The results of the “National Awards for Mistresses (全国包二奶大奖赛)” spoof the time and money and presumably effort that some of China’s leaders have expended on accumulating mistresses. The results indicate that many have crossed that fine line between peforming masculine virility and paradoy, which in turn slides into corruption charges because no one actually believes these old men are achieving sexual satisfaction, let alone satisfying their young mistresses — the numbers are just too high. Indeed, the results seem more like baseball cards than gossip; we’re trading statistical representations of performance, rather than vicariously participating in the realization of desire (or actually enjoying a sunny afternoon game). I’m also wondering about how many of these leaders were simply pimping their way to business deals and higher political ranking because these statistics are invariably linked to corruption charges and convictions. Consequently, when available I’ve also linked the offenders’ names to English language reports about these cases.
Results of the National Mistress Awards
1. Quantity Award: Jiangsu Province Department of Construction, Xu Qiyao Director, Xu Qiyao (徐其耀) who has had 146 mistresses;
2. Quality Award: Chongqing Municipal Party Committee Department of Propaganda Director, Zhang Zonghai (张宗海)for having kept 17 beautiful co-eds in five star hotels;
3. Scholar’s Award: Hainan Province Textile Bureau Chief Li Qingshan (李庆善) for his collection of 95 sexual diaries and 236 illustrated guides;
4. Youth Award: Leshan Mayor Li Yushu (李玉书 Sichuan Province) for keeping 20 mistresses between the ages of 16 and twenty;
5. Management Award: Xuancheng Municipality Party Secretary Yang Feng (Anhui Province) for using his MBA to effectively manage 77 lovers;
6. Expense Award: Shajing Credit Union Manager Deng Baoju (邓宝驹 Bao’an District, Shenzhen), also known as the “5 mistress youth” for spending 18.4 million yuan over 800 days on mistresses, this averages to 23,000 perday or almost 1,000 per hour;
7. Solidarity Award: Zhouning County Head Lin Feilong (林龙飞 Fujian Province) for organizing a dinner for 22 mistresses and awarding a 300,000 prize for best mistress;
8. Harmony Award: Lingao Municipal Administration Chief Deng Shanhong (邓善红 Hainan Province) for having 6 children by 6 mistresses and a wife who says she doesn’t believe the gossip;
9. Effort Award: Hunnan Province Telecommunications Bureau Chief Zeng Guohua (曾国华) for guaranteeing that before he turns 60, he will have sex three times a week with each of his 5 mistresses.
Shenzhen Noted 
Jiangsu Province Department of Corruption? Shurely some mishtake?
Fixed! Thank you for catching the mishtake. Department of Construction (but seriously, isn’t construction a synonym for corruption everywhere)?
Would be great if you could make legible the harems of these local emperors. say by reflecting on how they live and how a bureaucrat manages his time among them. how much they get. what are the backgrounds of these mistresses, how do they spend their time. Do they come out of it or once a mistress always a mistress. Right now the details below the catchlines are few. Need more to clinch one’s doubts. You could choose an interesting one like say the Jiangsu Director of Construction and his 146 mistresses.
Yes jasmeet, it’s true. Making visible the Director’s actual bed-stops would help demystify the whole “Chinese officials can do anything (murder) and anyone (mistresses) they want” myth. The only difficulty is that these stories usually only become public when they are too big to contain, and by that time we’re talking about political infighting. For example, other than these weixin blurbs, I have no idea what’s happening in Jiangsu, let alone what the province’s elites are up to. I can only make judgments based on my experience in Shenzhen. I hear a rumor and evaluate, “does this conform to what I have experienced?” If so, I believe. If not, salt shaker. And yet. The deluge of these blubs has me thinking that they are creating the anything and anyone myth that continues to inform the Party’s hegemony.
Very well. But if you are Shenzhen based you can bring out the details for a Shenzhen bureaucrat. He need not be having hundreds of mistresses as in Jiangsu. Even one with mistresses in the tens creates a very interesting situation wherein time, resource and attention management start becoming challenges for a person. And so it would be very interesting to go into that world and find out the “willing” exploitation which girls might be going through. Or do they develop mechanisms to resist and do they get to influence and even exploit the govt machinery for their own needs. So many unknowns which can be exposed….
Jasmeet, I would be interested to read your research into the subject!
I work in urbanized villages where marginal people make structurally similar choices in a much less forgiving environments. How many hours of work a day? What kind of verbal abuse and degredation are you willing to undergo in order to collect wages? How much sucking up to bosses and city custodians will you do in order get an extra few feet of sidewalk space outside your store? Gender inequality is clearly one of the reasons why old men end up with power and why young woment trade our bodies in order to gain benefits (not that I’m as young as I used to be –hee). But everyone I know — male and female, young and old — is trying to make deals in order to use the government apparatus for their own ends. Given the Party and government’s monopoly on power, this kind of negotiation predicates any kind of social agency, including putting on a play or opening a gallery space.
So to answer your question; all of us working in China are complicit with the power structure. And given relative positions and resources we are forced to make different concessions in order to achieve different goals, which can range from getting a job on an assembly line to winning a construction bid or having a play accepted to an art festival. Thus, I’m not sure how “willing” anybody is to smile when degraded or laughed when pinched. I do know that degraders and pinchers are more likely to give certain benefits (a job, a contract, a performance grant) to those who “willingly” go along with this treatment. I know that many of the degraded and pinched accept this treatment or perform “willingness” because they believe that this is “business as usual”.
Each of us comes to terms with inequality differently, both when we hold relative power in a relationship and when we don’t. I’ve seen and participated in similar patterns of abuse in in both the US and China. It takes time and courage to stand up to abuse, just as it takes time and courage recognize one’s privileges and learn not to take unconcious advantage.