nwasianweekly.com
June 25, 2005

(Photo by Ann-Marie Stillion)
Rachel DeWoskin, in Seattle recently to promote her new book, played the part of an American home wrecker in a Chinese soap opera. Her memoir is both a personal and historical examination of the “new China.”

New memoir takes astute look at modern China

This "Foreign Babe's not just a soap star"

By Ann-Marie Stillion
Northwest Asian Weekly

I doubt the U.S. State Department stocked up on Rachel DeWoskin’s memoir Foreign Babes in Beijing when its crimson-infused, vaguely lusty cover hit bookshelves in May. It should. With little fanfare or pretense and in the guise of sexual intrigue, the book by this young American poet and teacher is a valuable primer on international relations.

Deftly teasing out the meaning of countless personal moments, DeWoskin leads us by the hand to a lively understanding of China and America and what our relationship can, or may, mean in an increasingly interdependent world. She seems to do this as easily as a girl leaping onto a bicycle.

Governments might not be so quick to catch on, but Paramount Pictures took notice. Less than a month after the book’s publication, the Hollywood studio purchased the rights to make the story of one American woman’s post-college adventure in China in the ’90s into a movie.

DeWoskin admits that after college, recruiters in America regarded her as an oddball, even unemployable, since her education focused more on the arts than business. Instead of fretting over the obvious and cramming herself into a mold, she decided to spend time in a foreign country and broaden her outlook.

She chose China. Both of her parents had been teachers; her father was an Asian studies professor. As a child, she had spent summers with her family trailing ubiquitous Chinese treasures while sampling regional variations of hot pot. Studying Mandarin in college provided her with a basis for setting off to the “new China.” Faxing off dozens of resumes to companies all over Beijing and Shanghai, she got exactly one interview with an American public-relations firm in Beijing.

Little did DeWoskin know then that she would become part of arguably one of the most widely watched television programs in history.

Her day job at the PR firm quickly proved frustrating. Fleeing the boredom of writing on behalf of American corporations selling everything from donuts to chicken, she auditioned for the part of a foreigner who lures a handsome Chinese hunk from his wife and his traditions. The show, called “Foreign Babes in Beijing,” made DeWoskin, or Ruiqui, as she was known in China, instantly famous in the middle kingdom and gave her a reputation with millions of viewers as “Jiexi,” a hot-blooded American home wrecker.

All of this still might have been lost on some. But DeWoskin, in Seattle recently to promote her book, describes herself as an inveterate journal writer from childhood. In fact, when she returned to the United States in 1998 for graduate school, it was to study with one of America’s most distinguished poets, Robert Pinsky. On her book tour, literary allusions to both Chinese and American literature rolled easily off her tongue. And her passion for the Chinese language, whether classical or slang, is endless, making for a perfect conduit for many of the book’s most satisfying and telling insights.

The 32-year-old author notes Microsoft’s troubles in China, for example: “Microsoft had crisis after crisis, not only because Bill Gates was considered by the Chinese to be arrogant and greedy, but also because the company had chosen its Chinese name by translating ‘micro’ and ‘soft’ directly into weiruan, ‘flaccid and little.’ The failure of that to build a strapping corporate image speaks for itself.”

Reading her narrative, one begins to realize that the American media’s portrayal of real life in China has been mostly a kind of public relations game, and conversely, so has the Chinese government’s delivery of America to its own population. Somewhere in between, people willing to do the hard work of sorting out the truth from the lies make friends, money and love.

It is through stories about the lives of DeWoskin’s close friends that we begin to see more clearly how life for the average Chinese has frayed. It is startling to learn, for example, that divorce in China is practically an epidemic. Part of the popularity of the television character that she plays is due to the fact that family life is often a distressing hodgepodge of old and new. In the booming economy, relationships seem to be melting under the pressure to succeed.

As DeWoskin says during her interview in Seattle, “All of my friends there were caught on an edge between cynicism and aspiration, fiercely loyal to China and at the same time very interested in Western products and Western lifestyles, philosophies and engagement with the West. This is the question for China: How do you work the social and political aspects of opening up? … As Deng Xiaoping put it, ‘If you open the doors, some flies will come in.’”

On whatever level one chooses to read this cultural exploration, whether for a peek behind the doors of Chinese television or from the inside of a cab during the riots following the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Foreign Babes in Beijing is a passionate and intelligent work of personal and historical examination in the midst of a modern revolution that is touching us all.

Ann-Marie Stillion can be reached at annmarie@nwasianweekly.com.

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