The People’s Republic of Desire

by Annie Wang

Bitter Cauliflower: "Ricky Martin."

  Shortie: "James Bond."

  China Ball: "Britney Spears."

  Little Thing: "Catherine Zeta-Jones."

  Lovely: "Richard Gere."

  Yellow Chrysanthemum: "Audrey Hepburn."

  Wolf-in-Sheep's-Clothing: "Sharon Stone."

  Fleet-Foot: "Al Gore."

  "What? You think even a geek like Gore is good-looking?" American student Sophie cries.

  Fleet-Foot: "He looks scholarly, and he's better looking than

  Bush."

  "But Bush is affable, don't you think?" Sophie rebuts. "

  Chinese people don't think Gong Li is sexy or beautiful? Is that because they're jealous?" Dennis asks.

  Go-Go: "She looks too local!"

  The Chinese director, who has not yet expressed an opinion, finally speaks: "Chinese people think that 'Western style' is attractive, and that 'local style' is unattractive. Why? 'Local style' is like ourselves. Why is being like ourselves considered unattractive? It shows that Chinese people do not have any self-confidence."

  Last Samurai: "I agree. Ancient Chinese people had self-confidence, and their own sense of aesthetics. In the Tang dynasty, we liked full-figured women with short eyebrows. It was totally our own sense of beauty. In modern times, our aesthetics are all Western: long legs, tall, round eyes, double eyelids, high nose, white skin. Girls are having cosmetic surgery on their eyes, dying their hair blond – it's not natural at all. Why do they think their narrow eyes and short stature are ugly? We should create our own aesthetics."

  The Chinese director nods. "This is exactly what I'm talking about. Our ancestors actually had a strong sense of aesthetics. But unlike in the past, modern Chinese lack confidence."

  New Shoes: "I'm proud that China 's ugly women can become beautiful women on the world stage! I applaud China 's dogs becoming Oriental sex goddesses overseas! I am happy that those undesirable Chinese women who can't find a boyfriend in China can be in high demand in the West."

  The hour-and-a-half online forum ends. ChineseSister.com thanks the special guests and then hands out mugs, bags, and T-shirts.

  Colorful Clouds is extremely pleased, and tells me, "I am a sex expert. The kids all worship me. Some had me sign their T-shirts as a souvenir. I really need people to worship me – it's such a wonderful feeling. Oh yeah, that Ken, he's a real lady-killer! If I had the time, I'd take him for a spin."

  15 Colorful Clouds: "I Married My Husband's Grandson!"

  Colorful Clouds shows up unexpectedly as Lulu, Beibei, CC, and I are having a manicure in a beauty salon called the Rich Wife.

  She greets Lulu, who she knows is a big-time editor at Women ' s Friends, a magazine with one million circulation. Today, Lulu wears low-rise jeans with a Bebe T-shirt. She is also sporting newly highlighted hair and red stilettos. Her face is both fair and full of color and energy.

  "Niuniu says you can make any woman famous in China. You have to write about me in your magazine. I'm a miracle in the West," Colorful Clouds says vainly.

  "Our fashion magazine mainly features models," Lulu says, hoping Colorful Clouds will take the hint.

  "My husband looks like a model. Maybe you can publish his picture instead of mine. The headline can be 'How to Win the Heart of Prince Charming.' " Colorful Clouds turns to Beibei. "You should find investors to make a movie out of my story. My only request is that I will play myself and be provided with a caravan with a bathroom, the same as Gong Li gets. "

  "Don't you know that nowadays in order to obtain fame, you have to make morality irrelevant?" Beibei asks Colorful Clouds.

  "It has never been a problem for me," Colorful Clouds says with a wave of her hand.

  "Many people use cheap ways to make up sensational stories in order to shock the audience or the readers. Can you do that?" Beibei asks again.

  "My specialty." Colorful Clouds answers eagerly.

  "But still, too many women come to me and tell their bad-girls stories in order to get famous. Is yours any different?" Beibei is still not impressed.

  "I married my former husband's grandson. Who can compete with me?" Colorful Clouds proudly announces, welcoming all challengers.

  "No one, I guess," Lulu and Beibei answer together.

  Colorful Clouds was born in a small village in Guangxi province. She claims to be of Zhuang nationality, although some say that she is pure-blooded southern Chinese, and the only reason she calls herself a Zhuang is because nowadays being a minority is cooler than being a Han.

  In the early 1980s, she was attending classes at the Guangxi Art Institute. Once, a director from the Guangxi Film Production Company came to see his daughter, her roommate. Colorful Clouds talked the director into getting her a small part in an avant-garde film. Then, she seduced the long-haired director, her roommate's father. They ran off to Beijing.

  In Beijing, she met a local photographer and told him that she was a movie star in Thailand who had come to China to study Chinese. The man believed it and fell for her. She dumped the old director, whose Guangxi accent was considered low-class in the big city. Through her new boyfriend's connections, she started to mix with the foreign diplomatic crowd. After seeing the foreigners' lifestyle, Colorful Clouds decided she wanted to go overseas. Of course, her first choice was the United States.

  But how? No diplomat wanted to marry her. To them she was nothing more than an opportunistic local, and beneath their notice.

  Colorful Clouds met a seventy-year-old American man named David on the street. He happened to specialize in false marriages to foreign women. He had earned $50,000 by marrying two Guangdong women. He told Colorful Clouds she had two choices. She could have a false marriage: he wouldn't touch her, but she had to pay him $30,000 cash within three years. Or she could have a real marriage, and not refuse any of his sexual demands.

  To a Chinese person, 30,000 RMB, let alone $30,000, was an astronomical figure. In those days people worshipped "multi-thousand-aires," and didn't even know that millionaires existed. Colorful Clouds agreed to a real marriage with David, and thus joined the throng of people leaving China in the 1980s.

  Later, Colorful Clouds tells many people about the awful experience of sharing a bed with a man who is older than your grandfather in order to obtain an American green card.

  "The old man made all kinds of demands. He used waxes, Vaseline, and other toys I don't feel like getting into details about. He was a pervert!" Apparently Colorful Clouds, despite all her bragging, still had a little bit of Chinese modesty buried somewhere deep inside her. Every night she spent in bed with David was torture, but there was nothing she could do. She willingly tended to every one of his demands with a smile on her face, although on the inside she was filled with embarrassment, disgust, and shame.

  But she also managed to win the sympathy of David's grandson, Brian.

  David's family came from conservative Alabama. His children thought that David was a disgrace, earning money from fake marriages in China, each wife younger than the last, this latest even younger than his own grandson. They angrily cut off all contact with him.

  It was only Brian, who was studying physics at Yale in New England and had seen something of the world, who sympathized with his grandfather. Brian came to visit him and his step-grandmother Colorful Clouds. Young, handsome, active, and erudite, Brian excited Colorful Clouds. After sleeping with that shriveled old man for years, the sight of such a young man struck her dumb. While Brian was showering, Colorful Clouds heard the sound of the water and went to the bathroom to look at him. The outline of Brian's young body, especially his protruding butt, made Colorful Clouds sprout lust. She gazed at Brian's fresh, blooming silhouette and thought how wonderful it would be to lie down with him every night.

  While Colorful Clouds was in the midst of her daydream, Brian turned and saw her.

  Colorful Clouds knew that although she was not considered a pretty woman in China, her high forehead, slightly protruding lips, and high cheekbones were quite attra
ctive in the States. She actually believed that Brian thought she was very sexy. Seeing his step-grandmother, this Chinese woman, spying on him, Brian instinctively covered himself with a towel and blurted out, "You're sick!"

  Colorful Clouds understood. He had not said, "You're so sexy."

  Colorful Clouds ran to her room, crying like a crazy woman.

  And truly, she was crazy – crazy to go home again. At such a young age, she had married an old American, come to America, where she was unable to study, had no friends, and every day faced that rough, shriveled, disgusting, greedy old body.

  Was this the American Dream?

  In the past two years, she didn't dare see Chinese people. Some of her classmates back home had already become hot artists; others were diplomats wives, but she? Apart from looking after an old man, she was only holding simple English conversations with a bunch of Mexican and South American immigrants at the local adult school.

  Colorful Clouds thought and thought, and pretended to commit suicide by tying her bathrobe sash into a noose.

  As she had expected, the kindhearted Brian burst in and held her back. "Don't. Don't do something stupid like that."

  "How can I disgrace myself like this? How can I humiliate myself all for the sake of coming to America?" Colorful Clouds started to perform: "I want to die. I always dreamed of being a Hollywood film star and traveling the world. But I'm a child of the third world. Even in the third world, I was in the poor position of having no relatives overseas, so I had no other choice but to sell myself. I thought that by marrying old David I could get closer to my dreams. But in America, I'm just an old man's nursemaid and sex toy.

  "I wanted one day to star in a movie about my life. This movie would introduce the world to my people, to our folk songs, our customs, and the village I grew up in, that old banyan tree and the big bell in our village, the girls with their silver bracelets. But now I have no self-confidence at all! My life is totally meaningless. Before, when I was in Beijing, I'd often discuss existentialism with artists, but now I truly understand the futility of life."

  Colorful Clouds looked into Brian's eyes, and touched his youthful face. "I don't want to do anything wrong to your grandfather. But I am a young woman! My mistake was that I loved America too much. Ever since I was young, America was always a dream, an ideal. I am a slave to America."

  Brian dried Colorful Clouds' tears. "I'm sorry. It's my fault. I shouldn't judge you. Don't say any more. It's my fault."

  "No, Brian, please don't stop me. I've been in the United States for two years, but never before have I had the chance to talk about my feelings. Everything is all bottled up inside. I need to keep talking."

  "All right, I'm listening to you."

  "I was eighteen years old before I went to the city. At the time I had been admitted to our province's university. Our family was very poor and couldn't afford anything. When I left, my mother gave me a basket of eggs and asked me to take them to the city. The eggs were laid by our family's hen. When that hen was small, I used to carry it around like you'd carry around a small child. I caught the long-distance bus to Nanning, and then a local bus to the university. It was the first time I had seen such big roads, with so many cars – I was petrified. When I crossed the road, I was careless and dropped the basket of eggs on the ground. They all broke. Everything my family had!

  "It was at university, on my city classmates' stereo, that I first heard the Beatles. Never before had I heard such beautiful music. I could listen to 'Yesterday' and 'Let It Be' a hundred times without getting sick of them. Later I also saw them on the television, with their guitars, long hair, and big boots – they were so handsome. The Beatles were the soundtrack to my university life."

  "I like the Beatles too."

  "At university, I was most jealous of Yoko Ono. John Lennon loved her so much, he even changed his middle name to Ono. Their documentary film, Imagine, was really great. I dreamed that, just like Yoko Ono, I could be loved by a Western man. After graduation, I drifted to Beijing. I wanted to meet all sorts of Western men. But they only wanted to sleep with me; none of them wanted to marry me. Only your grandfather, David. I should be grateful to him."

  Colorful Clouds gazed at Brian's clear eyes and curling eyelashes. "I'm sorry, Brian. I am a filthy woman. I shouldn't like you. But I really do like you. I like your knowledge, your wisdom, your energy, your youth. I shouldn't. I should die." Colorful Clouds already knew that her little act had worked.

  "Don't speak like that. Don't."

  Colorful Clouds kissed Brian.

  As she had expected, Brian welcomed Colorful Clouds' warmth. Exotic background, suffering, poverty, and her hunger for freedom and Western culture – plus her thick lips and flaming gaze, a package that definitely sells!

  Colorful Clouds and Brian's unlikely affair led to Colorful Clouds becoming pregnant. This was exactly as she had planned. Because of this pregnancy, she divorced David and became Brian's wife. She didn't even have to change her married name. Colorful Clouds is extremely fond of her foreign surname. She tells me smugly, "When people see my name, they can't tell whether I'm Asian or white!"

  16 It's Not a Fairy Tale

  After marrying a handsome husband, Colorful Clouds finally felt proud, and resumed contact with her old acquaintances.

  Brian is a physicist. He did not make Colorful Clouds work, and wanted only that she realize her dreams of leading a happy life and becoming a great performer.

  Colorful Clouds became a middle-class housewife and mother of three. She vowed solemnly to break into Hollywood. She believed that her skin color and appearance, while not sought after in China, would be liked by these Westerners.

  She and Brian moved the family to southern California to help her make it in Hollywood. But after countless auditions, she never won a part. Even worse, her appearance, which she thought was so special, was common in Southeast Asia, especially Thailand. She was even more common in the States than she was in China. At least in China people used to admire her Zhuang ethnic features.

  What made Colorful Clouds especially unhappy was that the Chinese theater groups who visited the States had not hired her. After so many years, she appeared in only one feature movie – as a waitress in a Chinese restaurant, with a total of two lines.

  As time passed, Brian became disappointed that Colorful Clouds had not found work and moved back to the Midwest. He began to feel that perhaps his mysterious wife was really just mediocre after all. Colorful Clouds watched Brian rush about making a living, getting older every day. He had much less hair than before, but much more of a belly. The handsome air he had before they were married was gone. He had become a middle-aged man. The differences between the m grew greater, and they even began sleeping in separate beds. But her penchant for young men remained unchanged.

  To kill time, Colorful Clouds began to hang out in the coffee shops at the University of Missouri, and there she met a lot of young men. Many of them became her lovers. Colorful Clouds had several lovers, but she still felt empty and did not know what to do with her time.

  Colorful Clouds often telephoned me since I was a student there back then. She needed an audience to listen to her story – to listen to her show off, and vent, and curse everyone for her situation. She sometimes went overboard, blaming everyone and everything but herself: this girlfriend stabbed her in the back, that lover slept with her cousin, and on and on. I was like a garbage dump, taking all of Colorful Clouds' rubbish.

  Colorful Clouds was a gifted liar. Her real life bore no resemblance whatsoever to the life she recounted. Sometimes she said Brian had something going with another Chinese woman. This woman, who had abandoned her husband and children in China to establish herself in the United States, was a minor actress, nowhere near as good as Colorful Clouds. Colorful Clouds plotted how to catch the adulterers in the act. Sometimes she said that her husband was the most faithful man on earth, who only had eyes for her. I never pointed out the inconsistencies in Colorful Clouds' stori
es. I understood that she relied on intuition. If she wanted something, she would get it, whether it was in the real world or in the world of her imagination.

  17 Attention Whores

  When I returned to China from the United States, the huge changes that the country has gone through were immediately clear. Most people used to take pride in their humbleness and conformity. Not only was attracting attention something that didn't interest them, it was something that people were genuinely afraid of. There is an old Chinese saying: "The bird that flies ahead of the flock is the first to be shot down." Now, with the opening up of the country and the new market economy, it seems as though everyone I meet is a braggart and an attention-seeker. Being different from the crowd is actually encouraged. These ambitious birds have no fear of being shot down.

  Fifteen years ago, if you were a performer, you were guaranteed to become a household name by showing your face at the annual Spring Festival gala produced by CCTV. Nowadays you have to be not only creative but also shameless to become famous because everybody realizes that attention can bring money.

  In cultural circles, there are four popular ways of seeking fame.

  First, create controversy. For example, claim you are gay or bisexual. Publicize your love triangle stories, your affairs with married people, or even make them up. Pay a foreign stud to write a book about your wild sex life entitled My Sexy Chinese Doll. The whole point is to invite criticism and create shock. If people start to bad-mouth you, ding! Your mission is accomplished: you are known and fame sells.

  Second, fake your credentials and background. For example, if your mother is a shop clerk, you would tell people that she owns several chain stores. A Danish tourist says hi to you in Chinese on a bus? You tell the media that you dated the cousin of the Danish prince. You took some open university courses at Yale? Claim you got an M.B.A. degree there.

  Third, beg the government to ban you. Find connections in the Ministry of Propaganda and talk them into including your movies or your books in their blacklist. It's free advertising and attracts the attention of a worldwide audience.