Volume 2 provides a two-part discussion about  traditional Cantonese ideas about gender and experiences with gendered relationships. 
        Part I focuses attention on Cantonese womenfolk, as conceptualized in the idea of institutional bondage, which includes:
1) dejure or sanctioned institutional bondage, involving courtesans, prostitutes, slave girls, and indentured female servants; and 2) defacto or disguised institutional bondage, involving wives, widows, sisters, and daughters, and 3) how Cantonese women responded to institutionalized bondage, via coping mechanisms, survival strategies, and exit options.
        Part II focuses on Cantonese menfolk, relative to the subject of how masculinity was defined, and what meanings were associated with it, concerning  traditional avenues for homosocial (men and men) engagement. This nexus is especially significant, and also provocative,  when it is linked to activities and relationships with homosexual identifications. This subject is framed in a new and  unconventional revisionist transnational/diasporic theoretical framework, linking old world experiences in China with new world expectations in America.