The People’s Republic of Desire

by Annie Wang

  Baobao was a rare rebel in her generation. She abandoned her comfortable life for the United States at a young age. Now, a dutiful wife and mother of three, and an engineer who works nine to five and lives in a San Antonio suburb, she is not edgy or antiestablishment. Suddenly she feels old.

  Walking out of the bookshop, she enters an art gallery nearby. In each painting, whether the subject is peonies or horses or monkeys or landscapes, all the painters signed their age along with their name. Yani, eighteen years old; Xixi, fifteen year old. The younger they are, the more expensive the paintings are. Since when has this old civilization become youth-obsessed? she wonders.

  "Hey, Baobao. Is that you?" A woman calls her.

  "Oh, Mimi!" Baobao greets Mimi, Beibei's lawyer friend, "What are you doing here?"

  "I'm searching for paintings to place in my new living room," says Mimi.

  "You bought another house?"

  "My husband and I are expecting a baby. We bought a second home so our parenets can visit us and the baby and stay there."

  "Can I go see the condo with you?" Baobao asks. "I'm thinking of buying property in Beijing as well."

  "Sure," Mimi agrees.

  In the Soho condominium, they and two other couples are taken on a tour of the luxurious "Manhattan-style" model homes by a young salesman.

  "How old are you?" the salesman asks one of the young, fashionable-looking couples.

  "Twenty-eight," the couple answer with pride.

  "So young! You are from the new new generation. I admire you for having the money to buy a Soho. Are you also from the new new generation?" The salesman asks the other couple, who also look to be in their twenties.

  Now Baobao understands how fast the generations change in China. The new generation used to mean the young revolution-aires, the generation that participated in the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. During this time the "ideological purity" of the party was reestablished and the revolutionary spirit was rekindled. After the Cultural Revolution ended, the new generation meant those who became college students and gained Western influence in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They were the ones who could look back at the Cultural Revolution and give it a fair evaluation with their knowledge and new ideas. Nowadays the 'new' new generation means the GenXers and GenYers who were born in the 1970s, who drank Coke at an early age, who don't have any painful memories of the Cultural Revolution, and who are more liberal in their lifestyle.

  "Although we were born in the 1970s, we aren't part of that new new generation, we are the 'post-new' new generation, those born after 1976. We started to learn English in grade one. The 'new' new generation didn't start learning English until middle school. There is quite a difference here."

  "So you're even younger and more successful!" says the salesman.

  "That's correct!" The woman grabs her husband's arm, looking at the others triumphantly.

  Baobao finds the conversation unbearable, so she speaks. "Talking about age and success, you are in no position to be competing with my friend's baby," she touches Mimi's belly. "He's already living in a big house and he's going to live here before he is even born! And Soho is only his second home."

  POPULAR PHRASES

  CHUZHANG: Department chief.

  YOUHUA ZUHE: Optimization.

  85 Mimi and Lee

  I first met Mimi when she joined the Jeremy Irons Club I started on the Internet. We became acquainted after she came to our events a few times. Like most of my other friends, Mimi is a successful young woman with a strong Western education. Unlike my other friends, she is much more family-oriented and stable, with a loving husband named Lee and a quiet home. She is also a lawyer who pays special attention to social issues and civil injustices – maybe the furthest thing from the world of entertainment and fashion that most of my other friends inhabit. These days, I get to know her very well through working on an article that Hugh has me write about returnees and their experiences in and impact on China. Hugh is very passionate about this for some reason, so I want to do the best job possible. I am always especially proud of myself when I can make Hugh happy with a job I have done. Mimi's husband, Lee, is a well-known IT personality in China, and everybody knows that he worships his wife and has abandoned the United States to follow her around. Many in the media want to interview Mimi, but she is a very private woman. Perhaps because of Jermey Irons, or the fact that we both graduated from Cal Berkeley, she agrees to an interview.

  She invites me to her home at the East Lake Villa's Dongzhimen, where I know the rent is $10,000 per month. The house is huge, full of wood carvings and bronzes she and her husband have collected from all over the world, and with a garden full of palms, bamboo, orchids, Japanese red maples, and roses. There is a conservatory, with a Persian carpet on the floor, and some soft-colored cushions. Mimi explains that this is Lee's meditation room, and he often sits in here. This house would be considered extremely expensive even by American standards, so you can imagine the status that it brings them in China.

  On the living room walls are photos of the couple in places all over the world, skiing, rafting, camping, climbing, water-skiing, diving, and horseback-riding. There are also some of Lee's still-life photos, photos of broken pottery and wildflowers, and portraits of Mimi. Mimi has an oval-shaped face, olive skin, spirited eyes, and full expressive lips. Wandering around barefoot, she brings me a cup of peppermint tea, and then sits down on a Qing dynasty style bed and begins to chat with me. Celtic music floats through the room.

  Standing out among the wooden and metallic art objects and expensive antique furniture is a colorful plastic baby's crib and several stuffed animals in all sorts of colors. Mimi explains that she and Lee are expecting a child, so they have been extra busy preparing the house for the new arrival.

  After Mimi graduated from Beijing University in 1994, with a degree in sociology, she went to the United States to study. There she completed her law degree at UC Berkeley in 1997; she went to work at a law firm in San Francisco and quickly became one of the most successful lawyers in the company. Mimi met Lee through a friend she had in the high-tech industry. Lee was a senior manager at a nearby high-tech firm in Silicon Valley that was hugely successful. In 1998, when they were married, his stock options went through the roof. They used the money they had earned on the Nasdaq to buy a house facing the sea on a hillside in Silicon Valley. They both drove late-model sports cars, and had a holiday home at Lake Tahoe. The young, hard-working Mimi comfortably realized her American dream, and also traveled all around Europe.

  Suddenly one day, Mimi was driving her car along the highway to work when she asked herself, Why did all those fairy stories she read when she was a child always end with "And they lived happily ever after"? Why didn't anyone ever write exactly what "happily ever after" meant? She thought and thought, and unconsciously drove to a nearby national park. That day, she didn't go to work but sat alone in the forest for a day, until she thought of the answer.

  The next day, she resigned.

  The third day, she said to Lee, "I want to go and work in the third world."

  Unlike many of the other Chinese returnees, Mimi did not come home looking for new business opportunities, but instead to help better the lives of her countrymen. This was something about her that I admired immensely.

  "What does China mean to you?" I ask Mimi, eager to learn why she came back to China.

  "That is really very complicated. I don't know where to begin."

  "Then try speaking stream-of-consciousness style," I suggest.

  Mimi closes her eyes, like she is being hypnotized, and begins to speak her feelings.

  "Throbbing with energy, Great Leap Forward, warmth, tears, blood, quintessence, intense, natural, transforming like a demon, unknown, crossroads, anxiety, friendship…"

  "I like your description, 'transforming like a demon.' It's exactly right."

  "It's true. It feels like, having been overseas for nine years and coming back to China, one can s
ee more clearly than those who have always stayed in China. You have a comparison, a contrast, with the West, and with your own impressions of China."

  "Culture shock coming back to China!"

  "Right."

  "Do you like this feeling of looking in from the outside?"

  "I really like it. There is an ancient Chinese saying; 'I can't tell the true shape of Lu Mountain, because I myself am in the mountain.' The truth is incomprehensible to one too deeply involved to be objective. So you often have to leave to be able to observe. You should do the same for the United States."

  "Then what does the United States mean to you?"

  "It is the crystallization of order, the rule of law, rules, credibility, reason, and justice. It is a kind of ideal, created by humankind. This piece of land gives people hope, gives people space, lets people discover their own potential. To me, the most fascinating thing about it is that it gives people a path of struggle. This path of struggle is far more stimulating and enriching than the path of enjoyment."

  "You left China in the 1990s. So did I. What do you think the differences are between this generation and the generation who left China in the 1980s?" I ask, and then go on to tell Mimi about my experience with Professor Wang Xiaoyuan, and then add, "He left China in the 1980s."

  "In the United States I met many people who had left China in the 1980s, and they were all like Wang Xiaoyuan, not assimilating into the country, especially the culture, and at the same time defending themselves by saying American culture was shallow. They even still sang old Communist songs like, 'The Proletariat Is Powerful.' However, our generation is different. We read books like The Catcher in the Rye and The Old Man and the Sea growing up. When we were in China, we had tasted Coke and hamburgers, and were already familiar with English songs. So after we left China, there was not such a great contrast, and we didn't have a big problem communicating with Americans. Because of this we didn't feel particularly out of place. When I was studying at UC, our chancellor was Chinese. He said, when you are with Americans, you should be an American. When you are with Chinese, you should be a Chinese. I like that. Furthermore, wherever you are, you should treat things and people with a common heart."

  "True. So many people have got it the wrong way around. It reminds me of those old movie stars from the 1980s who married foreigners and went to live overseas, only to find they were lowly housewives over there. So they always felt they had to return to China to show off their superiority as overseas Chinese." I agree with her. "You just mentioned that America is an ideal. In the beginning did you leave your native land and go overseas to pursue this ideal?"

  "Yes."

  "Then what was it that made you abandon everything in America and return to live in China?"

  "I like tension; it makes me feel like I'm alive. In the beginning I had the courage to leave home alone with only one thousand dollars and go to a strange country. Now why shouldn't I have the courage to abandon my car, my house, and other material objects and return to China? China 's changes, energy, and dynamism, I think, are just like the United States in the 1960s. I have to join this wave."

  "Do you feel nostalgic for the 1960s as well?"

  "Do you?"

  I nod vigorously.

  Mimi laughs. "It seems like we are both people who thrive on chaos. Birds of a feather flock together."

  "Precisely because we thrive on chaos, we want to be in the United States one moment and China the next. We leap back and forth," I say.

  It is not like a regular interview, but I have found a soul-mate. It seems that there is so much we share in common.

  It takes only a few hours of talking with Mimi for me to realize more about what I want out of my life and my future as compared to all the time I have spent with my other girlfriends. Spending time with her makes the countless hours we have spent trying to decide where to go out on the weekend or talking about men seem meaningless. Mimi has the power to calm you down and make you feel focused. I would like to lead such a life: a caring husband, a stable family, a child, a rewarding job that actually helps make people's lives easier. I see in Mimi what my own life could be like someday if I am lucky.

  86 The Spicy Girl

  The Korean movie My Barbaric Girlfriend is a hit not only on the mainland but in Hong Kong and Taiwan as well. Young Chinese women identify with the hot-tempered, sometimes rude, yet beautiful female lead in the movie. It seems that the Confucian patriarchal Chinese society has finally come to embrace strong women. Especially among the one-child generation on the mainland, one would have difficulty finding submissive, stereotypical Asian girls nowadays.

  Describing herself as the "spicy girl" from Hunan Province, Dolly considers herself a representative of the new generation. Her idol is the barbaric girlfriend who slammed her boyfriend in the face in the movie. She has watched the movie at least five times. Dolly is short-tempered and doesn't want to change in any way for any of her men. She doesn't cook. She prefers that the men cook. She likes to wear miniskirts and doesn't mind talking about orgasms in public with her friends. She even dates her English teacher, Terry, who comes from Texas.

  In three months, she convinces shy, meek Terry to quit his job in China, marry her, and take her back to Texas.

  Everyone thinks that the free-wheeling American lifestyle will suit Dolly. But one month after she leaves, she calls her friends from a detention center in Austin, Texas.

  "I might be thrown in prison. I don't know anybody here to help me," she tells her friends in China.

  "What about your husband, Terry? He can help you!" Her friends in China are all surprised that she will ask for help in China when she has an American husband on her side.

  "He's the one who is suing me!" The usually tough Dolly now sounds more scared and shocked than anything else.

  Hearing her situation, her friends come to me to ask for help. After all, I have been in the States and, at a minimum, can offer some advice. I call Dolly right away.

  Over the phone line, Dolly pours out her story, "I tried to send a check of five thousand dollars to my folks in China, but my husband said that he didn't have a job at the moment, and didn't think it was a good idea for me to send so much money. I said, 'I'm your wife, not your appendage. I can make my own decision.'

  "He argued that I didn't have a job either and the money was all his. I got angry and said to him, 'We're husband and wife now. There should not be your money or my money.'

  "He argued back and I got enraged, so I threw the coffee mug I had in my hand at him. His nose was broken. Can you believe what he did next? He called the police! I didn't expect the police to take the matter so seriously. They arrested me! I was in the detention center for four days. America is a free country – why would the police interfere with my domestic dispute? Also, how could my husband be so cruel to me and call the police?" Dolly's words spill out through the phone.

  "You hurt him. You threatened his life," I explain.

  Dolly retorts, "But it is common to have verbal, and sometimes physical, fights between husbands and wives in China. My parents often beat each other when I was growing up. I know other kids at school whose parents fought too. How can Terry love me but leave me in the detention center and now threaten to sue me?"

  "If you love him, why did you hurt him?" I don't have sympathy for Dolly after hearing the story.

  Dolly argues, "But in Chinese, we have the saying, Dashiqin, mashiai. Beating is a way of showing love."

  "Would you like it if your husband showed his love by beating you every day? You need to change your temperament. Apologize to your husband and make him drop the case."

  "He has always liked my wild and spicy side. Men love barbaric girlfriends. If I change, I won't be attractive anymore."

  "Do you think you are attractive in a prisoner's uniform?" I ask. I hang up the phone, knowing Dolly's marriage has gone bad, like a pot of soup that has been overspiced.

  POPULAR PHRASES

  DASHIQIN, MASHIAI: "Beating is a
way of showing love."

  87 Doing Business with China

  China has recently been accepted as a member of the World Trade Organization. International companies are keeping their fingers crossed that China will loosen up on ideology and open their media and publishing markets to Western companies. This willingness works both ways. Many Chinese writers and journalists hope to work for a more free-minded globally focused magazine or a publishing house someday.

  I'm one of them. Although I like my job at World News, I'd like to write for Chinese readers. It's more rewarding if my friends can see my byline on a regular basis than having my articles published in countries where nobody recognizes my name. Even Sean once said to me, "Niuniu, you're such a good reporter. Sometimes I think you could contribute more if you were the editor-in-chief of a magazine in China and could write your own column there. I see this happening someday. Also, China lacks the talent that you have, with your education, experience, connections, and independent mind."

  I'm not sure why my own boss would say something like this to me. But Sean is sincere. Some part of me is willing to jump into local international magazines and publishing houses. Knowing this, CC introduces Lulu and me to Robert Payne, editor-in-chief of a New York – based women's magazine, who is in town on a business trip.

  Lulu and I meet Mr. Payne in the Beijing Hotel's lobby. Both of us are excited to hear Mr. Payne's newest information and the details of his China trip.

  But Mr. Payne doesn't look very eager at all. "This trip is disappointing," he begins with a sigh. "I've talked to some potential Chinese partners. I thought they'd be thrilled to meet a foreign investor with a strong background and interest. But they were not. At one Chinese magazine, their boss didn't show up. Only her assistant came to show me around. I guess my company should have done some prep work to promote our brand awareness before I came to Beijing."