ELISA ODDONE
Photojournalist
“Clients can be good and can be bad. Sometimes, I am scared (...) I only work until midnight because this area turns very dangerous after that. It is easier to get mugged.”
Wearing a knee-length winter coat, Xiaoyan waits for her next client near the main train station in Venice. Clinging to her bag, she looks like any other bundled-up passer-by in the evening cold.
But the 45-year-old Chinese woman from the Zhejiang province, on the country's eastern coast, has been working as a prostitute for the past three years.
She arrived in Italy in 2007 and, like many of her compatriots, initially found work in small clothes and footwear businesses.
