Sex, violence ... and the World Cup

Some readers have asked us about the alleged beating of a female Chinese employee at an Italian restaurant in Shanghai. The alleged perpetrator was said to be the boss, who supposedly got too excited while watching sports. Some readers have said that there was a China Daily article from June 30 on the matter, but that it didn't appear online. There isn't much information on the matter, though we recall seeing this story on the news long before (okay, about a week before) June 30.

It was on the Shanghai evening news, we forget what station, but the "standard" Shanghai news that comes on around 6 pm. At that point they had interviews with the injured woman as well as some of her colleagues. Only later, in a comment on this Shanghaiist post did a reader bring up the matter again.

After some brief searches, the only thing that we managed to find was this very brief Chinese article dated June 29. It says that the accused got too excited during the World Cup and hit the woman, and that when she tried to escape, he used even more force. Another employee is quoted as saying that this isn't the first time that he has gone over acceptable limits as far as touching or using physical force against people. None of this information has been verified, so please don't sue us. All we saw were the TV show and that one report -- strangely enough, there has been little information in either print or online media. We think that's probably because the case is being investigated now and the facts are not yet entirely clear.

In the process of trying to dredge up information about this incident, we encountered a lot of information about prostitution and forced prostitution during the World Cup. Germany legalized prostitution back in 2002 and there are approximately 400,000 legal prostitutes (we don't know if male sex workers are counted in this figure or not) in Germany. However, during the World Cup it was predicted that 40,000 additional sex workers would come in from various other Europeans countries, many part of the human trafficking rings. However, it seems that at least as of June 30, when this report hit the press, the sex trade wasn't so hot in Germany:

Luna, her friend, described the club as a "neutral ground," where national rivalries are left at the door. However, she said, the amount of alcohol consumed by the men can get in the way of business. And the customers do have fixed priorities. Whenever a game is on, Luna said, they invariably stop what they are doing to watch it. Artemis shows the games live in a theater normally used for pornographic films.

Real men multitask, but that's another matter.

However, this leads us, naturally, to think about the two most important years in the upcoming Chinese calendar -- 2008 and 2010. We know that they are going to stop the rain, cut down on the pollution, improve traffic, everyone's English, heal the sick and make the blind see. But what about prostitution? We imagine that the situation will be not unlike that experienced by Germany now, and although there wasn't the spike in sex transactions that some had hoped for this time around, there's no reason why it can't and won't happen in Beijing or Shanghai. We believe that both of these events the Olympics and the World Expo -- by dint of their sheer size and scope are naturally going to be headaches for whoever in the government takes care of visas and foreign nationals. And we might even see a significant change in visa policy, at least during the time of the events -- so will we see an influx of prostitutes posing as tourists and visitors? Will Shanghai really start cracking down on those "hair salons" before 2010?

In another somewhat awkward segue, have you seen the latest standings in the Shanghaiist World Cup Challenge? A "C. Lefebvre" maintains a narrow one-point lead over some guy named Nick Withycombe as we head into the semis.

Photo from Aur0's Flickr page.