by Roseann Lake
Ivy opens up the “moments” pages of a few of her protégés, to give examples. She’s now beyond this WeChat stage, but reassures June that it was very useful in getting her to where she was now.
“On your birthday, for instance,” she says, “post pictures of all the designer gifts you receive.”
June looks completely lost. She’d spent her last birthday at a Korean spa with a few of her best gal pals, but hadn’t gotten any extravagant gifts to flaunt beyond a few cosmetics. “And if you don’t get any expensive gifts, post pictures of other people’s gifts, making it seem like they’re yours,” Ivy continues. “With a few words of gratitude, of course, so it doesn’t seem like you’re boasting,” she adds. “Convincing pictures you can find online are also OK. You just need to make it look like the gifts were given to you.”
“The same goes for dinners,” she says, as if quoting The Confucian Analects. “If you go to a chic restaurant on a date, or even just with friends, post pictures of it. Men need to see you in nice places, so that they know to take you to them. They’ll cut corners whenever they can, but if you set the bar very high, their fear of coming up short will ensure they treat you well.”
I can see that June is excited to be learning this information, but not yet entirely convincd of the methodology.
“Next, you need attractive photos. Legs and cleavage. Nothing tasteless, but the pictures should be sexy.”
Since June doesn’t live far from the restaurant where we met for dinner, Ivy offers to help orchestrate a small photo shoot at her apartment that evening.
Once we arrive—Ivy drives over in her Porsche, June and I teeter over on my e-bike—Ivy proceeds to sit on the daybed in June’s apartment, which has a magnificent view of the Central Business District of Beijing. “This is the most flattering position for legs,” she says, stretching hers out in front of her, with one slightly raised, while arching her back slightly. “You try.”
June sits down, lumbering slightly onto the windowsill. Ivy prepares to take a photo. “Stomach!” she says. June inhales. “Stomach!” Ivy repeats, a bit more loudly. June (who is slim to begin with) cinches once again, just before Ivy snaps the picture. “We’ll just have to Photoshop,” said Ivy as she looks at the picture. Though a few of my Western male friends had fallen all over themselves when they met June, according to Ivy, June’s selling point was not physical, but her qi zhi, or the air about her. I take this to mean her special mix of charisma and intelligence, though I’m not sure that’s what Ivy is referring to.
As Ivy flips through the “Moments” of her other female WeChat contacts to show me more photos, I notice a trend. Many of them had uploaded pictures in the very same position she just suggested to June. Iconic blue Tiffany boxes abound, as do signature black-and-white Chanel ones. Some posts even include photo montages of several different luxury items shown together. Ivy, I was beginning to realize, has disciples.
Following the eye-opening session with coach Ivy, June enacted a more proactive plan of action. Pictures of fine pastries and filet mignon dinners began to pop up on the news feed of her WeChat profile. She even went to a photo studio to have some very sultry glamour shots taken of herself. In one, she was wearing a fitted canary-yellow dress that revealed a stunning hourglass figure.
“The photo shoot was ridiculous. The place was papered in outrageously doctored-up photos of models. One of the male ones was really attractive—he had to be Korean,” said June. Noticing her admiration for the man in the photograph, the photographer asked if June wanted to have a romantic photo shoot with one of the male models, as this was a service offered by the studio. “I was tempted,” she admitted, “but in the end I decided it would be creepy.”
A few weeks after her solo photo shoot, a Korean man popped up on June’s radar. They’d met at a networking event for young professionals, but hadn’t really made much of a connection. Her new WeChat images must have caught his eye, however, because he suddenly became more talkative and eventually asked her out.
This was monumental. June loves all things Korean—South Korean soap operas are her guilty pleasure; she is a diehard fan of K-Pop; and in her eyes, South Korean men are the Apollos of Asia. She readily accepted.
8
LOVE, WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS
There are people who would have never fallen in love, had they never heard of it.
—FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, MAXIM 136
It was a Sunday morning, just two subway stops after ten a.m. I approached Beijing’s Temple of Heaven Park with high hopes. As the unofficial playground of the city’s vivacious elderly population, you’re more likely to be cornered by a Shaolin septuagenarian than to find a quiet corner to read, lounge, or picnic in, but none the wiser, I set out to find a few secluded trees.
“Are you looking for a husband?” asked a stout, middle-aged woman as soon as I made my way through the gate. Standing about four foot eight, she was plucky, her accent thick with the heavy twang of a Beijinger. Before I could answer, she took out a small photo. “This is my son. He’s a lawyer. He makes a very good salary, and just outside this park, we own three lao fangzi (traditional Chinese-style row houses). “Would you like to see? One is already furnished and ready for him to move into with his wife.”
I kindly told her that I wasn’t on the market, but took a closer look at the photo.
He had his mother’s smile—and her belly. Though seemingly tall, he had a large convex paunch that protruded from his body, giving him the shapeliness of an anvil.
“Ta shenme dou hui,” she went on, explaining that he was an ace at soccer, basketball, Ping-Pong, badminton, and a few other sports Zhang Mei had not yet taught me the names for in Chinese.
“What do you think?” she asked with a winning grin and a nudge that seemed to say, Be my daughter-in-law.
“I have a friend who is a lawyer,” I said, in a halfhearted attempt to be polite, and a full-hearted attempt to escape.
“How old?” she asked.
“Twenty-eight,” I said, with June in mind.
“He needs a wife, not a dinosaur!” she said. “Anyone younger?”
I bristled, and she could tell. Though I was well aware of how ageist the Chinese can be, especially when it comes to marriage, I wasn’t going to encourage it.
She took out a treacly pineapple-coconut hard candy as a peace offering before leaning in a bit closer. “I should probably tell you something,” she said, in a hushed whisper. “He’s had a girlfriend before. They were even, you know, in love.”
“What happened?” I asked, suddenly very curious.
“I didn’t approve of her background. I forbade him to see her. He continued for a time, but they eventually split up. It ruined my relationship with him for several years. He wouldn’t even speak to me,” she said. “Things are better now that I’ve promised not to meddle in his personal affairs.”
“Then, what are you doing here today?” I asked her.
“Helping him find a wife, of course!”
I stopped to take everything in. This woman was one of nearly two hundred parents and grandparents who had attended the “marriage market” that Sunday morning. In addition to the Xeroxed tomes of information on available mates, there was even a members-only database that one could access for a nominal fee, which is how Christy’s grandfather also selects prospective matches for her to consider.
It surprised me that this was still happening in modern China—and smack in the middle of a city as cosmopolitan as Beijing—but I should have known better. What I saw play out that morning were the remnants of a romantic tug-of-war that parents and children in China have been engaged in for the better part of a century.
In 1899, a French novel by Alexandre Dumas, The Lady of the Camelias, was translated into Chinese. As one of the first European novels ever translated, it claimed a broad readership upon publication and legend has it that its intrepid translator, Lin Shu, wept so hard while translating its scenes of passion, ill-fate
d love, and the tragic death of Marguerite Gautier from consumption, that all of his neighbors knew what he was up to.
At this time, the steamy Chinese classic Dream of the Red Chamber was past its second printing. Chinese readers had long been exposed to literature laden with ardent emotion, the social paralysis of the aristocracy, and the heroism of renunciation, but as Haiyan Lee, Stanford scholar of Chinese classics, notes in her book Revolution of the Heart, Dumas’s The Lady of the Camelias presented these themes to Chinese readers in a radically new framework: one of romanticism. Through Armand Duval, the son of a tax collector who falls helplessly in love with a Parisian courtesan, and who defies the order imposed by his aristocratic class when he decides to marry her, Chinese readers were given a glimpse of how emotion and the pursuit of romantic love could be a legitimate basis for a new social order—not just a titillating bedtime story.
It’s worth keeping in mind that during this period of Chinese history—the Late Qing dynasty and Early Republic periods—there was no phrase to signify “romantic love.” The closest linguistic equivalent was the word “qing,” which translates roughly as “sentiment” and refers primarily to the novels of sentiment, which were popular at the time. More than individual emotions, qing was associated with virtue, and people were still expected to keep their identity and accompanying “sentiments” tightly linked to their kinship circles.
Given the all-encompassing nature of social networks, romance—it has been argued—was less necessary and less valued during this time in China, though it certainly wasn’t prohibited. Amorous dalliances were allowed in brothels and with concubines to the extent that if a man became so bewitched with his lover, he could bring her into his own home. (Polygamy was widely practiced and legal in China until 1949.) Homosexual relations were also tolerated, and even Confucius—often erroneously portrayed as stalwart and stone-faced—condoned having a good time, as long as it was done in moderation, and with no detriment to the family structure or associated ethical relations. The only real caveat to cavorting was that it needed to be done with great caution.
“Traditional Chinese literature is laden with tales of electrifying love at first sight and erotic bliss,” explains Lee. “But most of these tales have a tragic ending—the star-crossed lovers are wrested apart by the will of discordant parents, or one of the lovers (usually the woman) suddenly turns into an evil fox spirit.” This is all done on purpose, Lee reassures me, as a way of literalizing the anxieties that people may feel when searching for the appropriate marriage partner, and of reminding them of the perils of deviating from the time-trusted marriage system.
Though often scintillating reads, Lee explains that most of these stories are laced with a similar moral: if you abide by the codes and prescriptions of the process leading to marriage and don’t deviate from the structures of your familial network, the system will guarantee that you remain safe. But push the limits of passion a bit too far, and you might find yourself married to a rapturous but cataclysmically evil fox spirit.
By definition, qing didn’t exclude romantic love or passion, it just required that love and passion be harmonized with other ideals. Among the most important of these were filial piety and patriotic love. Depending on one’s family and the political climate, the grand trifecta of unwavering and harmonious devotion to one’s family, one’s country, and one’s beloved could be a rather tall and improbable order.
The May Fourth Movement, which took place in 1919, took the idea of qing and kicked it up a few notches. Grown from student demonstrations in Beijing, the driving force behind it was the idea that Confucian values—including arranged marriages—were responsible for the political weaknesses of the country. During the movement, which stretched into the 1940s, activists fervently campaigned for the privileging of the individual over society, and for feeling over formalism. And, as the spirit of the times would have it, one of their largest points of contention was love.
“It was declared (as well as demanded) that love was the sole principle underscoring all social relationships: between parents and children, between husband and wife, and among fellow Chinese,” writes Lee. This was so strictly enforced that “any social institution that was not hinged on the existence and continued articulation of love was believed to be impoverished and illegitimate,” she adds. Since arranged marriage happened to be one of the biggest obstacles to romantic love, it was dealt with accordingly. In May Fourth literature, parents came under attack and were portrayed as a source of tyranny, their self-interested motives for arranging the marriages of their children ruthlessly exposed.
Ideas of romanticism reached new heights during this period, which—despite being way before Flower Power, Janis Joplin, and the VW Microbus—is generally referred to by scholars as China’s “heyday of free love.” Incidentally, it was also a period in Chinese history when women writers flourished. They wrote stories of passion highlighting the bravery and resolve of women in love, and with their writings, they challenged the authoritarian family system and the subjugation of women. But perhaps most significantly, it was a time when qing morphed into aiqing, or the modern translation of “love.” Synonymous with freedom, equality, and autonomy, aiqing became a trope for the newfound primacy of the individual, and proof that the pursuit of romantic love could be a legitimate raison d’être.
This represented a monumental change for China, a country where identity had traditionally been grounded in kinship or ties to native place. The Confucian system of social relations had previously been so tightly centered on the needs of state and family structures, even friendships outside of these bounds were considered potentially subversive. Though the political ideologues of the time were determined to construct a marriage model that differed radically from the old Confucian model, they feared the heady feelings engendered by romantic love would detract from revolutionary zeal. And they weren’t misguided in thinking it might.
Even as far back as 600 BCE, Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu warned, “Love is of all passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart, and the senses.” These disruptive powers of romance were no secret to the ruling Communist Party. So once they were in power, after a brief but significant stint on the marquee of the Chinese national psyche, love was yet again taken off the billing.
Following the transition to “free-choice” marriages discussed earlier, and by the onset of the Cultural Revolution in the mid-’60s, kissing and hugging—once featured in Chinese films of the 1930s and in classical literature—became strictly forbidden, dismissed as capitalist, degenerate actions. To show their love, Chinese youth were encouraged to lend books to each other or exchange fountain pens or notebooks. When alone together, they were to discuss revolutionary ideals and steer clear of any personal feelings, lest they be accused of zuofeng wenti, or “problems of lifestyle”—the type of closeness with a member of the opposite sex that could lead to public disgrace.
Ironically, a term that did emerge amid all of the romantic repression was tan lian ai, “fall in love.” At the time, it referred more to courtship, or the period a couple should take to get to know each other before getting married. This was condoned because it was seen as a way of phasing out the Confucian system of arranged marriage by allowing couples to tan, or “discuss” their relationship before making the decision to wed. Though perhaps a bit more conducive to romance, this “fall in love” approach didn’t make finding a marriage partner any easier.
As noted by Elisabeth Croll in The Politics of Marriage in Contemporary China, in addition to the socioeconomic requirements that a woman’s family still encouraged her to keep in mind, she now had a man’s political affiliations to consider. Was he a member of the Communist Youth League? Did she and the young revolutionary share political ideals? These issues were of paramount significance, as reflected in the popular press, where some unaffiliated Chinese youth blamed the Communist Party and the Communist Youth League for their troubles in love. Without being accepted to these or
ganizations, they claimed to be “nonentities,” “unable even to get someone to love them.”
Marriage, it would seem, returned to being transactional. Romantic love went from being something that young people in the 1920s rallied and fought for—irrespective of class or kin—to being once again overtaken by a stratified, commodified system of family-approved matches that required all involved parties to be in good standing with the party.
Today, things work a bit differently.
It’s eight p.m. on a Thursday evening, and a bouquet of roses worth US $10,500 has just arrived at the front door of Maxim’s Beijing, an outpost of the famed French brasserie. The bouquet is easily the size of a small elephant. “We’re going to have to take the door off,” says Corentin Daquin to his staff. “There’s no other way,” he adds, motioning for someone with the appropriate tools necessary to unhinge the large wooden glass-paned double door. Moments later, four sinewy, flower-bearing Chinese men are cued to come in. Before them looms a steep, two-story staircase. “We can just call the fiancé down,” says Daquin with a bit more gesticulating. “Absolutely not,” interjects another of his colleagues. “It will ruin the proposal.”
According to Daquin, who formerly managed the restaurant, these sorts of floral gymnastics are a regular occurrence at Maxim’s, which has been operating in China since 1983. As one of the oldest foreign commercial establishments on the mainland, over the past three decades, it has weathered sudden changes in the Chinese political climate with great finesse. Its first location—just a mile southeast of Tiananmen Square, was wracked by violence on June 3, 1989, as Chinese soldiers shot their way through the capital city in an attempt to quell the legendary pro-democracy demonstrations taking place there. As Beijing’s best-known symbol of Western bourgeois elegance, the restaurant was required to close for five months following the Tiananmen massacre, but resumed business as usual that following October.