-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.nationalpost.com/home.asp?f=991211/149474 Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.nationalpost.com/home.asp?f=991211/149474">Nat ional Post Online -</A> ----- Saturday, December 11, 1999 Naked in Macau: Canadian strippers have favoured nation status Patrick Graham National Post Y.C. Leung, National Post Canadian stripper Ashley Heart says the hardest part of working in Macau is doing four shows daily for 60 days straight. MACAU - The Portuguese will pull out of Macau at midnight Dec. 19 and the colony will fall into Chinese hands after nearly 450 years. Well, not exactly hands, at least as far as the Canadian assets are concerned. As the sign in a private room at the back of the Jai-Alai strip club cautions: "Guests are requested not to touch the dancers." Canada, you see, exports a consistent flow of exotic dancers to Macau, and their prospects seem bright despite looming communist control. China has set up a number of economic zones, but Macau is likely to remain its erogenous zone thanks to the popularity of Canadian strippers. "Even when they are dirty dancing, they have technique," said Francisco Coelho, owner of the Jai-Alai Show Palace, in his windowless office above a brothel in the Lisboa Hotel. "They show everything, but it's pretty." Mr. Coelho has hired dancers from around the world. The Russians and Yugoslavs are one-third the price of the Canadians, he said, but they lack style. The Brazilians are pretty good, but he now hires only Canadians, who make twice their normal salaries working in Macau. Mr. Coelho wants the acts to be fun without being vulgar, which seems to be -- among exotic dancers at least -- one of Canada's national virtues. One-third of the customers who come to his bar are women brought in on package tours from mainland China for a taste of capitalist decadence in Asia's steamiest backwater. Too much raunch, said Mr. Coelho, and these tourists are likely to flee the Jai-Alai in embarrassment and the tours will stop instead at the less explicit "Crazy Paris Show," Macau's version of the French capital's "Crazy Horse" and "Moulin Rouge." "It's pretty easy. I have fun on stage," said Ashley Heart, the stage name of one of the Canadian dancers. "The most difficult part is the repetitiveness, four shows a day for 60 days straight." The Portuguese administration has tried to clean up the city for the handover ceremony on Dec. 20 -- it staged a show trial of flamboyant gang leaders and arrested Russian prostitutes who lined the streets -- but the changes are purely cosmetic. The incoming Chinese government is unlikely to tinker too much with the formula of gambling and sex that drives the economy of an enclave with only 420,000 people and few industries. Although Mr. Coelho owns both a strip club and a number of brothels, he said the two businesses have little in common. "Prostitution is prostitution and showgirls are showgirls," said Mr. Coelho, who admitted that clients had approached him offering to pay 20 times the going rate to meet the Canadian dancers. "The line is very clear. It's totally different." Although prostitution is illegal in Macau, as it is on the mainland, Mr. Coelho doubts that any crackdown by the new administration will last very long. "It won't make any difference," he said. "Everything will be the same." The only change in the industry, he said, was recent human rights legislation banning the use of one-way mirrors where clients could choose among the Thai, Vietnamese and Cambodian prostitutes who sat in little rooms behind glass. "Before the girls were in a room like a fish bowl," he said, pointing to a large aquarium in his office full of brightly coloured fish. "But a women's group said it was a violation of human rights. Now the girls come out and you can talk to them first." Below his office, in the New Fuji Sauna, clients are greeted by men looking like Brooks Brothers suit salesmen in blazers and blue-and-gold striped ties. Instead of sitting on benches behind glass walls, young women wearing numbers tucked into their bikinis stand in rows and smile at the clients in a foyer decorated in yellow pine, like a Japanese restaurant. Nearby, a bas relief of Mount Fuji hangs on the wall and a large religious phallus sits on the counter where the women are said to have prayed during the recent economic downturn, making offerings of condoms and candies. At the Jai-Alai earlier this week, the first batch of tourists arrived for the evening show. Led to their seats by women dressed in beige jackets and short, blue kilts reminiscent of school uniforms worn by students at Toronto's private schools, the 10 giggling women from mainland China hid themselves at the back of the empty room. Housed in an entertainment complex close to the ferry terminal linking Macau with Hong Kong, the entrance for the Jai-Alai lies across from the UFO Disco and just down the hall from the Emmanuelle Sauna, a euphemism for brothel in Macau. Outside, former Thai kick-boxers guard the entrance. As the room filled with men and women, the music grew suddenly louder with a heavy drum beat and smoke poured on to a stage shaped like a grand piano with a small shower at the front. An announcer introduced the first dancer, Andrea, rhyming off her measurements in Chinese. Four songs later, having climbed a brass pole six metres high and hung upside down, Andrea stood on stage wearing nothing more than a tattoo, a belly button ring and thigh-high, white vinyl boots. Putting her hands together to encourage applause, she left the stage followed by scattered, nervous clapping. "The crowd here is a lot more intimidated -- in Canada they yell and scream," said Jade, a 23-year-old from Vancouver who goes by the stage name Darcy Diamond. "I think they look up to us. We're on a pedestal because we're different. At home they can go to Hooter's and see big-breasted white girls any time." Wrapped in a purple boxer's cape, Ms. Diamond, accompanied by the club's manager, sat on a red couch near a small stage in one of the VIP rooms. "I love it here," she said after 58 days of her two-month contract. "At home you work six days and then move to another club. Here, it's straight work." The money is good, she said, though not as good as Alberta, where strippers are well paid and get better tips than in British Columbia, home for most of the Canadian strippers in the colony. In Macau, tips in local or Chinese currency can seem pretty dismal after the exchange. According to Ms. Diamond, strippers in Canada are paid depending on their titles. She was a finalist in the Miss Nude British Columbia contest and runner-up for Miss Nude Pacific Coast. At night Ms. Diamond and the six other dancers go back to their hotel or out to one of the nightclubs, although their contract stipulates they can't enter any of Macau's 10 casinos "to avoid gambling debts." Sometimes she hangs out with members of a Thai band playing at the UFO whom she met last year on her first tour at the Jai-Alai. During the day they can shop for silk in China or go to the Macau Grand Prix, where Ms. Diamond had her picture taken with martial arts star Jackie Chan who, it turns out, is "pretty tall for an actor. "I'm thinking of going to school and getting into other areas," she said. "This is a stepping stone to getting to where I want to be." As her show ended, Ms. Diamond gave up trying to encourage the audience to clap and sat on the edge of the stage soliciting tips from the front-row patrons who, according to custom, place rolls of bills between her breasts. The first couple, a young man and woman, began giggling and ran off into the back of the room without paying. Another man stared at her blankly until she leaned over and pretended to pull money from inside his jacket pocket. Reluctantly, the man reached up clutching a small roll of bills. Beside him, a middle-aged woman held up a coin. Ms. Diamond looked at the coin and then down at her breasts. "I don't think so," she said, and moved down the stage. National Post Copyright © Southam Inc. All rights reserved. ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. 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