by Annie Wang
But he is disappointed at the Chinese journalists. He complains to me, "They are capitalists now, always writing about millionaires and celebrities. It's so boring. If China 's journalists don't speak for the people, then I will have to speak for them. Look, whenever they talk about disabled people, they always say disabled people should support themselves. Where is the so cial security system? If parents give birth to a disabled child, does it serve them right? Doesn't society have any responsibility at all? And what about the peasants – the revolution is over fifty years old, but they still don't have medical insurance or pensions, and the local governments still force them to pay all sorts of exorbitant taxes like population taxes, family planning taxes, road construction taxes, textbook taxes, as well as pig taxes. The peasants in the countryside can't earn any money, so they flood into the cities! But look at how the cities treat them – even worse than Americans treat Mexican immigrants!" He is showing me an article of a Henan immigrant worker who was gang-raped in Shenzhen.
The poor woman didn't bring the proper identification card with her so the police put her in the correction center. But for some reason, she was placed in the men's cell and was raped repeatedly by the inmates and guards. After she got out, her parents didn't support her for telling the story to the media because they thought it was scandalous and also they were afraid of retaliation. At first, she listened to them. But her husband insisted that they needed to fight back. With him on her side, she told the local newspaper about the horrifying experience she suffered at the correction center. Soon, it caught the attention of the national media.
"I've been writing an article on this case, but nobody wants to talk to me. I'm sick to death of it. Whenever I go anywhere to report on something, as soon as people hear I am a foreign journalist, they are afraid. The husband of the victim originally agreed to an interview, but then he changed his mind. His lawyer also changed his story. They don't trust me. Why?"
"You are…"
"I'm a foreigner? So I can't be trusted? But doesn't everyone welcome international friends now? Especially foreign businessmen. Is it only their money that's welcome? Is that right? Chinese people are great to me. But why won't they let me interview them?"
"There is a saying: Don't air your dirty linen in public."
"It seems to me that these Chinese people still remember when they were bullied by the English. Niuniu, let's work on a piece about China 's underclass together! At least, the Chinese will speak their minds to you."
Sean's words remind me of Mimi, my lawyer friend who always represents the Chinese underclass. Since I interviewed her for my article on returning Chinese, we have become close friends. Unlike Lulu and Beibei, Mimi doesn't talk about men; instead, she loves talking about books, art, and social issues with me. She takes me to a deaf school, to a migrant workers' dwelling in the south of the city, and to a center for abused women, and helps me gather materials.
In the course of my startling research, I learn about the miserable world that some women still live in today. It is a world of dog-eat-dog poverty, despair, sixteen-hour workdays, struggle, tears, never seeing the light of day, unfairness, prostitution, rape, discrimination, abduction, and slavery. Making these hardships even more unbearable for me to observe, let alone write about, is that in the midst of all the suffering there are women with firm, indomitable, and loving hearts.
The most unforgettable conversation was with a pedicurist from Yangzhou called Huanzi. Huanzi spends twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, in a bathhouse – she works, eats, and sleeps there. She earns 1,500 yuan per month and has no medical insurance. She says to me that if she becomes ill, then she would rather die than be a burden to her family. Medical bills are too expensive.
I am unable to keep my usual detachment from my interviewees. Beyond seeing their suffering and writing about their suffering, I have to do something more for these people.
I speak to Mimi urgently. "Maybe besides our Jeremy Irons club and Ricky Martin fan club, we should also set up a Little Women's Club. The mission of this club would be to raise money for the poor, uneducated, and mentally and physically traumatized girls through hosting cultural events."
"Sounds great! We should make the club exclusive and the membership fee expensive," Mimi says.
"Why?" I ask.
"Charity, like golf, is a fashion among the rich. They will only do it when they think it is fashionable," Mimi adds with a bored expression and a wave of her hand.
97 The Little Women's Club
Following my experiences on my trip to the countryside, I return to the city and set up the Little Women's Club with CC and Mimi. We are all little women – shorter than five foot four. China is fascinated with models and the Brooke Shields type of tall Western beauty, and many Chinese women are risking their lives with leg operations to gain height, so we decide to celebrate being petite. "I was told Lucy Liu is only five foot three," says CC.
"Zhang Ziyi is only five-foot-three," Mimi says.
"Not to mention Mother Teresa, Liz Taylor, and Aung San Suu Kyi!" I add.
We set the requirements for membership in the Little Women's Club: a woman no more than five foot four in height, with a postgraduate degree or better and a strong CV.
Our shortest member is Dove, a poet, author, singer, and film star. She has published a collection of essays called Size Doesn ' t Matter. We set up a reading at CD Cafe, where Dove reads, sings, and screams. That night, we sell seven hundred copies of her book.
Although the membership fees are $1,000 per year, the response to the Little Women's Club advertisements exceeds all expectations. Female entrepreneurs, artists, authors, actresses, engineers, lawyers – all extremely intelligent women – donate money and offer suggestions. Some even voluntarily design the Little Women's Club Web site. Being a member of the Little Women's Club becomes fashionable and something of a status symbol.
Beibei, who has been doing business for so many years, knows clearly that in China, connections means money. She arranges for a concert to be hosted jointly by the Little Women's Club and her Chichi Entertainment Company and invites her proteges, the Young Revolutionaries, to be the only male special guests.
My father's company donates 500,000 yuan and Mimi's husband, Lee, provides 200,000 yuan on behalf of his company. In return, we give their companies exposure everywhere and one hundred VIP tickets.
Advertisements for the Little Women's Club Concert quickly appear at Beijing bus stops, and on radio stations, television stations, and even buses.
Beibei is pleased. Foreign company sponsorship, popular big-shot stars taking part, a public benefit concert, and television coverage – with the Young Revolutionaries as the only male act – it's a perfect chance for her to promote her band and gain publicity. She jokes, "Although I'm excluded from membership because of my height, I'll make the little women work for me! This is a battle between the tall and the short!"
On the day of the concert, Mimi and her husband Lee, Weiwei and his latest girlfriend, CC, Lulu, stepmother Jean, and I all sit in Lee's company minibus. It is like a family picnic.
After all the female artists have performed – the sweet, the crazy, the angry, the weird, the loud, the wild, and the sick – the Young Revolutionaries, surrounded by their entourage, come out onstage. The Young Revolutionaries were born and raised in Manchuria and have drifted down to Beijing, where they burst onto the music scene. Growing up listening to pirated foreign CDs, they are influenced by Western pop and punk music. They enjoy the limelight, being packaged, signing autographs for fans, and putting on cool poses for the cameras.
When the music starts, I see two groups in the audience: There are kids with dyed hair and vacant expressions who dance wildly; these are from China 's one-child generation which doesn't believe in limits. And there are older folks who twist their stout beer bellies, trying to shake away their midlife crises.
The Young Revolutionaries rap out their song:
My great grandfather Mao
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Who I have never met
You are the coolest rock star
The greatest punk
The heaviest metal
All Chinese rockfans
Rock with you
On the new Long March
Rock and roll
Beat America, beat England
Let's get it together
"These Young Revolutionaries have the dance steps of the Backstreet Boys, John Lennon's hair and political sensibility, Michael Jackson's crotch-grabbing, Ricky Martin's butt-swinging, Nirvana's smashing guitars – the only thing they don't have is themselves!" CC declares.
" China is currently in a stage where it can only imitate. Everything is like that, including entertainment," says Lulu. "Young people will do everything possible to be different, but they end up falling into the same old conventions." Lulu doesn't like the Young Revolutionaries either.
Beibei is unhappy. "What's wrong with imitating? Even Hollywood movies are imitating Chinese martial arts movies!"
"Chinese kids today are really something. They haven't practiced their skills, they haven't trained their voices, but they dare to come out and be idols? Do they think we're all stupi d?" Jean shows no respect for the Young Revolutionaries.
As everyone is talking, Weiwei opens his mouth: "I can smell marijuana."
In front of us, a group of students with nose-rings are lighting up, and several girls with fluorescent bands around their arms and necks are violently shaking their heads to the music.
Although it is superficial, vulgar, and drug-fueled, the Little Women's Club Concert has raised 250,000 yuan. Mimi, CC, and I bring the money to a poor village in Xi'an. On the way, I say, "If such a manufactured and unremarkable event can lead to such good, perhaps it should be encouraged after all!" Mimi says, "The event allows big women and men to see what our little women are capable of." CC shakes her head as she replies, "I don't want our club to be associated with brats like the Young Revolutionaries. What I can't bear the most isn't their stupidity. Plus, as men, they are just too short!"
98 Too Far Ahead of Her Time
CC decides to go back to England. As she tells me about the decision, I'm shocked.
CC says, "It's been five years since I returned to China. I did my best to become more Chinese, but it didn't work."
"You don't like China anymore?"
"Sometimes, coming back to China is like living in Hong Kong twenty years ago. It's so hard to find people who are at my level. I'm a misfit here."
One of CC's problems is that she's too far ahead of her time. In China, it's considered cool to carry a credit card, for instance, but CC has five or six. It's considered cool to drive a Buick, but CC was chauffeured in a Bentley as a young girl. It's considered cool to drink Blue Mountain coffee, but she's gone through her coffee-drinking phase and has moved on to green tea. It's considered cool to drop English words into your con versations even if your pronunciation is incorrect, but CC speaks fluent English. It's considered cool to know how to bowl, but she grew up playing golf with her parents. It's considered cool for young educated women to discuss works of the Beat Generation such as Jack Kerouac's On The Road and Allen Ginsberg's Howl, but she read them when she was a student.
"I can't stand people who show off their brand-name clothes that are at least two years behind New York and London fashions. I have to lower myself again and again in order to stay popular among my Chinese friends. I'm getting tired."
"There are two choices for Western-educated Chinese who return to China," I say. "You either hold on to what you've learned abroad, applying it to your new life in China to become part of its native-born expatriate community, or you try to hide your Western values and pretend to be native all over again."
"Apparently, Niuniu, you have chosen the latter. But for me, that choice is a step backward. I don't really want to go native," CC replies, as her arms flail ab out in desperation. "For a while, I tried. But I can never forget that, at a beauty salon, some women thought I was the second wife of a Hong Kong man," she adds, as if it was the ultimate insult one could receive.
"What happened?" I ask.
"I told them I was local, but they knew that the clothes I was wearing could only be bought at The Peninsula shopping arcade in Hong Kong. So, they concluded that I could only be a second wife. I guess they must have a lot of experience. From then on, I decided not to hide my Hong Kong roots anymore," CC says with a tone of finality. "I like China, but I don't like to be a Chinese woman living in China. I lost Nick and I don't find Chinese men attractive. We used to make fun of this, but it's not fun anymore. I want to go back to see my online date in London or find a former classmate to get married."
"You feel the urgency to get married?" I ask CC.
"Yes. And you, Niuniu? Don't you want to get married?"
"Yes. Someday, but not now," I say.
"I really would like to have my own family by the time I reach thirty-three."
"So you don't think you can find Mr. Right in China?"
CC sighs. "I don't want a rich guy. All I want is a man I can communicate with. But most men I've met here are so shallow. Those who aren't shallow often become so popular that they don't want to stay faithful. China isn't a paradise for educated women to search for spouses: that's the sad simple truth."
After my failed relationship with Len, I came back to China to return to my Chinese life. I didn't want to fall in love immediately. I have chosen to become a detached observer of other people's lives; my passion has been left in the States. CC's words make me wonder: Do luck and love have anything to do with location? Sometimes it seems as though in certain places, you're luckier than other places. Perhaps, that's why so many Chinese tourist groups take Chinese women to Silicon Valley for matchmaking, Japanese girls spend romantic holidays in Bali, and European tourists escape to Thailand for sexual adventures. But if China is really like CC says, a wasteland for educated women, what about America? Why did I fail there where I had no shortage of admirers and sex partners?
"If you want to go back to England to get married, what about your career here in China?" I ask CC.
"My career in China? Don't you see those job ads? Women over thirty-five are hard put to find jobs here. This is another sad truth. But the saddest fact for me is that my Chinese friends are all becoming CEOs and their companies are going public. Even though many of them are clearly behind the times in terms of fashion and philosophy, they've become part of the superrich, whereas I'm still a PR account manager. I'm not stupid, and I've got a great education, but they have occupied the resources here. If I can only be a member of the middle class, I'd rather be middle-class in Great Britain where my kids don't need to breathe smoggy polluted air every day."
"What about your parents?"
"They'd love to give all of their money to me if I married a Hong Kong man. It's my freedom that they want to buy. I won't sell myself short."
"So you're determined to leave."
CC isn't listening. She's admiring a woman's shoulder bag dangling off the back of a chair a few tables away.
"Niuniu, is that Prada real or fake?"
I say, "You said that it's not a matter of what one wears; it's where one wears it that counts."
"Yes. A real Prada can look fake here in China. But a fake Prada can look real in London. She should be walking in London now."
Listening to CC, I realize that CC really misses England, which is her home. China isn't.
Where is my home? I wonder. Ernest Hemingway says Paris is a movable feast. Can I carry my roots with me? Wherever I go, I make that my home.
99 Changed Yet Unchanged
To celebrate my birthday, my partner in crime, Beibei, has organized a dinner party at her newly purchased restaurant, China Planet. Beibei wants to turn the place into China 's Planet Hollywood. Her concept is to sell stardom. Her singers will often dine here, as well as bring along other stars. This will help attract ordinary customers who will come hoping to meet celebrities. B
eibei is as smart in money as she is dumb in love.
Her unfaithful husband, Chairman Hua, is the first one to show up at the dinner party. I can tell that he comes straight from his lover's flat. Hua sits on the left side of Beibei. On the right side is Beibei's new young lover, Hai, a singer and the latest sensation and heartthrob among the teenage set. The three don't seem to mind the situation at all.
Lulu enters, trailing the seductive scent of Lancôme's Miracle. With her long straight hair, high heels, grace, and elegant style, she oozes sex. With six years of hysteria, three abortions, endless encounter sessions where she discussed philosophy with Beibei and me, shrinks costing thousands, and one fortune-teller, Lulu has finally left Ximu and is standing on her own feet. She is a best-selling author and a disciple of feng shui master Bright Moon.
Other guests include my family friend Weiwei, the knowledgeable slacker who claims to be China's last aristocrat; Lily, the Harvard M.B.A. who doesn't want her Chinese friends to know she had a black lover back in the States; Gigi, my acrobatics coach, whose professor husband left her for a lusty student who needed some "private tutoring"; lawyer Mimi and her model husband, Lee; Yi, the CEO of ChineseSister.com, who cochaired the online forum on Chinese beauty as seen through Western eyes; John, the gay guy from the Jeremy Irons Fan Club; and finally, Master Bright Moon, my colleagues Sean and Hugh, and painter Jia. CC doesn't come. She's back in England now. I miss her.
I arrive with a flourish. With my nails blackened, my lipstick a dark brown shade, and those hideous baggy trousers, I am making a fashion statement. I am the center of attention today.
What a comic life I have been living since coming back to China! My life has been so eventful. I have learned so much, yet so little. I am an insider as well as an outsider. I feel connected, yet isolated. I have changed, yet I remain the same. I have a sense of belonging, but also a sense of alienation.
