Twenty-four-year-old K.K. (her working name) works at one such place. Located on the second and third floors of a building in a busy commercial area in Taipei, the interior has the feel of a hotel, with a lobby area and long hallways leading to rows of separate rooms. The surroundings are comfortable, with plush sofas and carpeting, but not as lavish as some of the more well-known KTV parlors around town.
Fitting the requirements of her job, K.K. is slim, attractive, and carefully made up. Although her working attire is a conservative uniform dress, she appears today fashionably dressed in a pair of tight black pants, long tunic, and platform shoes. Her straight black hair hangs to her waist. K.K. has been on the job for a little more than a year. Like most hostesses, she is in it strictly for the short-term benefits.
Money is the biggest attraction! I worked for more than a year as a secretary after graduating from junior college and made about twenty thousand [US$770] a month. A friend of mine introduced me to this KTV; she also works here. Now I make five to ten times what I did as a secretary. I plan to buy a small apartment. A lot of the girls have bought their own apartments in Taipei. One of them has three, another has two.
We have three shifts, starting from eight-thirty [nine-thirty, and ten-thirty] at night and ending around seven in the morning. There's kind of a roll call before we start, mainly to see if all the princesses have shown up for their shift. You know, some people call and ask for leave just because they get up too late or something. We have strict regulations on taking leave. For sick leave, we have to have a note from a public hospital. In the past, any hospital would do, but later they found out all our notes were coming from a small clinic, where we could buy them for a few hundred bucks [about US$10]. Anyway, at the roll call, the management staff also check our uniforms, name tags, makeup, accessories, and necessary equipment like pens and cigarette lighters.
Our work is basically very simple. We sing some, drink some, and chat with the guests. I sing OK, but you don't have to be a real good singer to be a KTV princess. Some princesses just sit there quietly, lighting cigarettes for the guests and filling up their glasses. They don't sing a single song, but they get the most tips. You can say we have all kinds of princesses to meet the tastes of all kinds of guests. People come to a KTV to relax, you know, and our job is to create a pleasant atmosphere. I guess you could say the decorations and electronic equipment at a KTV are the hardware, and we princesses are the software. Actually, we're just like friends of the guests. I have this one guest who comes once in a while. He doesn't drink, doesn't sing, doesn't dance. All he does is talk to me about his girlfriend for a couple of hours. I play the role of a good listener, then get tipped a few thousand dollars.
Tips are our major income—and they are all in cash and tax free. My basic salary is only twenty thousand, but one time I was tipped twenty thousand in a single evening. Normally, I get three to five thousand [about US$100-$200] an evening. There are all kinds of attitudes toward tipping. Some people tip everybody they see, from waiters to princesses; some only tip a few princesses they like most, and some put a thick stack [of money] on the table, but don't tip anybody. The ones who don't tip are the worst kind of guests. But you can't ask them to get out, so each of us goes in for twenty minutes to keep them company.
Naturally, the most popular topic among princesses is guests: who tips more, or who's hard to get along with. Most of our guests are in their thirties. There are all kinds. Some are nice, but some are lousy. Some like to see the princesses get drunk, so they keep on forcing us to drink. But we princesses help each other out, so we don't really get drunk very often. Actually, it's hard to get drunk if you drink slowly. There are also some guests who like to take little advantages, like pinching us here and there. I usually don't mind too much as long as they don't go too far. It's something that's difficult to avoid in this profession. The customer is always right, you know.
I think some people come just because they have too much money and can't find anything else to do. I have this one guest who comes very often, sometimes more than twenty nights a month. He always comes alone and always wants the biggest room, enough for thirty people. He invites everybody from the waiters to the cook in for a drink and tips them. But when he gets drunk, things get out of hand. Last time, he smashed a lot of equipment and decorations. But he's pretty reasonable afterwards. He always comes back the next day to apologize and pay for the damage. Sometimes I feel sorry for him.
After working here more than a year, I have a lot of regular customers. But you have to keep some distance from them or it can be troublesome. The most basic rule is never get serious with a guest, although some princesses do find their boyfriends here. A lot of times, you think some guest is a good guy and you want to make friends—I mean ordinary friends, not going steady or making any promises—so you call him and go out with him once or twice, and then he never comes back. Another situation is some guests try to find girlfriends here. I remember one guy thought he fell in love with me or something and called me several times a day. I had to change my phone number to get rid of him. The management is always reminding us don't mix business with personal feelings, and we usually try our best not to. But some guests don't seem to understand that our relationship with them is primarily limited to the KTV rooms.
We're usually busier on weekend evenings. But this is a very sensitive business. For example, our business is either very good or very bad on Tuesdays and Thursdays, depending on whether our guests have won [the popular, but illegal biweekly lottery]. If business is really bad, sometimes we call some regular—and rich—guests [and ask them to come visit]. Sometimes when there's no business, we find someplace and take a nap. Some girls spend the time playing cards, but I'd rather stay with some of the regular guests and have some fun. They don't have to tip us, you know. Making money is our first priority, but you have to make some adjustments now and then.
There are about seventy princesses at this KTV. Generally speaking, we princesses get along OK. We all recognize that our basic goal here is the same—to make money—and we help each other out when we're working. I live with three of my coworkers. Living in Taipei is expensive. Basic expenses like rent and transportation are at least twenty thousand [a month]. We don't have to spend too much on clothes since we wear uniforms at work. But in this profession, the way we look is important, so we spend a lot on makeup and going to beauty parlors. Some of my colleagues put all their money into real estate, some spend it on fancy clothes, some gamble their money away, and some give all their money to their boyfriends. I don't gamble, I hardly ever go shopping, and I don't really have to support anyone. From time to time, I give some money to my mother, who lives in Taoyuan [south of Taipei] with my stepfather—they have their own business. Anyway, I'm able to save some money and don't really know how to spend it, so I decided to buy a small apartment [in a building still under construction]. But sometimes I worry—what if the mainland decides to take over Taiwan? Maybe I'd better sell the apartment as soon as it's finished.
Our work hours are long. Including transportation and the time it takes to get ready, we spend at least twelve hours. So normally I sleep most of the day—most of us do. Basically, we don't have much of a leisure life—it's not like we would go to a KTV or have a few drinks to relax. (Laughs). I guess this kind of lifestyle is more or less influencing my health. It's easy to catch cold or something. They don't give us any labor insurance, but we don't really mind. We can get insurance someplace else.
For vacations, I go to Malaysia to see my boyfriend, who is an overseas Chinese. We don't have any concrete plans for the future. I guess I'll stay here another two or three years until I have enough money for the apartment I ordered.
—interview by Jim Hwang