S1E6 - China's Heaven & Hell: Working as a pimp - Part 6

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back again to Asian Uncle.
Now back to our segment topic.
As soon as I sat down, anincident soon happened.
I was there just playing withmy phone while my sister was
just toasting everyone andmaking her rounds.
I didn't know many people there, so I was pretty quiet for the
most part and all of a suddenthe ducks came in.

(00:22):
They did their tryouts, and ify'all still don't know what
tryouts mean, please go back toepisode one and go through the
vocabulary.
But anyways, they stood in aperfect line.
I think there was about 10 to15 of them, all different styles
, good looking.
They all introduced themselvesand I was just admiring it, like
okay, this is this type, thisis the muscular type, this is

(00:45):
the older kind of gentleman type, this is the younger party type
.
The ladies there they weren'ttoo excited but they were like
oh, and they started chattingback and forth and it seemed
they were very easygoing.
It wasn't like it before, wherewhen you came in they sat down
and pretended like you guys justmet right, but there the woman

(01:08):
already used to it.
This was 10, 15 years later.
They looked at the men and theyjust they were like wolves now.
Like wolves.
They were just looking at themdrooling, and a couple of them
sat down and we began drinking,playing dice games.
I was getting annoyed becauseone of the ducks was being very
rude to me.

(01:28):
I was trying to be nice playingdice with my sister and her
friends.
I asked him just out ofcuriosity how old are you?
Very straightforward question.
He replied younger than you.
I was like what the fuck?
He replied younger than you.
I was like what the fuck?
And maybe like a couple secondsafter I asked him to grab me a

(01:51):
drink across the table becausethere was just too many people
around and this kid told me toget it myself.
He must have been like 17, 18years old.
And now I'm heated because atthe time I was really busy.
I already made a lot of moneyand I'm one of those extremely I
think my daughter calls me whatshe calls me intense, and at

(02:11):
that time I was very intense.
I had a little bit of drink andI stood up.
I was about to punch him in theface and my sister saw.
She pushed me back, turned tohim and just bitch smacked him.
She didn't even smack him withthe front of her hand, she
smacked him with the back of herhand right in his face and
everyone was shocked.
It was just silence Forever.

(02:35):
It felt like the guy apologizedprofusely and my sister grabbed
a bottle of scotch that wasnext on the table it was half a
bottle remaining Put it down infront of him and said drink this
shit.
And he drank it.
He chugged it down.
Half a bottle of liquor chuggedit down like it was nothing.

(02:57):
What happened afterwards was thehighlight of the night.
The night and he sat next to meand he apologized to me
personally.
He said that he thought I wasone of the ducks and I was
trying to make a buck.
When he told me that, I didn'tknow whether to smile or to make

(03:17):
him drink another bottle, itwas a compliment, but it was
also.
You know, it just took thewords out of my mouth.
It's somehow.
I felt like he knew.
But then the rest of the nightwe got along pretty well.
Um, I think at one point I waspretty drunk and I grabbed all
the duckies together, the littleducklings together, and we sat

(03:40):
down and they all toasted me.
They called me og and and Ishared with them my story.
I didn't share with them all ofit like I'm sharing with you
now, but I shared with them likeone or two stories about me
doing this before.
I didn't tell them I did thisprofessionally for a year.
But anyways, that was a veryinteresting encounter of going

(04:01):
into a place that wasexclusively for women.
I didn't forget that over adecade ago I did the same thing
and when I left I didn't haveany feelings towards it.
I had fun, to be honest, but Iwas mostly contemplating about
how the market has changed andhow the Chinese people have

(04:22):
changed.
The women have changed.
These demands have gone up sohigh that there wasn't enough
supply.
Because of that, everybodycould do it and there was no
more class to it.
Back then, women did it verydiscreetly.
They came in, the manager knewtheir intent and then they
brought one person in that theyknew they would like somebody
you know.

(04:43):
The manager knew their intentand then they brought one person
in that they knew that wouldlike and they pretended that
they just met like a fling andthe person had to know how to
sing, dance, speak otherlanguages, be educated.
But not now.
When I was talking to theseducklings, I was right.
Most of them have never beenthrough any schooling, don't

(05:05):
have any special talent.
One of them the most talentedone is a fitness coach.
Another one was some studentthat was studying at a local
college from overseas.
We came here to make an extrabuck A good looking Korean kid.
All you had to do was lookappealing, be a bitch and be

(05:29):
submissive.
At that time, women liked it andwomen felt the stress at home
whether their husband went out,whether the husband was abusive,
whether her husband didn't comehome.
And most of the women at thatage, in their 50s, their kids
already left home.
They're alone.
They probably don't have a sexlife with their husband anymore.

(05:53):
And they have money.
What are you going to do?
They're going to spend it, andthat became a norm in developed
cities.
Perhaps it has to do with how Iwas raised.
Being in a very conservativeChinese military background
family, I was always raised towork hard, to believe that men

(06:15):
should take the burden ofproviding for the family and not
the other way around.
So even in instances where Icould have made more money, I
chose not to.
It just made me feel less likea man to take money from a woman
to be her company.
Nonetheless, it was a coolexperience.

(06:39):
Doing this podcast brought backa lot of memories for me, so
much that I texted and evencalled my old head manager.
Remember him, the ChineseIceberg Slim.
It was just to catch up on oldtimes, to tell him I miss him.
How's his kids, how are my kids?
And we kept in touch.
After all these years, twopeople who would have lived

(07:01):
entirely different lives,otherwise Kept in touch, and he
said to me that he doesn't tellanybody about this part of his
past.
Why would you?
He doesn't even tell his wife.
His kid knows nothing about it,and when my son hears this
podcast, he's going to be likewhat the fuck?
It wasn't something to be proudof.

(07:24):
Nonetheless, as I mentioned, heagrees too that it's a valuable
life lesson that you would notbe able to get proud of.
Nonetheless, as I mentioned, heagrees too that it's a valuable
life lesson that you would notbe able to get anywhere else.
I was only there for a littleover a year working full time,
but he was there doing it for 20plus years.
Things are very different now.
We both talked about it.

(07:45):
How different, except beingmore expensive.
We both talked about it.
How different, except beingmore expensive, the way the
business is ran.
Now it's completely different.
We could get into that in oneof the episodes later, but more
on.
Him is working here under amentor like him.
It taught me a lot about theunderground world.

(08:06):
It was all legal from the looksof it, but beneath it all it
was nothing more than money andpleasure in a developing country
.
Most of these clubs that Imentioned in this story are now
closed, including the WhiteHorse Club.
China isn't nearly as crazy asit used to be when it was

(08:28):
blowing up and developing, and Ido remember very clearly my
first time in mainland aroundthe late 90s.
I'm going to share with youother things about it, like
fortune, telling how I went tothe slums, but in here I'm going
to tell you about the nightlife.
So when I was there in China,my cousins, my step cousins from

(08:52):
my stepmother's side, took meout one night.
A bunch of dudes, not collegestudents, but like 26, 27, not
married.
I had a little bit of money.
Family was rather well off.
They took me out to what iscalled a meat market and indeed
that's exactly what it was.
On the way there, the car ride.

(09:15):
They were talking in their owndialect.
I could only make out parts ofit at the time, but I know they
were giggling, thinking aboutwhat it would be like for me to
experience what I'm about toexperience.
So what a meat market was.
When we got there, the sun hadjust gone down, just started
turning dark Probably aroundseven o'clock, I remember and it

(09:37):
was a street block hiddensomewhere.
But the street block was verylong and there were I shit you
not hundreds, hundreds of girlsjust standing around.
It was like that girl's lockerroom at the KTV.
But now they're standing on thestreets.
Two sides were covered with alldifferent types of restaurants

(10:00):
seafood, hot pot, whatever youwanted to eat.
I didn't know what to do.
I was like what the hell isgoing on?
What are all these girlsstanding out here for?
My older cousin stepped in.
He looked like a little streetpunk.
He walked up, started walkingdown the block.

(10:21):
We followed him.
He started gazing and harassingthe girls.
It was ridiculous.
Once he was ready, he grabbedfive of them and pointed to the
girls.
It was ridiculous.
And once he was ready, hegrabbed like five of them and
pointed to a restaurant.
And then we all went in and itwas then that I realized that
the girls standing outside wereall prostitutes.
There were businesses and eventowns centered around the

(10:44):
prostitution industry, which Iwill share in the later episodes
.
But it wasn't as nasty aseverybody thinks.
We call it a meat marketbecause they're all meat.
They're just standing on thestreet block.
But it was just how businessand entertainment was done
during that era.
It doesn't exist now.

(11:05):
Think about it Alcohol, musicand beautiful women.
What a better way to create adeeper connection with someone.
You won't see any Chinesepeople go there and split the
bill.
It's always the richest onethat pays or whoever called
everybody out.
And again, like I said, you'd besurprised how many deals are

(11:25):
done behind these very doorsKTVs, whorehouses, sauna houses.
It was part of the culture.
People don't want to admit it,but if you were working there at
the time, you had to have donesome of it.
Interestingly enough,afterwards we went to KTV to

(11:45):
sing and it was just like aregular KTV.
But you could bring these girlsout and you tip them for dinner
and you tip them to go towherever you want to go, right,
if you want to go party, youwant to go to hotel or you want
to go sing.
And so that night we chose tosing and so I had a chat with
her while we were there.
I was, I was super curious andshe was happy that I'm not

(12:08):
forcing her to drink or doanything else inappropriate.
I just wanted to ask herquestions and I was curious
about her upbringing.
She told me about her childhood.
It wasn't anything out of theordinary.
She and her family worked on afarm and she said that when she

(12:28):
walked down these streets onvacation with her family when
she was around five to six yearsold on a bus in the city in
Sichuan province, she saw.
She told me she saw on thesevery streets hookers,
prostitutes all over the place,hookers, prostitutes all over

(12:52):
the place, and her mom told herwhat they did.
And at the end of theconversation she said life takes
sudden turns.
You just have to deal with it.
She ended with.
I never thought years later I'dbe standing on the same corner.
This was all in the past and ofcourse, these are just some

(13:13):
stories about the topic.
I could probably write a book onthis.
The Chinese pimp I'm alsointerested in.
What would you do if you workedthere, or would you do it what
I if you had the chance to, ifsomebody offered you a chance to
go work as a manager or to workas a gigolo for a year or half

(13:38):
a year, would you do it?
Before you get excited and belike, yeah, would you seriously
do it?
You think about what you wouldhave to go through some of the
misery, the trauma just to makethat money.
And if you're like me you don'twant to make cuts off ladies
then you're not going to makeany money and you're going to

(13:59):
fuck up your body by the timeyou're 30, like the head manager
, he can't even drink anymore.
So this is an interesting topicthat normally people won't
share.
I'm going to make more topicsregarding this, including
entertainment industry, later on, but again, thank you for
tuning in.
This will conclude the firstpart of this segment and wish

(14:22):
you all the best.
Follow me if you like.
Peace guys.