The enigmatic book title, Eating Spring Rice ( chichunfan 吃青春饭 ), is indeed a metaphor for young people engaging in prostitution. Sandra Teresa Hyde, a professor of anthropology and social studies of medicine at McGill University , Quebec , has chosen as her field area the province of Yunnan and mostly Sipsongpanna (Xishuangbanna), an area popular for sex tourism. Her field-work has extended over seven years, from 1995-2002. Yet the study does not focus on the materiality of the disease as such, nor on the people being affected by HIV or AIDS. It is not a medical report about the spread of the disease. Instead, it can be considered as a socio-anthropological research analyzing the construction of AIDS as a discourse. For this, the author makes an excellent use of Michel Foucault's anthropological framework, with the three categories of governmentalism, system of knowledge and individual strategies. Beyond the opposition between society and state, the discourses by the different agents are viewed as being shaped by very complex and diverse motivations. The sex workers construct a discourse on AIDS; the government officials construct another type discourse on AIDS. These discourses are not contradictory, but they respond to each other. While prostitutes may subject themselves to the categories imposed on them by state agencies, they are nonetheless able to transform these categories and in doing so, to recover some freedom.

The book itself is divided into two parts, the first part focusing on the discourses by the government and the second part on the discourses by the sex workers. Statistics and interviews with government officials address the early cases of AIDS and the setting of the first policies, between 1995 and 2000. The author deconstructs these official discourses, showing that they do not constitute one monolithic discourse, but are embedded with diverse and complex strategies, according to the administration, to the political profile, etc. Yet common patterns can be discovered. Government officials tend to work, not with the concept of “risky behaviors” (like sharing dirty needles, or having unprotected sex), but with the devised concept of “people at risk” (like drug users, prostitutes, homosexuals, or ethnic groups). Such a construction tends to obscure the real facts about the transmission of the epidemic, but it serves the interest of state agencies for legitimizing their action of control over the population—what Foucault calls “biotechnology.” In this sense, the localisation of the AIDS epidemic into geographical areas like Sipsongpanna is a way of building the Chinese political space.

The second part constitutes the most important part of the book. It is mostly based on interviews with the sex workers in Jinhong, the capital of Sipsongpanna. In the context of rapid Chinese modernisation ethnic groups are associated with exotic images of a return to nature and of a loose morality. The Tai people are being subjected to a complex identity construction by the Han. This Han representation is highly eroticized and Tai women are considered as being promiscuous, licentious and free. Therefore, the common perception is that sex workers in Sipsongpanna are all Tai. However, 80 to 90 percent of them come from outside Yunnan , wearing Tai dress to attract customers. In the liveliest section of the book, the author describes the running of “beauty parlors” that she has frequented herself. Going beyond the usual opposition between “exploited female prostitute” and “exploiting male customer,” the author attempts to show the complexity of the social game being played. For many sex workers, prostitution is conceived as a temporary choice among a limited range of choices. The attitude of the police and government officials is also quite complex: while they claim to be making an effort in order to crack down on illegal activities such as prostitution, yet, at the same time, the police is capitalizing on prostitution through the imposition of fines; even local governments cash in on the tax revenues derived from it. At the local level we see also the demise of some aspects of the state's control over sexual life, with the state being sidestepped by the forces of the economic market. The marketing of condoms illustrates perfectly this change affecting sexual behavior greatly.

The last chapter of the book describes four different discourses on sexuality, one by a Han woman working in the area, another by a Han-Tai entrepreneur, another by an Aini woman tour guide, and lastly one by a male Tai activist. These discourses show that ideas on sex, gender and marriage do not play along the lines of a bi-polarity between domination and submission, but are shaped by complex strategies of power and identity constitution. In the epilogue, the author provides a wealth of information about the AIDS situation in China from 2002 to 2006, and discusses the policy being implemented by different administrations. The author insists on the need, not so much for national campaigns, but for a thorough understanding of local behaviors instead, so that prevention may work more effectively.

This book will be of interest not only to academics in the fields of anthropology and sociology, but also to social and medical workers. It includes many notes, an important bibliography and a detailed index. Deconstructing discourses about AIDS helps clear the motivations of the different agents involved and will hopefully reset priorities regarding this human tragedy. It is concerning this last point that I regret that the book did not include interviews with people infected with the disease. With the voice of their voice never being heard AIDS tends to be presented as a pure discourse, making the study quite virtual.

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