History
Established in September 1996, Zi Teng is the first group in Hong Kong working towards the recognition of sex workers as part of the mainstream work force, such as equal rights and a non-discriminatory environment.
The founder of this organization is Yim Yue Lin (嚴月蓮). Yim started to be aware of labour rights when she encountered an industrial dispute in her working factory. Afterwards, Yim has been working in different organizations fighting for the benefits of working labour. In 1994, Yim met her first-hand experience with the sex workers when she was working in the Hong Kong Women Christian Council (香港婦女基督徒協會). The inequalities, deprivations and discriminations that sex workers have to confront with, have strengthened Yim’s determination to help this minority group of people. It was later joined by other staff members, such as Elaine Lam, Mok Miu-ying, Chan Yan-yan and Kendy Yim Kit-sum. Zi Teng has been supported by dozens of nameless interns and volunteers, without whom the organization cannot exist till today.
In 1999, Zi Teng carried out Hong Kong’s first and only study of mainland prostitutes. After in-depth interviews with mainland prostitutes in Hong Kong, the Pearl River Delta, and Macau, it found that most of the women were travelling to South Asian countries on Chinese passports and used Hong Kong as a stopover.
For the past few years, Zi Teng field workers visit the field (lock-ups or red-light districts) twice a week in order to spread the knowledge of Aids and other health and safety measures. They also provide free condoms to sex workers.
Read more about this topic: Zi Teng
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world; it is more, it is the history of earth and of heaven.”
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)