Saturday night, I went out with a friend and decided to walk home afterwards ... partly because it was a nice night, partly to burn off some of the alcohol in my system, and partly to confirm a suspicion that arose earlier that night. Since I had the time and didn't have to work the next day, I took the long way home. If you look at the map, below, I had an interesting encounter at point B. As I walked through the old buildings behind the Olympic Square stadium and Gao'erji lu. I was approached by a prostitute. Ok, before you ask, no, I was not interested, but I had seen some there on my way to meet my friend and a nagging suspicion arose.

First of all, the prostitute said "Hello" to me, nothing unusual, you'll get this in several parts of the city, most notably, around Youhao Square (where they are all middle-aged ladies looking for some extra cash). The part about this "Hello" that was disturbing is that it was in as deep a voice, or deeper, than my own (and I have a fairly deep voice). When I turned to look where it was coming from, I saw the outline of a fairly attractive "woman" (the light was at "her" back) approaching me. My initial reaction was to just turn and walk away, but, as I said earlier, I wanted to confirm a suspicion I had from earlier, so I stuck around. As "she" got closer to me and some light finally hit "her" face, I realized that this was no woman, but a man in drag ... transvestite's in Dalian, who woulda thunk it. This prostitute went through what I would call "her" sales pitch, which I didn't understand (except the part about paying for sex) to which I replied, "But, you're a man!" He didn't speak any English, so I did my best to say "You're a man" in Chinese (ni shi nan ren - 你是男人). I had to say this 3 times before he finally said (other than the confirmation, dui - 对 - yes, I got most of this from his body language) "Yes, I am a man, but I have really nice tits." I had to walk away at this point because it was all I could do to keep from falling down laughing my ass off. This confirmed my earlier suspicion that there were transvestite prostitutes hanging around that area. On my way to meet my friend, I got off the bus and as I was crossing the street, I noticed a "lady" with a nice body dressed in very slutty looking garb. I also noticed that this lady had a very manly face ... hence, my suspicions (sue me, I'm a curious person and I don't like to just suspect, I like to know before I make accusations or statements).

Here's that map showing the route I walked home. Point B is where Gao'erji lu (高尔基路) and Duishan jie (对山街) meet behind the Olympic Square stadium:

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I guess I'm kind of disturbed about this because these people wouldn't be there unless there was a market for it ... just like the middle-aged ladies at Youhao Square. If there is a market for this in Dalian, a second-tier city in China, then there's no telling what other kind of markets there are around here.