For salvation ... to China? (5 photos)

When the revolution of 1917 took place, abroad, namely to China about 200 thousand people left. Everyone had their own reasons for running away. But the new country did not provide prosperity to emigrants.





Women had to trade themselves in order to survive. BUT what if not a couple of dozen, but a huge the number of hungry people at once? This is complete moral decay! What do?



Shanghai in the 30s

If for a free life of white emigrants a couple more years of Chinese power closed their eyes, then President Xu Shichang began to tighten the screws and deprived immigrants from the Russian Empire of the right to extraterritoriality. It was especially hard for the representatives of the nobility. After all these women were completely unadapted to life. Even they could not comb their hair and dress themselves. And to somehow to feed themselves, they had to engage in prostitution.

The most luxurious practical lucky ticket for ladies was patron, who took on the full content. For the Chinese in such relations there was nothing strange: the institution of concubines existed from deep antiquity.

One of the white emigrants wrote in her diary: “Forgive me, dear mother, for the fact that I have fallen so low.”



Russian women in Harbin accompanied by a Chinese

The runaway peasant women were threatened with approximately the same future: either in prostitutes or slaves. Those who managed to marry a local, one could still hope for some rights. The rest are essentially represented powerless and unprotected beings.

Selling love



Russian women on the streets of Beijing

But the concubine at least satisfied the whims of one man. BUT it was not easy for those who were thrown into a brothel by life. "Russian houses" were often kept by their own compatriots. Shanghai has become record holder for the number of brothels, turning into a real center of sin and depravity.



Shanghai opium den

One in eight Shanghai prostitutes was a white immigrant. About 22% of the representatives of the Russian Empire aged 20 to 45 years earned in the most ancient and accessible way. Chinese coolies whispered to the gentlemen caught on the street: “Do you want a Russian woman? High short, fat, small? Swarthy, white?

The fate of these women turned out to be unenviable: they often addicted to opium, because it was impossible to live in a sober mind, died from venereal diseases. Special structure - Russian the national committee that oversaw the issues of emigrants preferred baptize the problem as denigrating white women. And the newly created the state - the USSR, which replaced the empire, chose not to interfere: find out for yourself if you ran away. Moreover, he had a lot own problems.