ABSTRACT
The chapter reveals the highly gendered and sexualized organization of economic exchanges across the Taiwan Strait between Taiwan and China in the last three decades. It deconstruct the associated discursive fiction among its consumers that frequenting karaoke hostess bars is about 'play' rather than linked to the organization of work and to the creation of social differences and hierarchies. Nightlife in karaoke hostess bars and other similar places are key sites where commercialized sexual and emotional relations are established by many foreign men with local women in China. The chapter explores that the space of karaoke hostess bars and the phenomenon of prostitution in contemporary China both reflects and engenders the social hierarchy upon which a global political economy and uneven development depends. Karaoke hostess bars or other similar places are popular places where many businessmen including Japanese, Taiwanese, or Chinese initiate their commercialization and sexualization of women and cultivate their working relations.
