During the late Qing Dynasty, the entire country was in a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society. The Qing government was involved in the craze of capital division of territory because of the problem of the Opium War, and the people's lives were also in dire straits.
In the society at that time, everyone was divided into different starting points according to their respective backgrounds. The corresponding aspects of whether they were able to receive education, their level of education, and their economic level were divided at completely different starting points.
So, at this time, people often engage in careers that they are reluctant to do because of life. Men can work hard to make money to support their families, but women belonging to the vulnerable group are completely different.
In the social context of men being superior to women at that time, these women who had low living standards and had to face the streets engaged in careers that they were unwilling to be "salt water girls".
Saltwater Girl is a profession that relies on selling her body to get money. Of course, this profession has existed since ancient times, but in the past society, Saltwater Girl was the person at the bottom of society.
They will be labeled as contempt and despised when they go out, and they will often be despised by the world. Moreover, such professions as theirs will not have descendants. So in that era, what kind of people did they engage in mainly deal with?
Salty Water Girl’s Career
At that time, the term "Salty Water Girl" was first circulated from Guangdong. Most of them live on the water. Some people seem to be born to be prostitutes, and some people are cheated and deceived by human traffickers.
The origin of the word "salted water girl" is said to be transliterated from the West. Foreigners first called it "salted plum", which means that it is a pity to eat without taste and discard it. Later, the word "Salty Water Girl" was also widely circulated, specifically referring to women who do skin and flesh transactions.
Relatively speaking, Saltwater girls and others are trading in flesh and blood, but their personality and conscience have not been destroyed. They were just a bunch of ordinary but unusual women, but they were just women who could not survive in the social context at that time.
Since it is a transaction, it must have income. According to relevant historical records, most salt water girls in the late Qing Dynasty were like this: , gorgeously dressed salt water girls would give the person who carried her bags on the dock a few silver dollars . The next day, I saw this person wearing rags and generously paying for the person to buy new clothes and shoes.
At the moment she took money from her bag, it seemed that she was not a woman forced to engage in lowly transactions by life, but a soft-hearted philanthropist in the context of a dire era. They do not hate the world because of their specialty of their profession, but instead live more comfortable and comfortable in their own way.
For the saltwater girls, they usually wander on the sea. Because of the Opium War, the Qing government blindly seeking peace and weakness and inaction, foreigners tacitly set off a strong wind of dividing Chinese territory. The profession of "safe water girls" was a group that appeared in which local prostitutes were unwilling to accept foreigners.
The miserable life of the saltwater girl
The saltwater girl who rents the sea will naturally come into contact with foreign customers and some sailors who have been engaged in sea operations all year round. For these saltwater girls, the professional nature of years of life usually causes most of them to get STDs.
In the sanitary environment at that time, people did not pay much attention to hygiene and cleanliness between the two genders. Besides, I believe that few people will "take care of" them in terms of hygiene.
What's more, the foreigners and foreign sailors they received were contempt and contempt for the Chinese from the bottom of their bones, so no one would consider hygiene in terms of sexual life. Most of the transactions between them were physical venting.
Most salt water girls are Guangdong people. Guangdong people living by the sea usually like to clean themselves. The ones who get venereal diseases are naturally sailors or foreigners who have been wandering on the sea for a long time, because 90% of the customers they faced at that time were foreigners and sailors, and domestic men generally lingered in local brothels.
After the saltwater girl is infected with a venereal disease, those Western authors with better writing will promote it with words. How dirty the saltwater girl is? On the one hand, it criticizes the saltwater girl for being dirty, and on the other hand, it will raise this discrimination to the entire Chinese circle. For example, black people and Malaysian people will also be mixed in.
At that time, the areas where Xianshuimei existed were generally in the concession, and there were also provisions for abolishing prostitutes in the concession, but the implementation did not have the expected results. Xianshuimei still solicited business on the streets.
After the saltwater girl was exposed to be infected with a STD, foreigners would also distribute them to the following STD hospitals for treatment in their own concessions, and register these people. Instead of being afraid of this, these women changed to another way to continue to solicit business to increase their income.
At that time, the descriptions of these groups were different from media materials. Some people thought that Saltwater Girl carried the virus because of her ancestral home. Some people thought that Saltwater Girl was infected with STD because she recruited those sailors. Some people thought that Saltwater Girl had deteriorated human nature during the process of "working".
During the business process, they will be ridiculed by Salt Shui Mei because their clients do not know foreign languages and are not used to some foreign entertainment methods.
Some people also said that Saltwater Girls were high-end prostitutes at that time. They were well-versed in the languages of various countries. Even among the Saltwater Girls, there were also patriots and some elegant and clean images.
records show that the number of Xianshuimei picks up more than 30 customers a day. Domestic prostitutes stick to their own bottom line and refuse to receive foreigners, so Xianshuimei’s profession also provides convenience for some people on another level.
While serving foreigners, some saltwater girls will take the opportunity to take a fancy to foreigners' gold, silver and wealth, and will find ways to steal these property. Therefore, in the writings of Western literati, saltwater girls are not only representative of low-professions, but also Chinese women with robbery nature.
But this cannot stop foreigners and foreign sailors from patrolling the Salt Water Girls business. Instead, it has advertised for the Salt Water Girls group, allowing more foreigners to know that there are so many places for people to enjoy in the Chinese Concession area.
Postscript
The way foreigners have spent their time has made saltwater girls in Guangdong understand many national languages, and there are also ways for foreigners to rent some saltwater girls for monthly purposes.
At the same time, Salt Shui Mei is also very cooperative in decorating her room into a situation needed by people who are renting a relationship, so that they can feel at home.
More than a hundred years have passed, and the word "Salty Water Girl" has gradually faded, but in the late Qing Dynasty, the Salt Water Girl represents a mark in history at that time.
