The beautiful and forever ambiguous The World of Suzie Wong was one book that helps seal Hong Kong's reputation as the hedonistic Pearl of the Orient. Written by Brit Richard Mason, the 1957 novel tells the love story between a young English painter and a "hooker with a heart of gold".

The hotel where Suzie met the love of her life - the Luk Kwok Hotel on Gloucester Rd in Wanchai, Hong Kong - is no longer a brothel but instead one of the more smarter-looking modern hotels on the island.

However, just two streets further south sits Hong Kong's "unofficial" red-light areas, aptly dubbed "the Suzie Wong district".

Amateur Hong Kong historian Cheng Po Hung at his home. Photos by Edmond Tang

For renowned amateur Hong Kong historian, Cheng Po Hung, gritty scenes like this raise multiple questions: why would young girls go into the dubious trade? Who are they and what are their lives really like? And did the world of Suzie Wong ever really exist?

"Despite harboring an interest, I couldn't imagine myself going into those places and living it for myself," he said during a recent interview.

Shy by nature, Cheng is more comfortable with the scholarly world of historical research than that of investigative reporting where an unscrupulous reporter may exceed all the excesses he has ever described in print. This is especially true for reporters living in Shanghai and Hong Kong in the 1920s and 30s.

"As a result, I looked into old newspapers and magazines, hoping to find concrete clues to piece together a murky and enigmatic history that today exists only in the form of fiction," he says.

Due to the nature of the subject, archival materials are bare as bones.

The colonial government of Hong Kong began issuing licenses to brothels in 1846, five years after the island became a crown colony. This practice lasted for nearly 100 years, until prostitution was officially banned in 1935.

However, early in his research, Cheng was lucky enough to receive an important bequeath - two thick rolls of yellowing, crispy newspapers - from an old Hong Kong man in his late 80s.

"The papers were called The Bone (Guzi), and China Star (Huaxing), the former referring to a veteran vixen of the time as 'sexy to the bone'," says Cheng. "Both newspapers were published between the 1920s and 40s and were dedicated solely to the coverage of life inside the brothels."

And in very much the same way as today's Hong Kong tabloids ruthlessly hunt down their celebrities, The Bone and China Star spared no effort when it came to reporting the colorful lives of celebrated courtesans, providing detailed descriptions of their favored haunts, and their liaisons with countless men.

"The papers really helped to flesh out the story," says Cheng, who recently released his new book Early Hong Kong Brothels (Chinese with English prologue).

The historian has solved more than a few puzzles.

One involves a famous prostitute from the 20s called A-Kwai. According to widely circulated rumors, two infatuated lovers once competed for A-Kwai's hand in marriage - a highly unusual gesture given the nature of their affairs - and offered to cook her sweet porridge by burning banknotes.

"For years, people had been speculating about the outcome, which remained unknown until I came across this tiny piece of interview published in China Star," says Cheng.

"Believe it or not, a reporter in the 1940s actually managed to track down A-Kwai - who by then was in her late forties - and cleared things up."

It turned out that the porridge idea never had a chance of going ahead - A-Kwai married one of the two men, only to find herself on the street again after squandering the family fortune on opium. Forsaken and with nowhere to go - brothels were banned years before - she was reduced to selling peanuts and presumably suffered a less-than-happy ending.

Cheng is also an avid collector of old HK photographs and postcards, which he has bought in Britain and America, and which show clear views of the storied brothel houses, adorned with laundry hanging from bamboo poles from each window.

Other findings shed light on seemingly innocuous customs. For years, local prostitutes had worshiped Guan Yu - an ancient warrior general - as their patron saint, while secretly hoping that they could "chop" the money from their clients with the same lightening speed as Guan did to the head of his enemies.

Lyndurst Terrace, a bustling street in the Central District, got its Chinese name "Flower Street", thanks to those etiquette-conscious British gentlemen who would invariably bring bouquets of flowers to their courtesans living in the vicinity, thus giving birth to an entire street selling flowers.

However, in 1903, before their Chinese counterparts, who patronized the nearby and equally debauched Tai Ping Shan area, followed the trend, the government ordered all brothels to relocate to what would become the island's most decadent place for the rich and rapacious.

Shek Tong Tsui was immortalized by HK director Stanley Kwan's 1988 art-house classic Rouge, starring Anita Mui and Leslie Cheung, as the doomed prostitute and her lover. It is located on the north shore of the island only a few minutes' walk away from the University of Hong Kong.

According to Cheng, one night's carousal at such a high-class brothel could cost hundreds of thousands.

Colonial government officials were forbidden to go for fear of encouraging corruption. However, they were indeed allowed to patronize the less-costly brothels that had started to form in Wanchai, as well as Yau Ma Tei on the other side of the harbor.

"It may strike you as purely bizarre, but back then, there were even unscrupulous young men who wore white during a brothel visit," says Cheng.

"They were trying to cheat the prostitutes into believing that their parents had recently passed away, leaving him all the fortunes, while in reality there were probably no fortunes at all."

Some of the earliest brothels appeared around Possession Street in Sheung Wan, named after the British naval soldiers who seized HK in January 1841. The relaxing of the night curfew - in place between 1842 and 1897 because of the island's volatile political situation - gave red-light districts a mighty boost.

Despite the relocation, brothels prospered after World War I, however, trade dipped after the outbreak of the so-called 1925 "Canto-Hong Kong Strike" in which British troops massacred Chinese protestors, and the subsequent boycott and mass exodus.

Britain was also a "civilized country" under pressure from fellow League of Nations members to rid its crown colony of two vices - opium and prostitution.

These days, vintage erotica can be bought in shops on Hollywood Road, an area once infested with brothels.

The antique pictures, according to Cheng, are most likely to be modern-day studio fakes, since not many prostitutes back then would be so daring as to have their own nude pictures taken.

In his book, Cheng reveals that some prostitutes had tried to buy themselves out of the brothel game by gambling on horse racing, introduced to Hong Kong by the British in 1846.

Others attended schools run by missionaries for prostitutes, he says.

"But the end result didn't change much: most people died of a combination of opium, disease, poverty and heartbreak."

Over the past year, Cheng has been lecturing on the topic at universities and public libraries in Hong Kong, to wide acclaim.

"Apart from an understandable degree of curiosity, people become genuinely interested because they are starting to see real human stories that too often have been drowned in the hypnotizing sounds of the Suzie Wong world.

"Has Hong Kong rid itself of the two vices? Opium, maybe; prostitution, hardly," says Cheng.

(Source: China Daily)