China – The Return of the Concubine
Axelle de Russé
Winner of the 2007 Canon Female Photojournalist Award
In China, the status of a man was once measured by the number of women he had – both wives and concubines. In 1949, the Communists banned the practice, seeing it as a sign of bourgeois decadence, but now, after two decades of market economy, concubines have returned – the “ernai”, meaning “second wife”.
I wanted to tell the story as seen in China today in the third millennium, to report on the private, taboo tale of these young women, captives in a golden cage.
According to estimates, there are approximately 100 000 “kept women” in Guangdong province alone. The tradition of the concubine may be the subject of many a male fantasy, but for the young girls, it means living in seclusion, waiting on and for the man, in a state of total dependence.
Preview
For a man, a concubine is a sign of success. The deal is simple: money in exchange for sexual favors, but with exclusive rights. A man has “his” concubine. Even though the practice is banned by law in modern China, as are all forms of prostitution, it is so widespread that wives of civil servants have set up their own secret association known as the “Alliance against Concubines in the People’s Republic of China”, to wage their own battle. Their leader has become a private detective and travels across China in search of concubines. (In fact, the revival of the practice has brought about an increase in the number of private detectives.)
The phenomenon of concubines can be found in all social classes. Many of the girls have come from rural areas to escape poverty, and first started as sex workers, before being chosen as concubines. Others are approached at private parties, or even universities. These young women go from extreme poverty to a life of great loneliness and boredom in strange cities where they know no one. And they wait. In exchange, they have an apartment and a car, but they must be available for their partner who is often a married man, with his family somewhere else.
While concubines are taboo, they are everywhere, but are not allowed to speak, and certainly not to strangers. A concubine may have official recognition from friends and colleagues, but not from the rest of society. They lead lives reminiscent of 19th century courtesans in tales by Guy de Maupassant or Zola’s Nana.
Dazhu is 22 and comes from a very poor family. A girlfriend suggested she leave her village to work in a bar; she then became a hostess, and subsequently mistress. Nanhua is 20 and has no educational qualifications; she comes from a city in the north of China. She moved to Shanghai, attracted by the money and luxury, hoping that she too could gain from the market economy. After a few months she became a concubine, with a helping hand from one of her father’s friends.
Xian Mengfei’s family lives in abject poverty. She moved to Shenzhen to work as a hostess in a karaoke bar, and, before she knew it, had become the concubine of an older man. As is often the case, he did not tell her he was married. She is helping her family buy a home. The life of a concubine is short. Time is their cruel enemy. They obsessively check the ravages of time in the mirror, as every passing hour brings them ever closer to the day when they are no longer considered to be desirable.
