Annie Wang - The People’s Republic of Desire

When I walk along Beijing Street, I run into one Starbucks after another. It seems there are more Starbucks in Beijing than in Berkeley. There is even one in the Forbidden Palace! I see fashionable women in miniskirts talking into mobile phones as they ride their bicycles. Miniskirts and bicycles: socialism with Chinese characteristics. And there are more and more people who look overweight, even by American standards. Young people wear jeans and cotton T-shirts. They consider this the new fashion, although their parents still think cotton is too cheap a fabric for clothes. Boys are growing their hair long and girls are cutting their hair short. Shop signs are in English, with laughable mistakes throughout. Everyone uses Windows 2000 on their computers. Even my retired grandfather knows how to search for fortune-tellers on Yahoo. China 's changes have taken me by surprise.

Luckily I have my childhood friends Lulu and Beibei to reacclimate me to the Chinese way. Lulu and Beibei were my old schoolmates from Beijing 's Jingshan School. Beibei is seven years older than me, and Lulu is four years older. Jingshan included grades one to twelve all on the same school grounds. The three of us met fighting with the boys over the Ping-Pong table.

At that time Beibei was in senior high, Lulu was in junior high, and I was in primary school. I was mature for my age and liked to mix with friends older than me. The three of us got up to all sorts of mischief together, and we've been inseparable ever since.

At the time, China didn't have private schools, but Jingshan was very exclusive. Most of my classmates came from distinguished families. I was born in the United States and returned to China at age five. My family was categorized as "patriotic overseas Chinese," so I was fine. Beibei's grandfather was a high-ranking Old Revolutionary who the government assigned a big courtyard house in the best part of the town, a chauffeur, a nanny, and two assistants. She was fine. Lulu came from an ordinary family in southern China, but she was not only the cutest girl in school but also a child star who knew how to sing well.

Twelve years ago, we three girls made Beibei's grandfather's chauffeur drive us to every five-star hotel in Beijing in the Mercedes 600. At that time, Chinese people were not allowed into five-star hotels, and the doormen, not knowing what to do when they saw three scruffy girls climb out of the Mercedes 600, greeted us in Japanese. At a time when most Chinese households did not have a telephone, at my house, we used our household phone to call up male celebrities, pretending to be the hottest actresses of the time and professing our love for them. We didn't know we were privileged until much later.

Now, Beibei is president of Chichi Entertainment Company, which she founded five years ago; she currently employs five hundred people and represents one-quarter of the top actors and singers in China. Chinese singers make real bucks nowadays. Through Beibei I've learned that they can charge $100,000 for singing four songs in a concert. And this is aftertax money. Beibei keeps telling me that with such a cute face, I went into the wrong business as a reporter.

Lulu is the executive editor of the fashion magazine Women ' s Friends. After she graduated from Beijing University, she was offered many high-paying jobs, but instead she decided to be an editorial assistant at a fashion magazine. At that time, fashion magazines were so new in China that few people could afford to buy them and the pay for working there was low. So many friends told her to try something else. But Lulu has a natural passion for the beauty industry, and she stayed on the job. Now she is the second most important person at her magazine. Although her pay is so-so, she receives perks such as free memberships to gyms, spas, free gifts from Chanel, free trips to Paris, Tokyo, Milan, and New York. She is slim, graceful, and stylish. She has long flowing dark hair that always seems to rest perfectly on her shoulders, no matter what she is doing, and big, deep eyes like a Caucasian, Lulu's lover, Ximu, once described them as "pools of sex." Lulu enjoys wearing expensive high-fashion numbers from designers like Gucci and Versace. These Italian designs make her look powerful, and even a bit intimidating when she is surrounded by her Chinese colleagues and competitors. It's her moment to outshine others and find confidence.

Lulu is the most gentle and feminine of our trio, but she can also be extremely nervy. When she curses someone out, no one can be more rude. She also smokes. She looks at people from behind a cloud of smoke, giving her a vague, misty appearance. Beibei jokingly says she is a Huli Jing walking among men. Lulu is a total sex goddess of the fashion world.

When I returned to China, Lulu immediately realized that my Californian style was too casual: I don't use makeup, and I wear big baggy shirts and pants.

"You're too Americanized, and too ahead of the time in China," Lulu tells me.

"What do you mean?" I'm proud of my blue Ralph Lauren shirt.

"You've got a thin waist and nice skin that men love. But you need perfume, lip gloss, and polished nails, which will make you more feminine. You see people are superficial when you look expensive, they treat you with respect." She critiques my style.

The fashionable Lulu starts to teach me how to make a face mask out of pearl powder and milk, pluck my eyebrows down to only a few hairs, wear Chinese-style lined jackets and pants.

When I first arrived in the United States, I became a slave of American cosmetics. The clerk at the Estée Lauder counter of every Macy's store adored me because I bought whatever was new on the market. The reason was simple: I had never seen these things in China. By the time I left the States for China, I had been too influenced by Berkeley 's feminism and lost my desire to look like a model. Now, in China, I have to go back to my old obsession with makeup and my desire to be a cover girl. It's like time travel.

Lulu loves educating me. "To survive as a girl in big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, a thin waist and perfume are must-haves." She takes me out with her friends from the fashion crowd who are designers, models, and photographers. They are either gay or bisexual. Straight people are not cool in that circle.

Lulu has learned many tricks from me as well. Once she went to a party without wearing a bra. "This is the Berkeley style that I've learned from Niuniu," she said proudly, as everybody stares at her nipples through her silk blouse.

Lulu is stunning, svelte, elegant, with glowing skin and delicate features that every girl is dying for, but she is ill-fated in love. When she was a college girl, she met Ximu, a married man who brought her nothing but bad luck.

Ximu is a talented graduate from Tsinghua University, who went to study in France in 1989. He abandoned his electrical engineering major to take up an art major there. Five years ago, he returned to China, and has since managed to become a well-known performance artist. His wife is French, and lives in France. Ximu and his wife have lived apart for many years, but he has not divorced and does not want to remarry.

He says, "I am very French. I'm a free spirit."

Lulu has fallen for him, and willingly becomes his "little secret." She e-mailed me when I was in the States. She said, "I'd like to be Ximu's Simone de Beauvoir." In those days, she sent me her long reading notes of de Beauvoir and Marguerite Duras, who were must-reads among Chinese city girls. Lulu firmly believes that one cannot judge a genius according to ordinary standards. And Ximu, obviously, is a genius.

Lulu has undergone three abortions because of Ximu. The first was very painful: she felt that she was taking a life. With the second, she was helpless and felt that the heavens were punishing her. The third was a kind of self-destruction, like she was murdering herself.