The People’s Republic of Desire

by Annie Wang

  We met at Starbucks. Immersed in European culture, CC is into bars and cafes, not necessarily Starbucks. And as for me, from my days in the States, Starbucks was another word for "breakfast." The two of us often ran into each other in the Starbucks near Beijing 's Friendship Store. We would often sit facing each other, one with a cappuccino and the Financial Times,the other behind a mocha and the Wall Street Journal.

  CC is a business manager at an international public relations company called Ed Consulting. She is the organizer of many events and parties Lulu and I have attended. CC is a loyal fan of the singer CoCo Lee, who sang the theme song of the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. She also worships that Singapore-born, scantily clad violinist Vanessa Mae. CC wants to emulate any Chinese woman who becomes successful overseas.

  Unlike Beibei and Lulu, who have never studied abroad, CC is more Western than Chinese. For me, it's a good balance. I can cling to my roots by befriending Beibei and Lulu and keep my Western connection by being with CC. Another reason I like CC is that she is funny. She thinks of herself as a serious intellectual. Talking to her makes me feel like I'm in a salon of eighteenth-century Paris. She likes to discuss issues such as colonialism and drop high-brow names such as Tolstoy, Plato, Leonardo da Vinci, and Mozart during everyday conversations.

  This little princess has an acute identity crisis: she doesn't know whether she is Chinese or English. When CC is with Chinese people, she feels she is English and could never identify with the Chinese. When she is with English people, she criticizes them for their racism in not accepting her as one of them.

  Finally, CC decided that she would alternate months, being completely Chinese one month and completely English the next. When she is being English, she pretends not to understand if you speak to her in Chinese. On the other hand, when she is being Chinese and speaking her crummy Mandarin, no one dares to practice English with her.

  CC's parents racked their brains to raise CC as a quasi-royal, to fulfill their dream of her someday becoming China 's own Jackie Kennedy. They never expected CC to have a problem with her identity. They always hoped she would marry "a Chinese aristocrat," in keeping with her social standing. But CC is not attracted to Asian men. Sometimes, she says that she simply prefers the vanilla flavor. Sometimes, she says dating an Asian man is like dating a brother, which is quite boring.

  CC's current boyfriend is a poor Welshman named Nick. After CC graduated from Oxford, she took Nick back to Asia with her. He doesn't have a full -time job. He helps a couple of Chinese Internet sites as a part-time English editor, but his salary remains a fraction of CC's. Nick works for only two or three hours each day, so he has a lot of free time, which he spends learning Chinese from Chinese people in bars, Starbucks, parties, and sometimes at his home.

  Now CC's biggest headache is that Nick, her ever-faithful boyfriend from England, has discovered that in China his average Welshman looks are surprisingly well received by Asian girls. Nick often spends time with Chinese girls, in the name of studying Chinese culture. Once he even went swimming with three Chinese girls, and CC was furious at the photo of Nick hugging three hot young chicks in bikinis. Knowing that I had a failed relationship that prompted me to return to China, CC comforts me, "It's wonderful that you don't have a boyfriend right now. You don't have to worry that local girls will steal him from you. You have a fresh start." CC worries that Nick will turn into another Frank.

  Who is Frank? A real character. We will get to him later.

  POPULAR PHRASES

  XINGUI: The new aristocrats, or nouveaux riches. During the Cultural Revolution, educated people were purged by the government and everyone was equal (equally poor that is). The new market economy has made it possible for people to have money and a strong education. This group of people constitute the "new aristocrats."

  NIUJIN: An Ox and a ford – Oxford.

  CHA CANTING: Popular Cantonese fast-food restaurant that offers quick meals and milk tea

  6 The Postmodernist and the Womanizer

  My favorite necklace is Native American. It is a piece of turquoise on an ox-tendon string, which I bought in Sante Fe, New Mexico.

  Sante Fe is one of my favorite American cities, a melting pot of Indian, Hispanic, Mexican, and Anglo cultures, with the distinctive little red-earth adobes set off against the cacti on the plains. It has such a raw and primitive feel. And it's a prosperous art community that attracts artists from many different cultures.

  It was in Sante Fe that one of my favorite American artists, Georgia O'Keeffe, was inspired to do much of her work. O'Keeffe was an independent and well-educated woman whose artwork was original and sensual. I especially love her Sante Fe – inspired flower paintings, which resemble female sexual organs. They remind me that the female form is both beautiful and delicate and strong and resolute. O'Keeffe also had a romantic love affair with her sponsor, Alfred Stieglitz, who was the only art dealer who would show her work in his gallery. The two eventually married, even though Stieglitz was thirty-one years older than O'Keeffe. Stieglitz loved to tell people that Georgia was his muse. By visiting New Mexico I hope to feed off the same energy that inspired O'Keeffe to create some of her best work.

  I remember how I sat on the second floor of the Coyote Cafe in the city center, gazing out at the sapphire sky above the plain and sipping a margarita. At ten o'clock at night, the arcades in the street were still open, and I could sme ll the enchanting scent of incense drifting up from the gallery shop. Colorfully dressed people strolled along the street. Like me, they were there on holiday. Other people were in couples, but I had come alone. I stayed at the Saint Francis Hotel, next to the Coyote Cafe, an old hotel where you had to use a real key, and not a magnetic card, to open the door.

  I liked the feeling of the old hotel. The old walnut furniture, books whose pages had been turned countless times, and the creaking wooden staircase, all made me think of dead authors like Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. In the States, old is precious because the country is young, the exact opposite of China, where old things are seen as roadblocks to the future.

  At the time, I had just been dumped by Len, the eye doctor who is twelve years older than me. This was after I had dumped my previous boyfriend for Len. I was depressed. At night the sky above the plains reminded me of my school trip to Tibet. It was the same sapphire blue, whether in the East or the West, always lucid, distant, mesmerizing. That night, I bade farewell to my failed love and decided that I'd stop seeing a psychologist and return to China.

  Before coming to the United States, I had been forewarned about racism against "yellow people," so it really surprised me when I found boys liked me in school. Actually, I was a popular girl. I had several boyfriends ranging from football players to lawyers to African immigrants.

  The gentle Len was the only man whom I fell passionately in love with. My body used to tremble just thinking of him, and I felt like my life couldn't get any better. I met him after I finished my bachelor's at Missouri and moved to Berkeley for graduate school. There I was, a young foreign girl living in the States, and dating an older, handsome Chinese American man. As a third-generation Chinese American, Len was more American than most American friends I knew. He never tired of introducing me to the country. We went to baseball games and operas in San Francisco, took road trips down the Pacific Coast highway, and went camping in Oregon. He even taught me how to ski and dive. He enjoyed telling me the names of cartoon characters and music bands that I hadn't heard of, and explaining psychosocial or literary terms I had not known. He was knowledgeable and fun to be with, and at the same time he retained the humbleness of a Chinese man. As a doctor, Len is patient and caring. Knowing my love for Picasso and Matisse, he bought prints of their paintings to help me decorate my dormitory. Once when I was sick, he took a day off to take care of me.

  The most romantic time we ever spent together was a two-week vacation in Yucatan, Mexico. I knew that Len didn't have much of an interest in this area, but I had always wanted to know
about the Maya and Native American cultures. Len had often heard me talking about wanting to go there someday, so he had secretly planned out a whole vacation without my knowing. Being surrounded by the lush rain forest and warm gulf waters was like a dream come true for me. Even more than the beautiful natural surroundings, I loved visiting the ancient pyramids and sculptures. Seeing these incredible works of a culture that has long since vanished from the world filled me with awe as well as sadness. The best night of the trip came when Len took me to the top of one of the ancient stone pyramids as the sun was setting over the forest. It was not safe to be this deep in the jungle late at night and Len had had to hire a guide as well as a guard to make sure we made it back to our hotel safely. This was the first time I seriously considered that Len might be my true soul mate. After that trip I never would have guessed that things would end the way they did.

  A year has passed since Len left me, and I have been a celibate for the whole year. I can't explain why I don't have sex anymore. I haven't tried to abstain. It seems that I used up all my sexual energy with Len. Now, I'm done.

  People say that I have a baby face. With a round face and a pair of sparkling almond eyes that look slightly distant, I've achieved a naive and innocent look. Many people think of me as an inexperienced schoolgirl. Few people I know in Beijing, including my own mother, could imagine that Niuniu was quite a wild girl back in the States. Beijing isn't like the United States. All my family and friends keep me busy drinking and eating. My first priority is not to find a date but to rediscover what it means to be Chinese.

  This is my new life: I race around the old city of Beijing in my red four-wheel-drive Land Cruiser, showing up at various events – art exhibitions, fashion shows, cocktail parties, masquerade balls, political conventions, press reception, and charity events. I meet people and go anywhere that is fun and newsworthy. This is the life of a journalist and a single metropolitan woman. Because the China of today is an ever-changing one, I have no shortage of stories to keep me busy. I cover everything from politics to business to social issues.

  When I was first hired by the Beijing bureau of the English news agency World News, I was assigned to an apartment in the diplomatic compound. Now, I am more than ready to move out of the compound to live in a hutong, with their narrow alleyways and simple courtyards. I didn't return to China to live in a fishbowl, but to mingle with the people that make this country unique. The many hutong that dot the landscape of Beijing remind me of a different time in Chinese history – a time that I yearn for but, sadly, may soon be gone.

  Living in the diplomatic compound makes me feel like a foreigner in Beijing. Whenever my Chinese friends come to visit me, they are always stopped by the guards, and I have to personally come down to let them in. If my friends drive local cars with blue license plates, they are not allowed in at all – only cars with black license plates, registered to foreigners, are allowed. As time passes, my friends stop coming by to play tennis or eat the dumplings that I cook.

  "You want to move? Are you crazy? The diplomatic apartments are in downtown Beijing, next to Chang'an Avenue, a few steps away from your office." Mother disapproves of my idea on the phone. "It has the broadband you need. It's safe. You don't want to live somewhere without guards. You know many migrant workers come to Beijing to rob or kill people for a few dollars."

  I talk back. "Mom, I want to live in a hutong. I grew up in Beijing. I want to be an ordinary Beijing person."

  "Niuniu, I was an ordinary Beijing person, I lived in a hutong for many years. Never again in my life do I want to queue up at the public toilets to empty the shit and piss from the night pans. How will you get used to it, child? There isn't even a place to park your car!"

  "I don't want special privileges; I don't want people to think of me as a fake foreign devil," I complain.

  Mother points out, "You are a fake foreign devil. You're an American citizen, your mother is an American citizen, your father is, your stepfather is, and your half-sisters are, and your stepmother Jean Fang is dreaming of becoming a fake foreign devil right now. But what's wrong with being an American devil? The whole world is working for America!" Mother, accustomed to living at the million-dollar Riviera Villa, cannot comprehend why I want to live in a hutong.

  I know that special privileges are exactly what Mother likes – her life has been a roller coaster. In her early days, when China was poor and closed to the outside world, she had nothing and worked as a kitchen hand in a jail, and now she lives an affluent life and is the regular guest of foreign ambassadors. Since she suffered enough during the Cultural Revolution, Mother sees being an ordinary Chinese person as shameful. An ordinary Chinese person, to her, is the synonym of poverty, backwardness, and squat toilet. To those lucky enough not to know what a squat toilet is, it is just that: a simple hole that you squat over to relieve yourself.

  Growing up in China in the 1980s and 1990s, I have the idyllic memory of China. For my generation who grew up in the city, poverty can be a prank and backwardness can be a postmodern experiment. The diplomatic apartments may be considered high-end by older generations. For me, they are a bunch of ugly concrete matchboxes, neither cool nor postmodern. They simply have no character. I don't tell this to Mother, who has no clue what hou xiandai is. With Beibei and Lulu's help, I find a traditional courtyard house in a hutong near the well-preserved section of town: Drum Tower. It is convenient and close to the subway. My yard is two hundred square meters, with two large japonica trees, a grapevine pergola, and a flower garden. I can stand on the earth. As I look up, I can see trees and the sky. It's quaint.

  I paint doors and roofs in blue, and the outer walls ivory. My house looks Mediterranean from the outside. I decorate the bedroom with bright pink-and-green gauze drapery and hang brocade from minority tribes in the living room. I have gone to an antique market called Panjiayuan and brought back a round sandalwood eight-seater dining table, old-fashioned wooden armchairs, and some Ming- and Qing-style vases. My grandparents give me a birdcage, snuff bottles, and incense burners as homewarming gifts. My house is a fusion of old and new.

  With my encouragement, CC also moves out of her foreigner's community and shares the courtyard house with me. Not to be outdone by my efforts, CC installs a heavy opium bed in her own bedroom. Both of our jobs require us to stay connected to this new China: to follow and document and immerse ourselves in its culture. The new China can be a bland, frivolous, and even scary place, with its endless cinderblock-shaped skyscrapers and immense shopping malls. Our new home allows us to create an escape from the busy, modern world. It takes us back to an ancient place, when my Chinese ancestors still possessed the confidence and nobility that seems to have been lost in the Chinese people of today. I love my new house tremendously.

  After we settle in, CC and I hear the story of the house's previous occupant, Frank, who was not only a postmodernist but also a womanizer.

  Frank graduated from a small college in Indiana and was a foreign teacher at a Beijing technology university. When he was in the States, Frank was a pure and honest midwestern lad. He was modest and down-to-earth. At university he was shy, a bit of a nerd, and couldn't find a girlfriend. After graduation, Frank came to Asia, wandering around Thailand and Vietnam, teaching English to get by. Finally Frank came to Beijing to work as a foreign teacher.

  Asia completely changed him. Back in the States, no one said Frank was good-looking, but Asian girls loved his Western nose and blond hair. Frank was treated like some kind of baima wangzi, a veritable Prince Charming. Women would take him out for meals, open doors for him, and give him candy. Sometimes, when he was walking along the street, people asked to take their photos with him. Chinese TV stations fought one another to get Frank as their special guest. Frank's confidence blossomed.

  Within a year of his stay in Beijing, Frank nailed down nine girls. Living in the school's foreign expert dorm was no longer convenient for him since the guards looked suspiciously at every girl he brought back to his
dorm. So he moved to a hutong.

  He met his tenth girlfriend that year near the City Hotel area. Her name was Grace. She was a tour guide. Frank and Grace were together for two months, Frank's record. But unlike Frank's previous Chinese girlfriends, Grace was no sucker. After Frank dumped her, she mustered a bunch of punks to beat him up. Grace even threatened to kill "this heartless bastard" for "messing with Chinese girls." Although it was Frank who had been beaten up, he felt he had brought it upon himself. He had nowhere to report it, so he just had to suffer in silence. After that, there was no way he could stay in Beijing, so he slunk back to Indiana.

  Whenever anybody mentions Frank's story, everyone laughs. Wives of foreign expatriates hear about the Grace incident, and they pay much more attention to their husbands' whereabouts.

  POPULAR PHRASES

  HUTONG: Old-style Chinese homes that create narrow alleyways and little courtyards.

  HOU XIANDAI: Postmodern.

  BAIMA WANGZI: A Prince Charming on a white horse.

  7 Harvard Inc.

  Guess what the hottest foreign brand in China is at the moment. McDonald's? No, too cheap. Nike? Wrong again, you can't tell the real ones from the fakes. Marlboro? No, no, no. Yuppies are quitting smoking and becoming trendy environmentalists. Yves Saint Laurent? Much too hard to pronounce! Sony? Unthinkable! Many Chinese still hold a grudge against the Japanese. Motorola? Uh, uh, Nokia is more popular. Microsoft? Not everybody likes Bill Gates. Microsoft has just lost a big deal with the Chinese government and China has vowed to develop its own software to compete with Windows. What is it? I say that it is Harvard.