My interest in understanding the community of Chinese sex workers in Flushing, Queens, began when I came across Song Yang’s story in The New York Times. An ambitious Chinese woman, she was one of the most sought-after workers on 40th Road before she fell to her death from a fourth-floor balcony during a police sting targeting Asian massage parlors. Unlike the sex workers I had seen in films—often portrayed as trapped in narratives of misery—Song Yang was strategic, self-directed, and driven to excel, determined to realize her American Dream as quickly as possible.

That curiosity led me to visit her family in a northern village in China in 2022. I also interviewed a dozen sex workers in Flushing, along with some of their clients. Through these conversations, I was introduced to an underground economy that is intensely competitive, where hundreds of immigrant women—many undocumented—strive not only to survive, but to carve out a sense of agency through hard work.

I grew up in a second-tier city in China, where sex was a taboo subject. That silence only deepened my curiosity—I couldn’t understand why something so close to our lives remained unspoken. In the world of erotic massage businesses, I encountered a different reality: sex as labor, as business, as a form of care, and as a site of risk.

Through this short film, The Life, I hope to bring audiences closer to the women we often pass by without acknowledgment, and to the complex realities they navigate—caught between the promise of an American life and a path toward independence through competitive sex work.