “Chinese culture dictates that for a woman to marry, she must find a man with superior education, societal status, and earnings. Today, given everything Chinese women have achieved, the number of these men in proportion to single women just doesn’t work out, and so in order to get what they want, some women have to become mistresses instead.”
Although it was hard for me to imagine that Ivy became a mistress as the result of an unfavorable numbers game, I decided to ask her anyway. “It wasn’t a difficult decision,” she said. “I’m not the type of woman men want to marry, but it turns out I’m exactly the type they want to have an affair with. Rather than change my nature, I chose to use it to my advantage.”
As she spoke, I couldn’t help but think about how much she has in common with Christy, Zhang Mei, and other so-called leftover women I’d gotten to know. She was resourceful, ambitious, and—while it may not seem obvious—fiercely independent. “Being with several men gives me the freedom and the resources to avoid becoming the property of one,” she admits, in a rare moment of emotion. This idea reminds me of an earlier conversation I’d had with Christy after she had finished a particularly taxing week of work. “I don’t work this hard because I want to,” she said. “I do it because I need to know that I can support myself.” In China, little girls grow up hearing the phrase “It’s better to marry well than to study well,” Zhang Mei once explained to me during a lesson. “But that’s a very foolish thing to think and a very dangerous way to live.”
* Before De Beers appeared in China in 1993, there was no tradition involving the exchange of diamond engagement rings; gold and jade were used instead. Since then, China has become the second largest diamond market in the world after the United States, which suggests that more than a few Chinese women have required their fiancés to “put a ring on it.”
† Gambling is illegal under Chinese law, which begins to explain why casinos around the world—including in the special administrative zones of Hong Kong and Macau—are often filled with zealous Chinese gamblers.
‡ Mistress Fun Fact: Today, Valentine’s Day in China is celebrated by couples with roses, chocolates, and candlelit dinners, much like it is in the West, but until the 1990s, Valentine’s Day, translated into Chinese as “Lovers Day,” was largely understood otherwise. Since the word “lover” at the time was still almost exclusively associated with extramarital affairs, many Chinese believed that Valentine’s was actually a special holiday to celebrate mistresses. “Mistress Day” (March 3) didn’t come along until two decades later.
4
MARRIAGE AND MORTARBOARDS
Women of high intellect die young.
—CHINESE PROVERB
When June Ma goes out on a date with a Chinese man, she hikes up the virgin factor. Instead of wearing an open cardigan and a necklace, she stows away her cleavage and is demure in a modest sweater and scarf. Throughout the course of the date, she is careful to let the man do most of the talking, to appear interested in everything he says, and to react with sufficient wonder to ensure that he is—at all times—very comfortably marinating in his own ego.
This proves somewhat challenging for the twenty-seven-year-old Beijinger, who is by no accounts a shrinking virginal violet. She graduated at the top of her high school class and was admitted to Yale, where she earned her BA and began her JD, then worked briefly at a Manhattan law firm before returning to Beijing to be closer to her parents. Animated, affable, and razor sharp, she is also endlessly inquisitive, a habit she developed in the United States—which for the information-deprived Chinese student, was an all-you-can-ask buffet.
“Pay attention to your laugh!” warns her mother as June is getting hers
elf ready for a date one evening in Beijing. While it isn’t necessary to cover her teeth, her mother is constantly reminding her to tame her expressions of amusement to a titter when in the company of a Chinese gentleman. Equally invested in his daughter’s marital future, June’s father—a respected scholar—more radically suggests that she mute her laugh altogether, and instead encourages her to “smile like the Mona Lisa.” Anything more exuberant might convince a prospective suitor that she is assertive, worldly, charismatic—in short, not a good wife.
June is a prime example of the obstacles Chinese women with advanced degrees encounter when seeking a marriage partner, especially once they’ve had exposure to foreign men while living or studying abroad. Back in China, June feels as if she’s living a double life. She finds that most of the local men she is set up with aren’t interested in casual dating; they are looking for wives—blushing, tender, baby-making wives. June plays along out of respect for the family members and friends who set her up, but in her free time, she dates Western men and other “return turtles” (Chinese who have studied abroad but are now back in China) whom she meets when out on the town. Like them, her education, exposure to a foreign dating culture, and higher emotional expectations all make her an anomaly in modern China, where traditional courtship mores of propriety and practicality still dominate. Though determined to avoid finding a husband of the “shake-and-bake” variety—that is, the kind who, shortly after shaking his hand, you are married to and baking his children—as she has discovered, these types of arrangements abound in China.