Hsiang Tzu found Hsiao Fu Tzu, but it was too late. She had hung herself while working in a low-class brothel.⁶⁵ Many women choose suicide as an escape from intolerable conditions such as prostitution or concubinage. Concubines and prostitutes frequently ran away with their lovers. One man had two concubines. One escaped to be with her lover; however, the lover stole her possessions and disappeared. She drowned herself in the river. The master then said there were no good concubines in the entire world. The remaining concubine overheard his statement and committed suicide by eating raw opium.⁶⁶ Her master adorned the corpse of his concubine in jewels. His enraged wife opened the coffin and removed them.⁶⁷ A concubine ate raw opium to escape her master's maltreatment.⁶⁸ In Family, a maid was sold to be the concubine of an old man well known for his sexual perversions. The maid drowned herself in the lake to avoid becoming his sexual plaything. The replacement had to be forcibly shoved into the sedan chair, kicking and screaming.⁶⁹ A daughter of a respected family who felt she had sunk into a degraded life thought death would be preferable.⁷⁰ She thought, "Dying must be the easiest, simplest thing that there is because living was hell already."⁷¹

There were other less drastic forms of escape. One was opium use. Both concubines and prostitutes were able to obtain opium. Prostitutes had to buy it from their brothels, while opium smoking masters often supplied their concubines' needs. Concubines smoked with their master, an official. They fed him puffs of opium smoke.⁷² Some prostitutes escaped into concubinage, while some concubines escaped into prostitution. A prostitute became the concubine of a minor official.⁷³ The attractive younger sister of a brothel operator became the concubine to the secretary to the viceroy.⁷⁴

There were legal and social sanctions against visiting brothels that made concubinage a more attractive option. Officials would lose their appointment if they were caught in a brothel. There was a danger of "...being degraded from office for cuddling courtesans..."⁷⁵ Censors punished brothel-goers, usually by beating them in the streets. Officials were not beaten, but lost their appointments.⁷⁶ This outside legal pressure probably increased the concubine-to-prostitute ratio. The risk involved probably led more timid men to concubines, and bolder men to brothels. The bolder men were also more likely to be violent, so prostitutes may have had more violence to contend with than a concubine. Certainly the lives of prostitutes were more consistently violent than those of concubines. Prostitutes and brothel-going officials were equated with dishonor.⁷⁷ Concubines were honorable, but degraded.

Concubinage was a form of prostitution. Women and girls were sold to be sexual and domestic slaves. Families did not always want to sell or force their daughters into prostitution or concubinage, but economic hardships often made it a necessity. Unfortunately, some families did eye their daughters greedily, training them from a young age to be pleasing to men. Whether the family was willing or not, the results for the girl were basically the same. She lost her autonomy, both personal and sexual. High-class prostitutes and beloved concubines enjoyed more autonomy than some of their sisters. In spite of this autonomy, the emotional consequences of being sold by one's own parents, treated as a piece of property, and used sexually without consent must have been devastating. True, some women entered prostitution and concubinage voluntarily, but their other options were so poor that their "voluntarism" seems meaningless. Until very recently, all women's adult roles (except for that of the chaste widow) were virtually that of a prostitute. Maids had no recourse against their masters' sexual advances. Women did not even get to meet their husbands before the wedding, much less have a say in whom they married. Women were expected to submit sexually to whichever male they currently belonged.