Is Hong Kong’s playground of prostitutes and bankers really as lawless and crazy as international media has painted it to be? Coconuts Hong Kong goes behind the curtain to find out.
Bored women in black patent thigh high boots, barely-there hot pants and gaudy painted faces slump on stools outside Wan Chai’s infamous “girlie” bars, bursting into intense animation only when a potential punter casts them the glad eye. “Hi, handsome. Come in and have a drink” they coo as the fierce-faced “mama-sans” strong-arm customers through the dark red curtains and into the club beyond.
Monday to Sunday, day and night, the neon of Hong Kong’s red light district never dulls – not even the news of the double murder of two suspected sex workers has caused the fun times to flicker.
In the early hours of Nov. 1, 29-year-old British banker Rurik Jutting called the police to his luxury apartment in J Residence, Johnston Road. There, just steps away from the heart of the prostitute-lined streets, they found the body of one women – identified in international media as 29-year-old Seneng Mujiasih – with cuts to the throat and buttocks. Eight hours later, another body, that of 25-year-old Sumarti Ningsih, was found practically decapitated in a suitcase on the apartment’s balcony. The corpse had been there for several days.
A small amount of cocaine was reportedly found in Jutting’s apartment when he was arrested. The just-resigned Bank of America trader has yet to enter a plea on the two murder charges, and on Monday psychiatric examinations were requested by the court.
Accused British banker Rurik Jutting. Photo: Facebook
With one of the lowest crime rates in Asia, and only 14 murders so far this year, Hong Kong – despite appearances on the streets of Wan Chai – has been shocked to its core by the killings.
Both victims were believed to be Indonesian, with Sumanti coming to Hong Kong on a tourist visa and working as a maid, and Seneng being confirmed by the Indonesian Consulate as coming to the territory as domestic worker. Her visa expired in 2012, and her status since was unknown.
It is also not known whether Sumanti and Seneng were professional sex workers or somewhere on the sliding scale of the city’s demimonde — anywhere between offering services for money or simply scouring for a sugar daddy. The two victims may indeed not have been prostitutes at all, but the fact that their bodies were discovered in Hong Kong’s vice corner has prompted much commentary on the dangerous nature of the sex industry in what is traditionally one of the world’s safest cities.
With the international press not bound by Hong Kong’s stringent reporting laws, outlandish articles ranging from interviews with Jutting’s former lovers to his alleged comments to police after his arrest have gained much traction online. Wan Chai has been depicted as a lawless haven of abandonment and excess, but is the reality on the ground quite so stark and shocking?
While it is legal for an individual to sell sex in Hong Kong, organised prostitution or the running of brothels is not. Working women — mainly of Thai, Filipino, Indonesian or Vietnamese origin — are hosted by the “curtain bars” along and around Lockhart Road, but must leave the venue to perform a “transaction”, paying a fine to the club for their absence and immediately losing any protection they may have had.
The customers who find themselves lured in to such “no cover” establishment are, sometimes very aggressively, pushed by the mama-sans [older female supervisors] to buy the girls obnoxiously priced drinks.
“When you’re not looking or when you’re too drunk, she [the mama-san] will shove a bunch of the drink coupons in to your cup, which becomes your bill at the end of the night,” one anonymous patron told Coconuts HK. “Most people living in Hong Kong would consider these to be tourist traps, but if you’re at a work event and someone else is paying the tab, you don’t care.”
He explains that the bill at the end of the night can run to USD1,000 (HKD7.7k) per person if you choose to take a girl home. A significant proportion of the clientele are wealthy bankers — especially from the US, UK, Japan, Australia and Europe.
One former banker in Hong Kong, who asked to remain anonymous, explains, “The girls in the curtain bars are basically, I wouldn’t say ‘sex slaves’, but more sex indentured servants in the sense that their visa has been paid for by the bar, they’ve been taken to Hong Kong by the bar, they live in bar provided housing, and whatever they make at the end of the day is subtracted from their debt to the bar”.
Alternately there are “freelance bars” where dozens of girls trawl for drinks (for which they are paid a commission by the club) and anything else they can get or are willing to sell. These girls have no official affiliation with the bar and are their “own agents” unless they choose the go under the protection of a pimp.
Understandably, the working women of Wan Chai were not very forthcoming when approached by Coconuts reporters, stressing that they feel safe working in their “contracted” roles at members’ clubs.
Our source concludes that while prostitution is much more “accessible and in your face” in Hong Kong (and Asia in general), it is no more prevalent than in the United States or the United Kingdom. It is instead just more socially acceptable, and indeed almost celebrated, in the time-honoured white man’s playground of Hong Kong.
“There’s still a bit of a sense that it’s the ‘Wild East’,” one banker told us. “They’re out in Lan Kwai Fong on Wednesday night going to Dragon-i for models night. Those types of things seem to mostly be gone from post-[financial] crisis New York. Asia still feels like it’s living a bit more of the ‘glory days’ in that regard — lavish parties, expensive watches and suits, in general more flashy than NYC. In New York, I feel bankers are almost embarrassed to be bankers, everyone’s more focused on eating healthy salads and tracking steps with things like Fitbit, and far fewer Ferragamo loafers to show off how successful they are.”
Aside from ubiquitous prostitution, there’s no denying that drugs, particularly cocaine, are also easy to come by for Westerners with money in Hong Kong. Another finance executive who worked in the territory for several years claims that almost all his peers do cocaine, or have done it, with Hong Kong dealers making it particularly easy by providing a drop-off service anywhere, any time.
According to him, the general acceptance of the practice within high-paying professions makes such antics more likely to be viewed impartially rather than as an unsavoury or unprofessional weakness. “There was no stigma,” he told Coconuts HK. “It wasn’t there all the time, but if it was there, if you were at a party, at a club, if you were doing key bumps in the toilet, no one would bat an eyelash.”
However, similarly to the prostitution scene, our source does not see the drug epidemic as exclusive to Hong Kong – to the contrary, he says drug use is more widespread in London and New York. He describes cocaine as “almost a staple” in London, while in New York he claims use of coke is rife among all walks of life because “it’s more available and cheaper”.
“I think [it seems like] more of a banker thing in Hong Kong because there’s more of a separation between bankers and locals. But if you look at cocaine use in cities like New York or London, I think its probably more prevalent, and prevalent across the classes.”
Besides from the obvious headline grabbing appeal of a story that potentially involves prostitutes, drugs and a rich, white foreigner behaving badly in Asia, there’s a reason this story has captured the world’s attention – it’s highly unusual.
Despite decades of debauchery in Wan Chai and Hong Kong Island as a whole, this case, at least in modern memory, is one of a kind. While it may be easier to misplace your moral compass on the wild streets of Wan Chai than, say, in Amish Pennsylvania, for a city with an abundance of money, drugs and prostitution, it could be argued Hong Kong is faring much better than most.
Photos: Laurel Chor, Coconuts Media
Related Stories
Hong Kong double murder suspect Rurik Jutting to undergo psychiatric tests
Over 100 Indonesians hold prayer vigil and demand justice for two murder victims
British banker, 29, charged with murders of two women: What we know so far
British banker arrested after two dead prostitutes found in Wan Chai flat
Reader Interactions