Customer Reviews

The People's Republic of Desire: A Novel (P.S.)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book fails in many areas: there is no real plot to speak of, and the characters are terribly under-developed. The story meanders, diary-style, without focus. The narrator and her three friends lack personality: you simply can't tell them apart, and nothing really changes within any of them through the course of the story. The one redeeming quality of this book was its in-depth, native view of modern Chinese culture in comparison to Western culture. The author's personal experience as a Chinese-American makes for a lot of interesting commentary in her novel. I would recommend this book to others not so much for the story, but for the chance to experience modern China.

In the grandly failed spirit of CANDY (Mian Mian), SHANGHAI BABY (Wei Hui), and BEIJING DOLL (Chun Sue) now comes Annie Wang's THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF DESIRE. Less fiercely rebellious and shock-seeking than her predecessors, Ms. Wang has apparently set out to pen the New China version of "Sex and the City." She succeeds, at least to the extent that she portrays four attractive, well-educated, financially successful and independent Chinese women as vain, shallow, superficial, parochial despite their travels, grotesquely self-centered, (mostly) sexually liberated, and manipulative, and a host of Chinese men as either sex-starved schemers, morons, greedy show-off businessmen, or any combination of those attributes.

As typical of New York City/urban women as Carrie Bradshaw and her friends were in "Sex and the City" were (and as atypical of most American women), so it is with Annie Wang's cast of characters. They may well represent a small group of arts and media types in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, but they would hardly seem to be models of Chinese women in general. After all, these are ostensibly the same women who, to celebrate one of their group's birthdays, decide to have an afternoon tea party in Shanghai followed by dinner in Shenzhen, some 400 - 500 miles distant.

Ms. Wang builds her tale, really more a series of loosely connected vignettes modeled on a newspaper column, around four women. The narrator is Niuniu (pronounced nyee-oh nyee-oh, faintly like "no no?"), recently rejected by her older boyfriend/lover Len and now a returnee, a fake foreign devil escaping her romantic rejection in America and searching China for her cultural roots. Niuniu is a writer for the World News, researching and writing what would loosely be called human interest stories about the emerging "new China." Her friends are Beibei (pronounced bay-bay, a variant of Britany Spears' pronunciation of "baby"), Lulu, and CC. Beibei is president of the aptly named Chichi Entertainment Company, representing a quarter of China's top singers and actors. Lulu is the executive editor of a women's fashion magazine, Women's Friends. CC, who can only be described as a Chinese princess (wealthy parents, educated at Oxford, plays the piano, violin, and chess, dances ballet and sings opera, speaks fluent French and some Spanish, etc., etc. etc. ad nauseum), is a business manager at an international public relations company whose job seems to consist largely of organizing parties and events.

From this rather unlikable cast of silver spoon swallowers, Ms. Wang offers a liberated woman's view of contemporary China. Of course, this view is largely filled with searches for lovers and prospective husbands, club-hopping and dining at the best and most expensive restaurants, buying designer apparel and shoes, and offering snarky comments on the tragic state of Western and Chinese males. Along the way, her four protagonists offer occasional cultural insights into the curiosities of modern China: that it's more shameful now to be poor than to be a whore, that youthfulness in China is worshipped to a ridiculous degree, that orderly lines are not part of the Chinese psyche, and that "when women turn bad, they get money, and when men get money, they turn bad." Chapters typically run just three or four pages each, mimicking a gossip column in their length and cursory presentation. Their titles tell all one really needs to know about this book: "Attention Whores," "Me, Me, Me!" "The Gossip Party," "Fake Nose, Fake Breasts," "Fake Car, Fake Man,""The Gold Diggers," Cat Fights," "Going Gaga for Designer Labels," and so on. You get the picture.

As the book draws to a close, Ms. Wang appears to have altered course toward some higher literary value by introducing a fifth woman, Mimi, as Niu Niu's foil and ostensible soul mate. Mimi is Western educated, having attended the same school (UC Berkeley) as Niu Niu before becoming a lawyer and social activist. Mimi appears to be everything Niu Niu is not - happily married, pregnant, helping others. Mimi and Niu Niu even work together to raise 250,000 yuan (about $30,000) for charity. However, their relationship is abruptly shattered by a wildly improbable set of circumstances that leave Niu Niu alone and contemplating surrender and return to the United States.

THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF DESIRE aspires toward a vaguely Chinese take on Thomas Wolfe's thesis that you can't go home again. However, what it achieves instead is an ugly portrait of "the good life" in China that puts to shame the most venal aspects of American culture and life. Given China's lack of a moral or ethical center following its abandonment of Confucianism under Mao, Ms. Wang's China comes across as greedy and grasping, exasperatingly selfish and obsessed with form and face over substance and depth. No one can be taken at their word, and no one can be trusted. Altruism is non-existent, with everyone looking out only for themselves or, at most, their immediate family. In such a world, all's fair and no behavior is out of bounds, no matter how blatantly dishonest or self-serving. It is hard to know what to make of Ms. Wang's portrayal of modern, educated, urban Chinese women, except to say that the picture is far less attractive than the writer's four heroines are purported to be. While this book is not without merits as a profile of today's urbanized China, that profile is jaded indeed.

Annie Wang's second fiction release follows the lives of four modern metropolitan professional women, dealing with issues ranging from adultery to high fashion to the corporate ladder and even the inevitable nip/tuck. Sound like yet another Sex and the City pink cover wannabe? While it does have a pink cover, Wang's novel has a little more to offer--our sassy females live in Beijing. They might live a life full of New York fashion, pastimes, and careers, but there is an underlying element of cultural change (which does not come without conflict). The slang phrases used and then defined at the end of each chapter get to the heart of the cultural conflict between old and new China.

Wang herself knows the cultural conflict--she is a migratory bird who actively moves back and forth between the East and West. The fictional narrator, Niuninu, is also one of these "fake foreign devils," a Western-educated woman has returned to homeland, to never blend in with her elders or her miniskirted peers. Ultimately, the tale of Niuninu and her three gal pals is about finding satisfaction in life. That is, the novel is about desire--desire for those items which can give a modern woman satisfaction.

An excellent reading group guide can be found on the Harper Collins web site. As chick lit, this book ranks high, but as literary fiction, it is a mediocre offering.

I picked up an uncorrected proof of this book at a bookseller convention and read the book over Christmas vacation. A GREAT Read! A fun read! It would be too easy to dismiss it as ChickLit, a la "Sex in the City" set in Beijing. But like all good fiction (ChickLit or otherwise), it explores the needs and desires of four friends without devolving into stereotypes. Very nuanced view of the changing Chinese society. Loved the extra "vocab" section at the end of most chapters in which the author explains Chinese slang. Loved the running commentary about the "lust for freedom" vs. crass consumerism. Loved the attraction/repulsion of the China and America "relationship". Loved the book!

Having lived in Asia for almost a decade and spent long stretches in China, both the cites and the countryside, I giggled, frowned and smiled my way through the escapades of Annie Wang's four heroines of Beijing's upper-middle class, Nuinui, Beibei, Coco and CC, as they attempt to find love, meaning and happiness in, as Wang ironically puts it, the Peoples Republic of Desire.

Annie Wang nails the girls, their class and their generation spot on as a group of confused, self-centred, hardcore, materialistic, sexually liberated yet also poignantly fragile and lonely New Chinese Women, free and rich at last in a country where sexism for thousands of years kept women downtrodden, where appearances meant everything and tyrannical despots ruled the provinces with an iron fist. Bound feet and rickshaws have been replaced by silky thongs and expensive cars with which to impress one's neighbours, Chairman Mao and communist frugality with Gucci and Louis Vuitton - but all at a pace that has even young twenty-something Nuinui, perhaps the brightest and most thoughtful of the group, gasping for breath.

It's a vibrant cocktail - and it's funny.

Nuinui's is a new China - but in such days of female emancipation, the men can no longer keep up with the women, and desperately attempt, in the classic way of the Chinese middleclass, to impress them with status and money, not realising that a heart would suffice. The irony is that the women themselves can't keep up with all the money and freedom either, and the tragic flaw of Annie Wang's quartet is exactly that they are equally blinded by and addicted to the very materialistic existence that has given them more freedom and opportunity than any Chinese generation prior to them. Life in the fast lane is fun, but it's hollow - even soul crunching, though none dare truly admit it, for it is their whole identity - and the light at the end of the tunnel is just another bar.

Having sipped cosmopolitans with many Nuinuis, Beibeis, Cocos and CCs in neon glittered Beijing and Shanghai, I tore through Annie Wang's book, marvelling at just how well she has managed to capture this schizophrenic generation in the guise of these four women, and especially the innocence that lies at the centre of their coming of age, despite all the erotic debauchery that Nuinui and her gang gets up to.

The front cover itself serves as an excellent image - bizarre, beautiful and desperate for attention, though attention craved not to chase away any sense of insecurity, but rather a hidden loneliness of the heart.

I kind of enjoyed the (admittedly idiotic) "Shanghai Baby," and Amazon recommended me this book as being in the same vein. They both concentrate on the materialistic youth culture of modern China...

This book is probably the better one. The serialized format makes for a bunch of quick vignettes, many of them are fun. The characters aren't explained in any great detail, but are generally amusing characters. I wouldn't like them in real life, but they're fun reads.

This book really could have used some judicious editing. The vignettes generally have a point being made, or a type of character being made fun of, and sometimes the author is ridiculously ham-fisted and obvious about it. Characters will say things that no human being would ever say, just to help the author make her point. The more ridiculous vignettes should have just been removed from the book.

The shorter length would have helped, because this is a breezy book of amusing vignettes that goes on for four hundred fifty pages. Frankly there's not all that much substance to this book, reading through page after page became a bit of a chore. The book as a whole would have been much better at about half the length.

Anyone who has read this author's previous work might be surprised by the drastic conversion of the author this time; she presents her new work, and porttrays her alter ego, as shallow and stupid as she could ever make it to be and I, in a way, find it funny to learn the author's unexpected trait. I could not help going "Where is the overserious tone she held?" I had the slightest idea that the annoying tone and the plop were to be a mere pose of hers.

Anyhow, people change, so as a country. This time, the author shows her newly acquired economic power off as believing it to be sophistication of the typical elite, who has spent her youth in US to get better education and returned her homeland where she finds different even to her eyes, just as in many ways the recent media depict as the 'economic powerhouse' with all the hypes. She recounts the reversed culture shock as she experiences to be home again as well as how many men she has splept with so far with great ease now that it raises less people's eye brows, for people cannot care less anyhting that is not lucrative.

Women represented here are all so naive despite of the power they have and you might wonder what the education they had pursued was for. However, this reads paradoxically true as in every society of the developing country. To see if women with education fulfill their potential or not is a good assessment of its maturity and a lot of countries still have very little room left for the 'over'educated women. China might be still one of those sadly.

This novel might offer a good description of how the people are becoming overly materialistic in current China as if to quench the long dry spell, which we typically find in every former communist society. I would not call this author's change rancid given she seems to believe this shallowness to be a good example of what people are after and at least her new trait of superficiality is a reflection of the transition that the increasing number of population is going through. Even though economic prosperity they franticly pursue is only a tentative answer to the subject matter, this makes us question why on earth the world has long wanted only China to remmain mystified, as if they at least needed one place they could cast all the prejudice and projections they entertained based upon their ignorance whereas China is just another country where people live and want be better off like anywhere else.

Lastly the author's writing suffers more this time and I am examining the reason of it. The last work Lily read immature but it passed anyway provided the content was a narrative set in a foreign land with a non-native English user's voice. It even served the purpose of the publication that was accentuating the author's foreigness as a faint, mysterious and helpless young female cry barely heard from somewhere far. But this time the strategy was night and day. If this book aspired to be another chick lit that happened to be set in a newly discovered exotic land, it might have been more crucial to develop its prose and the narrative technique so that it would guide readers in less boring and less choppy text.

The People's Republic of Desire is a collection of
columns from the South China Morning Post, telling
the story of the reporter's character Niuniu and her
cross-cultural friends, living the elite life in
the New China... What at first might seem to be a
disconnected set of viniettes gradually becomes
a facinating story achieving thematic closure by
the end... While some may find some of the characters
a little unbelievable, I can testify that I've met
some members of Niuniu's Jeremy Irons Fan Club!
Well written, entertaining, and worth reading...

Annie Wang grew up in Beijing, China but currently commutes back and forth between the California and Shanghai. She has published eight books in Chinese and The People's Republic of Desire (PRD) is her second English novel. Her first was titled Lili.

In the preface Wang says, -Two types of people exist: those who admire power and wealth, and those who are being admired for their power and wealth.- This line basically sums up the existence of the main and sub-characters of this novel.

PRD is narrated by Niuniu, a twenty something returnee (those who return to China from abroad) to Beijing. She was born in the United States but returned with her Chinese parents to China at age five. Her parents were divorced when she was 11 and are otherwise engaged but doting. She works as a reporter and has a Buddhist background despite having a father who is a devout Christian. Poor Niuniu was recently dumped by an ophthalmologist in the United States who has abandonment issues and while her life doesn't revolve around this event she has a tendency to force it to the top of many situations. The local Chinese call this devout fan of Jeremy Irons anything from a "cosmopolitan" woman to a "fake foreign-devil" but Niuniu is just trying to find a place where she can happily co-exist. She's torn between where she thinks she wants to be and where she is at the moment.

When not working or travelling she is sharing the not so top secret lives of her friends. Partly, I guess because she lives precariously through them. There's Lulu, the executive editor of a fashion magazine; Beibie, a 35 year old president of ChiChi Entertainment Company; and CC a fellow returnee / princess who's also a successful business manager. These charming women easily fill Niuniu's down time with gossip, drinks, and advice.

For most of the book I hadn't a clue of a plot or purpose to this novel but I found it captivating to look into a culture I've only seen through samurai's and geisha's (which, it turns out, are both traditional Japanese figures, not Chinese). What I learned was both shocking and sad. China "has moved forward too fast, beyond the average person's normal comprehension." And completely beyond mine. The Chinese of the present have been rotted by the commercialism of their Idol. Everything and anything revolves around one's education, money, contacts, clothing and vehicle of choice. The wrong choice in any of these can result in being a social outcast, every Chinese person's worst nightmare.

Once I was over the shock of the lapse of traditional culture, a story emerged about the bonds of friendship. (quote)Women can be compassionate, sympathetic, and giving, but at the same time, we can be catty, jealous and moody. At a certain point in our lives, we all crave friendship to some degree. When it comes to friends, there have never been too many.(end quote)

When it was all over I found myself wanting more of these women, wanting to see them come out on top despite their own undoing. I'm sure you will too.

As a Chinese-American female who's been to Shanghai and Beijing, I felt these voices were genuine, and found it great fun living vicariously through the characters. They may seem superficial to some of the reviewers here, but then so do many of the housewives and single women on this side of the hemisphere. Niu-Niu is indeed a Chinese version of Carrie Bradshaw in the sense that she carries a little bit of old world, new world, plus a soupçon of the global soul --- in other words, a bit of the individual qualities that we find in her other friends. I was sorry to see the tale end. I'm hoping there will be more adventures of Niu-Niu as our world evolves, and China becomes the center of the universe and the US joins Great Britain, France, and Spain as powerful on-lookers.