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As Zheng details in her book, getting overly sentimental or romantic toward women is seen as a sign of weakness and lack of masculinity. If a businessman is unfortunate enough to love his wife or girlfriend, using it as an excuse to avoid sex is a massive faux pas. I’ve seen some instead plead tiredness or drunkenness, a more acceptable excuse, or use everyone’s 2 am exhaustion as a chance to slip away. Yet it’s not unknown, according to sex workers, for men who have retired with the girls for the night to pay for “special services” the next morning that they never received, instead spending the night watching television or sleeping chastely.

Perhaps that’s why some bosses demand a more public performance. The ultimate are what participants describe as frequent forays into group sex, often with more male than female participants. Sharing women appears to bring men closer to each other, in a perversely familial fashion. As one northeastern saying goes, “Once two men share a woman, they’re brothers.” And when it comes to building up mutual trust, the photos often taken during these miniature orgies provide a rich source of mutual blackmail material that can prove explosive if exposed, as in the 2007 photos of one group of pasty officials leaked online in 2012.