🚀 go-pugleaf

rented by her protector, who lives
    generally in another part of the town; she receives a fixed salary
    from her protector, and sublets every available room to individual
    sly prostitutes, or to women keeping a sly brothel, no visitor
    being admitted unless he have some introduction or secret
    pass-words. If an inspector of brothels attempts to enter, he
    is quietly informed that this is not a brothel, but the private
    family residence of Mr. So and So.... This system makes the
    suppression of sly brothels an impossibility.... The principal
    points of difference between the various classes of Chinese
    prostitutes of Hong Kong and the prostitutes of Europe amount
    therefore to this, that Chinese prostitution is essentially
    a bargain in money and based on a national system of female
    slavery."

    "It must not be supposed, however, from what is said above, that
    the Chinese, as a people, view prostitution as a matter of moral
    indifference. On the contrary, the literature, the religions,
    the laws and the public opinion of China, all join in condemning
    prostitution as immoral, and in co-operation to keep it under a
    certain check. The literature of the Confucianists, which, as
    regards purity and utter absence of immoral suggestions, stands
    unrivalled by any other nation in the world, does not countenance
    prostitution in any form.... The laws and public opinion ... agree
    in keeping prostitution rigidly out of sight. Although the Chinese
    are a Pagan nation, they have no deification of vice in their
    temples, no indecent shows in their theatres, no orgies in their
    houses of public entertainment, no parading of lewd women in their
    streets.... In short, as far as outward and public observation
    goes, China presents a more virtuous appearance than most European
    countries."

The report goes on to show that nevertheless the practice of polygamy,

    "leaving the childless concub