What is the origin of "salty dampness"?

1. The "party" edition of Yangcheng Evening News once published a textual research article by a man of insight, saying that "salty dampness" originated from the transliteration of English hamshop (translated by Shanghainese as "bacon village", referring to brothels). There is also a story about "salty dampness". It is said that during the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, the lower class citizens in Guangzhou-coolies, workers, apprentices, etc. -I have to solve my own physiological needs after work. Their generation ignored the hot weather and often got into brothels in a smelly sweat. The younger sister of Paozhai (the inferior brothel) had to make fun of them afterwards, laughing at these salty and wet men's "grasping the green" (recklessly) and "salty and wet" which was later simplified to "salty" and formed slang words such as "salty slices" and "salty pig hands". This is not only a unique obscene expression in Cantonese, but also a very interesting language phenomenon. As we all know, Chinese doesn't care about sex, number and case, so naturally there is no difference between yin and yang of parts of speech, but the context is still different. For example, "salty and wet" only refers to men. Relatively speaking, when describing women, it is called "jiao", which means temptation, such as "being afraid of having children and being beautiful" and "lewd". Therefore, there is no such thing as "Jiao Lao" or "Xian Po" in Cantonese dialect. It's not that there is no such role in reality, but that Cantonese people are not interested in saying so. There are still some opinions about salty dampness, but not many people agree with them, which are listed as follows: 1. At a certain time in ancient times, the seaside was a place where prostitutes concentrated, where they "attracted guests". Because the sea water is salty and wet, those cheap customers are called "salty and wet" 2. The secretion produced by hormone increase is a salty liquid, also called salty wet.

2. It is said that the first Opium War ended in 1842, Shanghai opened its ports, Britain, the United States and France successively set up concessions in Shanghai, and the western porn industry poured in one after another. Among all kinds of "walks", there is a bar that specializes in thigh dancing. Dancers secretly engage in prostitution, and foreigners in the concession call this bar hamshop. By the way, ham is a ham in English and shop is a shop, so Shanghai slang literally translates hamshop as "Ham Shop". However, the Guangzhou people living in Shanghai at that time bewitched ghosts and transliterated this evil English compound into a puzzling "salty wet". Judging from the way of pronunciation, the transliteration of ham is salty, which is in line with Hong Kong people's translation of football superstar David Beckham into Bi Xian.

Merchant ships between Guangzhou and Shanghai return once a month, and the Cantonese word "salty wet", which was born in Shanghai, is shipped back to hometown with all kinds of goods, which has a new connotation.