Annie Wang - The People’s Republic of Desire

I have noticed that Colorful Clouds never wears her wedding ring in China.

"You'd better be careful." I warn her about the existence of xiao yazi, male prostitutes, before she takes off.

On the way home, I receive a phone call from Colorful Clouds, proudly saying that the man is not a little duck, but a college student who is intrigued by her elegance. She is going to take him out for dinner.

Half an hour later, I join my usual friends Lulu and Beibei at a teahouse. My phone rings again.

"Guess what? I can't believe Beijing people are still as rude as they were when I left here many years ago." It is Colorful Clouds on the line.

"What happened?"

"The waiter came and asked, 'Are you and your son ready to order?' How dare he?" She' s angry. "I do not look that old. I use Estée Lauder every day."

I tease Colorful Clouds. "Perhaps the waiter is jealous of your friend?"

"Perhaps!" says Colorful Clouds cheerfully.

After I hang up, my friends Beibei and Lulu ask me, "Who was that?"

"Colorful Clouds," I admit.

"The woman who thinks she's a double for Gong Li, but is really only double her size?" asks Beibei.

"The peasant woman who thinks she can become a member of the aristocracy by marrying her American grandson?" asks Lulu.

They both dislike Colorful Clouds.

I don't know what to say. I don't see Colorful Clouds as a friend, but she always contacts me. I don't want to offend her, a run-around full-time gossiper, because of possible reprisals.

Around midnight, I'm awakened by Colorful Clouds' phone call.

"Niuniu, help me! I've been robbed!"

"Where are you?" I can't help but feel a little sorry for her.

"I'm in a hotel room. I took the young man here after dinner. We were going to do it, so I said I'd take a shower first. But when I walked out of the shower, he was gone! My purse and money were all gone! Please come and get me!"

I sigh, thinking to myself, "This is what I get for always saying yes to people like Colorful Clouds."

"Bring some clothes on your way. He even stole my clothes!" says Colorful Clouds.

"He probably thinks they'd fit his mother well!" I say to myself as I head out the door, cursing Colorful Clouds' massive reluctance to harness her pumped-up ego and act her age.

A typical Saturday late morning. I'm hanging out at Lulu's apartment. We have just finished working out to Cindy Crawford's aerobics video and had taken a sauna in the new clubhouse. Lulu is teaching me how to baotang, make soup, Cantonese-style. Soup is the gem of Cantonese cuisine. Cantonese people believe that soup functions as a tonic and can do amazing things for the human body.

"My father is from Canton," says Lulu. "He told me that to be a good wife in Canton, a woman has to learn to baotang. Cantonese put everything into their soup. They believe snake soup can reduce one's fever and turtle soup acts as an aphrodisiac for men."

Baotang takes time, often over three hours. The woman who makes it has to be patient. Lulu is very patient as she makes soup. Her dream is to be a good wife for a man she loves, but such a simple dream is hard to fulfill. She keeps bumping into married men and liars.

As we are making soup, Beibei arrives, bringing a big stack of music videos and live-concert DVDs. "Girls, I need you to cehua how to position our company's newest band, the Young Revolutionaries."

Cehua is one of those fashionable new Chinese words that can be used as a noun or a verb. When used as a verb, it means to plan, to promote, to publicize, to create a certain image. When used as a noun, it means people who work in such fields. A cehua can be an advertising campaign director, a movie producer, a publicist, or a marketing director. Cehua and entertainers' agents are two of the new white-collar jobs created by the market economy.

Beibei uses Lulu and me as her clients' cehua from time to time.

"Let's follow our usual custom. Makeover first, and then cehua," Lulu says as she goes to the bathroom to get the materials.

All three of us make a face pack. I choose a seaweed pack. Beibei selects black mud. Lulu uses milk and almond. Our faces are each a different color, like three witches sitting together. We eat fresh peaches and lounge on the sofa watching music videos, both classic and contemporary groups.

The Beatles' classic Yellow Submarine, with "I Want to Hold Your Hand."

Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.

Nirvana's Nevermind.

Westlife's Flying Without Wings.

Backstreet Boys' Tell Me the Meaning of Being Lonely.

'N Sync's Bye Bye Bye.

Watching Sting's solitary pride in Desert Rose, I again think of Len. In the music video, he is sitting alone regally in the backseat of a Jaguar S – type, chauffeured over the desert sands at full speed, the wind riffling through his hair. I always wondered where he was going and who he was going to meet. The mystery and sexiness that Sting gave off in that video gave me the same feeling I always got when I was with Len. Once we were riding along the highway in Len's Jaguar, when he suddenly stopped the car by the road and started to kiss me. At that moment I felt like the woman who was missing from the video, the one who should have been there from the beginning. "This is how that video was supposed to go," I thought to myself.

For a long time, whenever I saw a Jaguar, I thought of Len – this Len, who sometimes did crazy spontaneous things. After he had made love to me so many times, suddenly one day he said, "Don't fall in love with me. If you love me, I will hate you. I can never forgive women who love me." This announcement came out of nowhere and took me completely by surprise. What was so bad about being loved, and why was Len so afraid of it in the first place? I wondered what had happened in Len's past to make him so unwilling to let someone love him.

Now I am with my girlfriends. I'm happy, I'm confident, and I'm having fun. I tell myself, you don't need his twisted passion and pain anymore.

After watching Eminem's My Name Is, Beibei says, "I think we've found our inspiration. With a bit of brainstorming, I've come up with an idea for the Young Revolutionaries."

"How do you plan to position them?" I ask.

"Rebel meets Slacker meets 'To Revolt Is Good,' " Beibei smugly replies.

"Not bad. Revolt you definitely want. These days, everyone is cynical; you can't not be a rebel," Lulu agrees.

"I think they should have a little of the Backstreet Boys' youthful vigor, don't go too overboard with the bad boys style. After all, this generation still needs icons," I say.

"Why does this generation need icons? I don't agree. These days, nobody gives a damn about anything or anybody. We need iconoclasts, not icons," Lulu retorts, appearing to be very deep.

"True. Nobody believes in anything anymore. Everyone can see through those shallow, fake posers!" Beibei nods.

"Don't you think that, precisely because there's nothing to believe in, people need idols even more?" I retort.

"What do you mean?" Beibei asks.

I consider my own observations on the current status of religion in China, "Everyone rebels back and forth until they've got no faith. When they've got no faith, they've got no spirit. Without spirit, everybody feels lonely and confused. When people are lonely and confused, they desperately look for something to believe in. Sometimes they turn to cults, money, the opposite sex, or a band. In a faithless time, it's easier for a band to have a cult following and become an icon."