P * I * M * P

Some of you may know a certain former student here in Changzhou and reader of this blog who goes by the English name of Sophia. Well the other night before I went over to Shanghai and Nanjing for a quick trip I went out to dinner with Sophia another Chinese friend of hers and most of the foreign English teachers. On the way there Sophia recounted a story that is just too good not to post, and with her permission here is what she told me. Sophia works for a company that manufactures and exports stuff to the US and other western countries, which could be a description of about every business in this country. Her company sometimes hosts clients from the countries they sell too. The usual way to entertain business people in China is to take them to KTVs. KTV's which I've mentioned a few times previously are sort of like Karaoke places in the US expect that you sort of get a private room for your party and the whole thing is a lot more tacky, if you are having trouble imagining something more tacky than a Karaoke place in the US believe me it can be done. These places range from what are essentially brothels with singing, to more upscale places, where the hookers are probably on another floor.

The particular place where Sophia and her boss brought their foreign client on this night was on the seedier end of the range so the prostitutes were hanging out with the foreign client looking for some work. Now of course this isn't exactly how Sophia described it to me. She used a lot of words like, "women who will preform special services" in the typically Chinese modest way. Well towards the end of the night when things were wrapping up at the KTV the moment of truth came between this lady of the evening and the foreign client. The problem was the the client spoke no Chinese and the courtesan spoke no English. So the task fell to Sophia to translate between them and ask the client if he wanted to go home with this call girl. In the end it all worked out fine but Sophia described it as a disaster, more a reference to her embarrassment than anything bad happening I think. I just think it's a great story and made a lot of fun of her for being a pimp, or maybe Madam would be more appropriate. I'm sure she'd appreciate it if someone would send her a nice purple velvet pimp hat from the US.

What's less funny is the story she told me about being harassed by the one of the higher ups in her company, her bosses partner I think. She said he basically just straight out propositioned her and even grabbed her hand at one point. She was only thankful that this wasn't some one she had to work with on a regular basis. These sort of stories are still pretty shocking even though I know that things which would get some one sued for sexual harassment in the US are considered pretty normal here. Every time I here people complain about how litigious people are in the US I am reminded about all the good uses lawsuits have. From what I've heard and read it seems like have at least one mistress and generally behaving in a lecherous way is required behavior for Chinese business men. For more senior people having a bad comb over yellow teeth and a foreign car also seem to be part of the uniform. Well maybe Sophia can learn the pimp slap to deal with these miscreants, remember it's back of the hand across the face.