Prostitution in Overseas France were female, 20% male and 50% transsexual (known as "raerae"). When Captain Samuel Wallis discovered Tahiti in 1767, he traded with the islanders for fresh provisions. The Polynesians had no source of iron, and the women sold sex for nails. Wallis had to ban shore leave for the crew for fear of the ship collapsing as so many nails had been removed from the structure. When Captain Cook arrived in 1769, the price had risen from one nail to three nails. By the time of Cook's 3rd visit in 1774, the currency had changed from nails to European clothes and
Trouble in Tahiti at Carnegie Hall. With the permission of the Leonard Bernstein Office Inc., The Chinese University of Hong Kong Chorus gave a semi-staged performance of the opera with a chamber choir substituting the Trio as scored. On 17 June 2018, the Chorus performed the adaptation with Garth Edwin Sunderland's reduced orchestration in their Leonard Bernstein centennial celebration concert "Bernstein in the Theater" at Hong Kong City Hall Concert Hall. Bernstein wrote a continuation, "A Quiet Place" (1983, libretto by Stephen Wadsworth), which was poorly received. It was rewritten incorporating "Trouble in Tahiti" in the form of an extended flashback. The opera,