What's Wrong with Brothels? Brothels Are the Source of Chinese Culture!

2006/3/9 10:00:26

Today I happened to see a post claiming that Chinese cinema has become "brothel-ized" and therefore debased. But what's wrong with brothels? The cream of Chinese culture all came from brothels — brothels are the source of Chinese culture! Today's garbage Chinese films don't even deserve to be associated with brothels. Don't assume that just because China's greatest novel is related to the "Red Chamber" [Dream of the Red Chamber] you can look down on the "Green Chamber" [brothels]. The person who wrote the Red Chamber was certainly connected to the Green Chamber — without brothels, there would be no Red Chamber.

Never mind how Liu Rushi brought the two great literary alliance leaders of the late Ming and early Qing to their knees, and how centuries later, one of the last century's most preeminent Chinese scholars still wrote a biographical study of this woman who came from the brothels. Never mind how many masterpieces of the Tang and Song were written in brothels, or how much of China's classical music and painting was produced there. Never mind how many of China's most beloved love stories have been continuously manufactured in brothels over the centuries. Just consider: nowadays everything has been "culture-ified" — sex culture, tea culture, wine culture, this culture and that culture — so why can't brothels have their own cultural moment?

Brothels encompassed virtually everything China proudly claims as culture — sex culture, tea culture, wine culture — which of these wasn't magnified and glorified in brothels? Poetry, lyrics, songs, prose, political essays — which could have flourished without passing through the brothels? Look at the one who wrote "to see a thousand miles further" [Wang Zhihuan] — when he went to a higher floor of the brothel with two other famous men, he turned beet red because the courtesans there weren't singing his work. This proves that brothels were indeed the wellspring of culture, and even more so of inspiration.

The disappearance of brothels accompanied the degradation of an entire civilization. Only the most vulgar people shamelessly and absolutely equate brothels with sex trade. True brothels were mostly about things beyond sex. Just as fine wine needs a fine cellar, the brothel was that cellar — what was aged inside was Maotai and Wuliangye. With the brothel — that "cellar" slandered as a "kiln" — Chinese culture was able to defeat time and remain sublimely fragrant.

Nowadays, one old thing after another is being restored — so why can't brothels be restored? Beyond the laughable reasons of so-called morality and such, the most critical point is that people today simply aren't worthy of brothels. Tell me: is there anyone today who is worthy of the brothels the way Li Bai, Du Fu, or Su Shi were? Is there anyone today writing verses worthy of the brothels, like "Ten years' Yangzhou dream — a fleeting sojourn"?

Brothels — the source of Chinese culture, the historical dream of Chinese civilization!