Space, mobility, modernity: The figure of the prostitute in Chinese-language cinema

Abstract

Abstract This article is a study of the figure of the modern Chinese prostitute by examining a series of important Chinese-language films. I describe a pattern of increasing mobility on the part of the Chinese prostitute from the turn of the twentieth century to the turn of the twenty-first century. The spatial expansion of the Chinese prostitute over a long historical time span has to do with the evolving conceptions and realities of the modern Chinese nation state within a global capitalist system. I demarcate successively three times in modern Chinese history and describe the corresponding phases/faces of gender politics as embodied by the figure of the Chinese prostitute.