ABSTRACT
In April 2007, a story about a wealthy businessman keeping a young college student as his mistress (ernai) spread quickly among users of the Internet in China. What attracted media attention most was the existence of a baoyang xieyi-an agreement of an extramarital relationship. According to the South China Cosmopolitan Newspaper (Nanfang Dushi Bao) (Feng 2007), the 21-year-old student, under the pseudonym of Guo Fang, was a freshman in 2005 when she fi rst met Chen Ming, owner of a private enterprise. Guo’s father had died a few years earlier, leaving her mother with Guo Fang and her two younger brothers. She had been in debt for paying her university tuition and had worked as a tutor. Chen offered her a monthly payment of 10,000 yuan in return for being his mistress. Guo Fang agreed, and to ensure that she was paid she drafted a contract which was signed by both parties, each of whom kept a copy. The contract specifi ed the fi nancial obligations Chen should undertake and the sexual service and companionship Guo should provide; it also stated that she should not date any boyfriend or have sex with any other man during the contract period from May 2005 to July 2008. The affair was later discovered by a private detective hired by Chen’s wife. They were stunned when Guo produced the contract, which she had kept in her purse. Guo Fang was reported to have shown no sense of shame or guilt, insisting that she was just carrying out an agreement involving mutual rights and responsibilities.1
