Note sur Shanghai

In the decades straddling the new century, only one category of venal women escaped rapid commercialisation, thus retaining a relatively safe and separate identity. The singing changsan courtesans averted the sexualisation of their trade by virtue of their vocal talent, as well as by nurturing relationships with 'respectable clients'. Just as the socially more elevated courtesans had done in previous decades, changsan frequently attained a more normal life style through marriage. Meanwhile, ordinary prostitutes were increasingly mired in misfortune. An intermediate category of venal servants, the 'tea house girls' (yao'er), fell victim to an assimilation process which by the 1930s would amalgamate all classes into one broad mass of prostitutes.

http://www.triangle.co.uk/pdf/viewpdf.asp?j=whr&vol=8&issue=3&year=1999&article=ch&id=24.37.249.238

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/late_imperial_china/v019/full/19.2yeh_fig18f.jpg

 Reinventing Ritual: Late Qing Handbooks for Proper Customer Behavior in Shanghai Courtesan Houses
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/late_imperial_china/v019/19.2yeh.html

In the walled city there were also different classes of female story-tellers and singers. They were classed according to their specialty, the highest being those "good in reciting" (pingshu)," or in singing (changqu), courtesans well trained in singing and entertainment skills. Ranking below them were singers performing "flower-drum plays" (huagu xi), or "telling stories of retribution" (shuo yinguo); as they performed in public, they were constantly threatened with being banned by the authorities for singing lewd songs. 18

The move to the Settlements brought new categories of courtesans and a new hierarchy among them. At the top are now the shuyu, a class of their own who are story-tellers but explicitly do not offer sexual services. In this top category we also find a group of entertainers considered to be the most cultured and sophisticated, the changsan. In the early years of the 1860s the encounter between a client and a changsan courtesan still seems very informal, and sexual services were not seen as a special favor. It was only by the 1880s that this earlier "three dollar" service had disappeared. 20

By the 1890s changsan and shuyu were used more or less inter-changeably. 

Forced by this competition, [End Page 11] [Begin Page 14] the tea-houses and story-telling halls that had hitherto been the domain of male singers eventually began to actively invite the changsan and shuyu to perform, enlarging the scope of action of these courtesans even further.

 The public visibility of the shuyu and changsan brought a new dimension to Shanghai entertainment, and quickly became a great attraction. From the architetural style of the female story-telling halls of the 1890s it is clear that the Shanghai courtesan entertainment was performed in part in buildings open to the public and to public view. 
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By the 1890s literary talent in the courtesan had become a relic of little authenticity, and is even the subject of satire in Flowers of Shanghai. 17  Nevertheless, the courtesan-literatus relationship that was  prominent in China for already hundreds of years still informs the  1892 Flowers of Shanghai as a guiding memory. Most of the  prostitutes in Flowers of Shanghai may still be thought of as  courtesans in the sense that the high-class  [End Page 7] ones (called shuyu or changsan, and yao'ni if they are slightly lower) live in well-furbished brothels, are commonly adept at some kind of musical performance, and if possible like to form steady relationships with one man at a time. 