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Overview
An uncensored, eye-opening, and laugh-out-loud funny portrait of modern China as seen through the lives and loves of four professional women in contemporary Beijing.
Divorce, oral sex, plastic surgery. Indulging in a Starbucks coffee, admitting to the emotional repercussions of a one-night stand, giggling over watching pornography.
These once taboo subjects have become the substance of daily conversations and practices among urban women in contemporary Beijing. It seems that no one remembers what happened at Tiananmen Square in 1989.
A cross between Sex and the City and The Joy Luck Club, The People's Republic of Desire follows four sassy gals as they preen and pounce among Beijing's Westernized professional class, exultantly obsessed with brand names, celebrity, and sex.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780061842900 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 10/13/2009 |
| Sold by: | HARPERCOLLINS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 464 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Annie Wang grew up in Beijing. Her first short story was published when she was fourteen years old. She is a contributor to Fortune magazine, and her first novel written in English, Lili, was published to extraordinary reviews. She lives in the United States and China.
Read an Excerpt
The People's Republic of Desire
A NovelBy Annie Wang
HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright © 2006 Annie WangAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0060782773
Chapter One
A Fake Foreign Devil
"Returnee" is a popular word nowadays in China, especially since the Chinese government called on all "patriotic overseas Chinese" to return to their homeland to build a "modern, strong China."
These returnees have a number of common traits.
First, they don't normally wear miniskirts or makeup, like so many local girls do. They often don't look very fashionable and seem to care little about such frippery.
Second, they have usually obtained advanced degrees somewhere in the West and often like to say, as casually as possible, "I went to school in Boston." (But they never forget to wear their Harvard or Yale rings on their fingers.)
Third, they are timid pedestrians. It takes them forever to cross an average Chinese road.
Fourth, they don't smoke. In fact, they get dizzy around smokers.
Fifth, they don't like people to ask where they come from, especially someone who has just met them. If they are prodded for an answer, they tend to pause for several seconds as if faced with a multiple-choice question. If they were to give the traditional response, they would tell the inquirer the birthplace of their fathers' ancestors. Knowing your ancestors' birthplaceand tomb sites demonstrates that you haven't forgotten your roots. Anyone who forgets his roots is despised and accused of being a sell-out. In China the phrase, "He doesn't know his last name anymore," is hurled to mock those who try to forget their roots.
But in the last twenty years, some Chinese scholars have claimed that China's long history and cultural roots have impeded its modernization. For the modern Chinerse, history is just so much cultural baggage. So the new Chinese way to answer is to name the birthplace, not of your father's ancestors but of your father. The American answer goes one step further: you simply point to your own birthplace.
So this is what is going through minds of the returnees when you ask them where they come from: Should returnees follow the traditional Chinese, the modern Chinese, or the American model? Or should they go one step further, and say that they come from California or London? Well, in China, smart people leave things vague. It's called nandehutu.
Twenty-something Niuniu is one such returnee. If you've been to Beijing, you might have seen her. She's no different from all the other members of the trendy young xin xin renlei -- the "new" new generation. Her hair is short, like a boy's, and spiked up with gel, sometimes dyed red, sometimes purple. Her hands are covered with all kinds of unusual white-gold rings, with little feet, apples, skeletons, snakes, and so on. Black nails, dark brown lipstick, baggy trousers, a colorful Swiss Army watch, yellow Nokia mobile phone, palm pilot, IBM notebook, JanSport backpack, and a Louis Vuitton purse, which always holds two condoms -- not for herself, but in case one of her girlfriends needs one urgently.
Everybody in China has a dangan, or personal file, which is kept by the government and details their political, family, educational, and employment background. I have one, too.
Let's take a look at my dangan. Top secret.
Height: 5'2"
Age: Twenty-something
Weight: 110 pounds
Marital Status: Single and fully detached
Birthplace: United States
Mother: Wei Mei, daughter of revolutionary opera performers. Born in Beijing, half Han and half Manchurian, granddaughter of a Manchu minister. Married three times. Moved to the United States during first marriage in mid-1970s. Currently the wife of the chief representative of an American oil company. Mother of Niuniu and a pair of Eurasian twins, Dong Dong and Bing Bing. A former Hooligan girl and shop clerk during the Cultural Revolution. Currently a social butterfly in Beijing's expatriate circle, involved in some high-level diplomatic exchanges and movie projects. No higher education, speaks fluent English.
Father: Chen Siyuan, orphan from Taiwan. Arguably Chinese, adopted by an American missionary and converted to Christianity. Ph.D. in electronic engineering from MIT. Former employee of Hewlett-Packard. Currently CEO of the Chen Computer Company. Twice married, currently to his former secretary, Jean Fang, who is eight years older than Niuniu and soon to have a baby.
Twin Sisters: Dong Dong, age nine, and Bing Bing, age nine. Students of Beijing Lido International School.
Education: B.A. in journalism from the University of Missouri at Columbia. GPA 3.8. M.A. in journalism from the University of California at Berkeley.
Profession: Reporter for the World News Agency in Beijing.
Religion: Buddhism, light.
Smoker: Nonsmoker.
Drinker: Started at fourteen. Now occasional drinker.
Sexual History: Lost virginity at sixteen. Had sex with twenty-two partners. Currently sexually inactive.
Psychological Background: Suffered from depression while in the United States after being dumped by her boyfriend, the moderately successful eye doctor Len, a third-generation Chinese American who holds an M.D. from Johns Hopkins. Six sessions with a shrink, who taught her about the eye movement treatment, about which she remained highly skeptical. Eventually she left United States for a makeover in China as an alternative strategy.
Probably, you've guessed by now that Niuniu is me. From my dangan, you can see why people call me a cosmopolitan woman. I love the word "cosmopolitan" as much as the drink. "Cosmopolitan" is a trendy word to toss around in China at the moment: China is building cosmopolitan megacities and luring people with a cosmopolitan background.
In a country where background and history are so important, it's increasingly popular in China to fake one's identity, origin, and accent. For one hundred yuan, you can get a fake ID, a dangan, or a diploma from any school in the world as easily as you can pick up a fake Rolex in Shenzhen nowadays.
Last week, I was in Shanghai, at a bar called CJW, owned by a friend's friend, where several native Shanghainese were complaining about "some peasants claiming to be native Shanghainese after being here less than three months."
Two weeks earlier, I was in a Hong Kong teahouse where the waitresses bad-mouthed a chic patron carrying a black Prada bag, who had just walked out the door.
Continues...
Excerpted from The People's Republic of Desire by Annie Wang Copyright © 2006 by Annie Wang. Excerpted by permission.
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