When one sleeps until noon, the afternoon slips effortlessly away. Had a good crowd over for martinis last night, but today recovering. The Silver Lining is also quite conked out after the enforced socialization.
At martinis: a Dutch photographer, Italian and Shanghainese filmmakers, Shanghainese-Malaysian-British writer and historian Ling, Northern Chinese gallery owner Plum, food writer Cloudy and her chef husband, a Finnish journalist and her actor boyfriend, a Belgian artist, and my adorable little assistant and her friend. It was fun getting to expose Xiao Wen to my friends, she's so earnest and smart and cute, and I think she enjoyed herself after a spell of initial nervousness. Cloudy and I had fun watching her and her friend accross the room: Xiao Wen chatting animatedly with the historian - who is a very cool, impressive, sophisticated grand dame - and her friend between them looking lost and miserable. I think Xiao Wen's friend is made of the same substance as my cat.
I was really glad that Ling came, and seemed to have fun. She is the best writer in Shanghai as well as a very impressive and fascinating person, and is not the biggest social butterfly so is a bit hard to get to know. I am a big fan, and it would be great if she becomes more of a friend and mentor.
You know, I am pretty confident of myself, but I still get all giddy when people I admire, the people I think are way cool and so look up to, like and befriend me. It goes both ways, I suppose, like how I enjoy watching and hopefully helping shape Xiao Wen and other cool younger women (and some young men too, but mostly keeping it to the cunthood).
Thursday night I went to a dinner party at a cosmetics mogul's house, and despite it being a swank place with a lot of swank people, it was a very mellow and friendly affair. It lacked the prepostorous pretentions of "Diamond Ho's" parties, which sinks under the weight of her self-importance. I met a lot of people who were really nice and interesting, and that they are titans of industry and mainstream media rather than the literati bohemians I usually run made for a nice change.
I bumped into a Taiwanese-American acquaintence who I have met many times but don't really know, and she plopped me with her Shanghainese mother-in-law, like Ling one of those lao ling Lao Sanghei women I so enjoy and admire. We had a fun chat comparing Shanghai to Taiwan to California. I am reminded how much I need to make a pilgrimage to Taiwan, that strange little place that has been a conduit of most of my nearest and dearest, as well as of many a passing acquaintence. Ah, the Taiwanese! The Mainlander vs Taiwese-Taiwanese rivalries, the psychological abuse particularly of their male children, their neuroses about "Chinese"ness, their Japanese/KMT facist anality, their hostility towards us whities and...everyone. The place seems fascinatingly fucked up, and yet has produced about so many of the people I love. There is something about Taiwan.
I ended up sitting with this lovely old lady again at dinner, along with her teenage daughters. The younger, 13, was more my sort of girl: chubby and quirky and geekish. But I was sitting next to the older, 16, who was a tall skinny superficial, popular babe in the making. I was astonished that we got along great. She's so so SoCal, a spoiled little expat teenager at the American School, but turned out to nonetheless to be a cool person. She's angsting over college aps, and wanted to pick my brain about getting into and attending Brown.
She is really infatuated with the idea of being in a sorority, based on watching US tv and movies. I hope I helped talk her out of it: she's the sort of pretty, perky young woman who would be embraced by that world, but I think it shapes people quite negatively. (I was an RA sophomore year, and my 50 charges were placed between a frat and a sorority with like twenty members each, and despite our paying the same or more for our board they had about five times the residential resources we did. Because, in my day at least, the greek system, which was 10% of the Brown student body, was 95% of the student government. So, in my Junior and Senior years, I went out for student government, was on both the general student council and the residential council.) Honestly: they are useful networks, but at the cost of conformity and cliqueishness and secrecy. Not all haze, make you strip to skivvies and circle your flab in permanent marker, not all kick out their fat or non-white members, there are all sorts of sororities. But, by being in one, you declare yourself as a certain sort of person, and that...shapes you.
Brown had an International House, which several of my friends joined. It was a good community for international and transcultural students, and was a very warm tolerant laid-back environment. It was also a year-to-year thing, rather than a three-year commitment like the greek houses, and their events were open to and encouraging of guests. They also took ordinary Americans, as long as they had suitably globalist outlooks. After the racial indifference of my SoCal high-school, the whitey-hating of the Taiwanese- and Chinese-Americans at Brown was pretty upsetting; my friends weren't of that bent but they had friends who were. But the international students were very diverse and accepting and cool.
By the end of dinner, before the cherry stem tying competition, I had convinced (I hope!) that an International House or equivalent would be a better fit for a Shanghainese-Taiwanese-Californian expat brat than most sororities. And then we discussed "Ugly Betty" and its portrayal of fashion journalism.
On New Year's eve, I bao-ed jiaozi at Plum's house. Much fun, but wow Plum really only hangs out with foreigners! Apart from her, the only other Chinese in attendence was a married-to-a-whitey and lived abroad, and their two mothers. The Northern mamas and I did all of the dumpling work, but since my roomie Happy's jiaozi parties in college, I love making dumplings, find it comforting, although the mamas kicked my ass in terms of skill and efficiency.
Ah Ren was there, and as always I blathered nervously at him, to his good-natured amusement. He has become my social comfort zone, he feels to me warm and dry and safe. Crushage aside, I have become so immensely fond of him, and really enjoy his presence. He was off to the US the next day, and will be there several months. Hopefully enough time for me to get over him and/or lose enough weight that he sees me as a hottie not a meimei. He almost moved back to the US this time, but decided not yet; personally, I want him to stick him around, but he does seem rather at loose ends angsting over where to go, what to do. For his own sake, I wish he would just pick a place, any place, and start putting down some roots, but I suspect he's still recovering from being very rooted but unhappily so in Beijing.
Mmm, I have stuff I should do today, but nothing I have to do. Recipe for more martinis and a late afternoon nap. I shall start another detox spree tomorrow, combined with some power writing and a date to hit the reopened gym with Cloudy, but today is for hair of dog martinis and maybe an afternoon nap.
