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The lantern beckons
“The lantern beckoned him. The new ‘ah ku’ was pretty, fresh from Canton. High on opium, he made his way unsteadily towards the gas-lit brothel.” No, this is not an entry in the worst opening lines of a novel competition, but rather an introductory description to a walking tour billed as The Secrets of the Red Lantern of Singapore's Chinatown. Our guide, Helena, who, as it turns out, has a sister living in Woodend, Canterbury, takes us, as the narrative continues, “to where many men have gone before, tracing the the red light district in Chinatown from past to present, to learn about the colourful lives of those who were embroiled in its timeless drama”.
And it seems many men have gone before: “In 1887, the brothels in Chinatown were as many and as close together as the teeth of a comb. Combine that with the proliferation of opium and gambling dens, it was sin city. It is no accident that Chinatown was also known as Bu Ye Tian, The Place of Nightless Days. Discover vice and tragedy in the shadows of Chinatown by night. You will venture into the fringes where entertainment, in its rawest form, is still practiced today”. It was a wild time, one prostitute to every fifteen men and an opium trade run by the British, as much to maintain political control as the West’s modern-day management of some heroin markets.
Given Singapore’s conservative regime, it is something of a surprise to learn that prostitution is legal, but probably no surprise at all that the vice-squad systematically raids two brothels a week to ensure that their workers are licensed and have up-to-date health checks. The contradiction being that it is illegal both for women to solicit and men to purchase; apparently liaisons are arranged through some form of osmosis. Until last year oral sex was unlawful unless accompanied by penetration, a poster glimpsed through the door of one establishment advertising that such a form of sex only to be performed on clients suitably attired with a condom. We are not sure which flavor might be preferred.
These days Chinatown is being gentrified, quite beautifully, and as current brothel licenses expire they are not being renewed, with former bordellos being transformed into trendy boutique hotels. There are still the remnants though: in the “Blue Triangle”, we pass doorways where house numbers are illuminated in small lightboxes to indicate they are open for business, a yoga club invites passersby to “Kum In”, reflexology massage parlours advertise half-hour massages for $5 as if they could survive on that, and hotels offer rooms to rent by the hour.
Changes to the face of Chinatown do not mean that demand for commercial sex has diminished; it has diversified and developed its own particular class system. Twenty minutes of fun in Chinatown costs around $S40 ($NZ48) while at the fashionable Orchard Towers, a complex of bars and restaurants in the city’s fashionable shopping area eloquently dubbed the four floors of whores, clients can expect to pay $S200 for an encounter of limited duration or up to $S1,000 for the night. For the latter one might wish (or need) to take advantage of some of the traditional enhancements available, not only the customary antler velvets and ginsengs, but also such exotic delights as seal and deer penises.
There is apparently a local medicinal restaurant that offers diagnoses and traditional accompaniments with its cuisine. If a young man is not feeling on top of his game or, for example, is about to go on a hot date, he can tell the chef and something will be prepared to, shall we say, balance his “yang”. Our guide tells us that this was put to the test by one skeptical female journalist who requested the chef prepare a lunchtime meal to enhance her libido. The journalist reportedly returned to work and spent the next four hours under her desk, so aroused she was fearful of what she may do to any passing male.