"Yes. Expensive villas at the foot of the Great Wall."
"Let me tell you about an escapade at the Dreamland," Lulu says with a deep sigh.
Lulu had attended a fashion show followed by a cocktail reception at the GWD. There she ran into a stream of movie stars, TV talk-show celebrities, and high-profile singers and musical groups. Her photographers were busy photographing these people, but she was bored.
Her friend Mary, editor of Family, came to her. "Let me introduce you to a really cool woman – Jenny. I was told that she is going to buy one of these mansions here. She just came back to China from the United States and doesn't have many local friends. I think the two of you would hit it off."
As Lulu saw Jenny, she couldn't believe her eyes. She knew this woman! But she had known her as Yu Zhen not Jenny. Yu Zhen was Lulu's college classmate; actually, they were even closer, as they had lived in the same dorm room for four years. Yu Zhen was a bit older than the other girls. She had always been quiet. In her second year at college, she had started to skip classes and come back to the dorm late at night. Sometimes she disappeared for a few days at a time. She had become a woman of mystery. The only way to track her down was by her perfume.
At that time, most college girls couldn't afford to wear perfume. But Yu Zhen did. She came back occasionally, leaving wafts of Christian Dior's Poison or YSL's Opium in the room. Lulu's fashion education first began by guessing the brands of perfume Yu Zhen used.
Rumor had it that Yu Zhen might be dating a sugar daddy, but nobody knew exactly what had been going on with her until one night when Yu Zhen came back around midnight and all girls were sound asleep.
"Save me! Help me!" She begged the girls in the dorm, who were still only half-awake and confused.
Yu Zhen made a confession. She wanted to change her fate by going to the States. In order to earn money for application fees and tuitions to American universities, she had prostituted herself. But one time she had been stupid and greedy. She had stolen 20,000 RMB from her customer, Big Feet. He had been so angry that he hired thugs to watch her outside the campus. He sent out a message that he would have her fingers cut off if she didn't return the money.
"Give the money back to him," her roommates suggested to her.
"I've sent it to the American schools that I applied to," she said.
"Why don't you go to the police?" Lulu asked her.
"I'd be expelled for what I did."
At that time, Lulu was the richest girl in the room. Because her parents had been newly divorced, both of them sent her money to compete for her love. She gave Yu Zhen 4,000 RMB in cash. Others also donated some money. Together they collected 20,000 RMB for Yu Zhen. Yu Zhen cried and kowtowed to everybody, saying that they were her reborn parents. She would work like a dog from now on to repay their money.
Then Yu Zhen vanished totally. Of course, the money they had lent her was gone forever, like a rock thrown into a lake.
Jenny greeted Lulu gracefully in English and excused herself for her sluggish Chinese. Mary helped her explain. "Jenny was born to a Taiwanese mother and a Macau father. She spent most of her time overseas. So that's why speaking Chinese is difficult for her."
Jenny didn't recognize Lulu.
As I listen to this part of the story, I ask Lulu, "Are you sure Jenny is Yu Zhen? Maybe they just look alike! Otherwise, she'd have recognized you."
"I was wondering about that," Lulu says, her voice rising on the telephone, "because Jenny's nose looked higher than Yu Zhen's and Jenny's breasts were bigger than Yu Zhen's. But as she kept talking, she started to stutter! I realized it was the same Yu Zhen. The only difference was that back then in college she had stuttered in Chinese, and at the cocktail party, she stuttered in English."
"So she pretended she didn't know you!"
"Yes! The ungrateful bitch!"
"But how can you explain the changes to her nose and breasts?" I ask.
"If she can fake her identity, I guess it's a piece of cake for her to get a fake nose and fake breasts!" Lulu concludes.
48 The Little Empress
I decide to take a long vacation in the States. It's strange – when I was in America, I thought of China, but in China, I miss America. After living in the gray city of Beijing for more than a year, I dream of America 's blue skies and green lawns. More than that, I feel part of me has never left America.
I'm not sure why I have chosen this exact moment for my visit, but I feel as though my time in China has helped to soften some of the painful memories I have of my time in the States. Through this vacation I hope to recapture the moments and things that I loved about the country. But perhaps more important, I need to find out if moving to China was really the best way to ease my pain over losing Len and having my heart broken. What better way to test if my experiment was a success than going back to the States? I must find out if I have truly exorcised those bad thoughts from my mind.
Although news on TV about the United States is not that optimistic, from terrorist threats to a bad economy, most Americans I run into still seem carefree. I feel flattered as cars come to a stop in front of me when I cross the road and as strange passersby smile at me. In China, pedestrians stop for cars and strangers don't make eye contact.
I stay at Mother Bee's. Mother Bee was my hosting mother when I first arrived in Columbia, Missouri, for college eight years ago. Returning to Missouri is refreshing. I see the trees dancing in the wind and hear birds chirping in the morning. Missouri is about as far away as you can get from Beijing. I like the idyllic, calm atmosphere. Already I can tell that this is going to be a good vacation.
Mother Bee embraces me warmly. "Welcome back! Your room is still there. Only one student stayed there briefly after you."
To my surprise, I find a voodoo doll in the room. The doll has been pierced on the chest with multiple needles. "Bee" is written on the doll's back.
I bring it to Mother Bee.
Mother Bee sighs, clasping the poor doll, "I gave it to Juju, the exchange student from China! She didn't like it because I got it from Wal-Mart and it was made in China. She said that her parents always bought her the most expensive gifts, ones that are made in either the U.S.A. or Japan!"
"So she did this to you?"
Saying neither yes nor no, Mother Bee tells me about Juju. "Unlike you, seventeen-year-old Juju was a spoiled brat who didn't know how to tie her shoelaces or boil water. Her room was always messy. Once I asked her to clean the room, and she called me a big American imperialist who was exploiting her. She said that since her parents paid me money, I had no right to ask her to do things."
"Now that families are allowed to have only one chi ld, children like Juju are the rulers of their families, dictating to six adults: two parents and four grandparents!" I shake my head.
Mother Bee nods. "I read about it. She might get her way in China by behaving so badly and by being so lazy, but not under my roof!"
"What else did she do?"
"Juju ordered me to wake her up every morning. I gave her an alarm clock and showed her how to use it. Juju felt ignored and threw it away."
"So how did she get up every day?"
"She made her folks call her from China every morning!" Mother Bee stresses every syllable of the sentence to drive home the point.
"Sending kids to the States is fashionable among the new rich in China!" I explain.
Mother Bee continues. "I allowed her to use my home computer. One day I tried to log on to the computer, but it had crashed. I found that she had installed the pirated version of Windows XP without consulting anybody first. I told her that we don't use pirated software in the United States. She yelled at me."
"What did she say?" I ask curiously.