He Works Hard for the Money

Jane Zhu loves the full-bodied bordeaux at PuJ's bar in Shanghai's glitziest hotel. She also loves the cigars, which are, she concedes, nothing but excessive phallic symbols to be smoked with high-roller abandon. But what Zhu likes best are the sexy, well-honed bodies out on the disco floor. "The pickings are best right here," Zhu says, exhaling puffs of Montecristo smoke. "Which one shall I take home tonight?"

Lovers were once only a rich man's prerogative, but in today's urban China, married women like Zhu want it all, too. Empowered by rising incomes and left alone by wandering husbands, many city women...