In China, yueji, music performers or music prostitutes, existed as early as years ago during the time of Confucius Warring States, B. Unlike modern prostitutes who only perform sex acts, yueji were professionally trained in the arts of music and dance. At the courts of kings and noblemen, these young girls, chosen for their beauty and talent, survived only as long as they could charm. While most faced a tragic end as their smiles became wrinkled, or at best became Buddhist nuns, a few miraculously transformed themselves into noblewomen and even empresses.
Their cultivated skills in music, poetry, painting, calligraphy β and of course the bedchamber - - fascinated wealthy businessmen, high officials, learned scholars, even prominent monks.
Their would- be clients had to compete with each other for their favors. Women at all levels imitated their haughty manner, elegant clothes and elaborate hair styles. Most of these women were born into privilege yet lost it through ill fortune β death of parents, criminal conviction of a family member, bankruptcy or abduction.
A ruined family might be faced with the stark choice between selling a daugher or starvation. Like the rest of the premodern world, China had no social safety net. For most of these fallen women, there was little hope. Yet a determined and resourceful few manipulated the system to attain positions of power and respect. Most prestigious among them was Cai Jinhua, Golden Flower, who rose from a prostitution house to marry an ambassador and later became the mistress of the most powerful European general stationed in China.
She used her influence to stop pillage by European soldiers and even, it is said, saved the life of the Empress. Unlike in our own time, prostitution in China was not just about sex. Not a furtive encounter in a hotel room arranged from a payphone but a leisurely orchestrated mutual seduction in which the attraction was not a bulging chest but elegant conversation and artistic accomplishment. Actual sex might follow a lengthy and extremely expensive courtship by the customer involving gifts of jewelry, lavish banquets, gambling parties and other events put on by the prostitution house.
