China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan

Published by Doubleday on June 16, 2015

The ordinary rich have a few hundred million. The China rich have billions. China Rich Girlfriend skewers the China rich as well as ordinary Asian multimillionaires. Like most novels that skewer frivolous and empty people, it is ultimately frivolous and empty, lacking insight beyond "look at how absurd and pretentious these people are." Still, the novel is tons of fun and Kevin Kwan's snappy prose kept me engaged.

With the help of a spreadsheet and some Venn diagrams, you might be able to keep track of the relationships between the characters who appear in China Rich Girlfriend. One connecting thread is Carlton Bao, who crashes his Ferrari into a Jimmy Choo after a night of London club hopping. Carlton's father is both a politician and the owner of one of China's biggest drug companies. His mother pampers him but so does his casual lover Colette Bing, the daughter of one of China's five richest men who contrives through Twitter, a publicist, and careful grooming of the Chinese paparazzi to maintain her celebrity status. She's sort of the Paris Hilton of China.

Also central to the story is Eleanor Young's son Nick, who is a professor at NYU. He is newly engaged to Rachel Chu but tries to keep that a secret from Eleanor, who despises Rachel (largely because Nick's grandmother plans to disinherit him if he marries Rachel) until she learns who Rachel's father really is.

And then there's Mrs. Bernard Tai, formerly the soap opera star Kitty Pong, who married well and wants the world to know it. Her ostentatious display of wealth (which falls just short of China rich) assures that she will be denied social acceptance in the upper classes unless she benefits from the services provided by social coach Corinna Ko-Tung.

Apart from providing an introductory tour of Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Singapore, China Rich Girlfriend can be read as a wealthy outsider's guide to how one might fit into the Asian upper class -- how to dress, where to eat, what to eat, where to shop, what to drive, how to behave, what to say -- although a non-Asian outsider would never find social acceptance no matter how closely the rules are followed. The Asian hierarchy -- Filipinos and Malaysians are always outsiders although sufficient wealth might allow them to join the right dining club or church -- also plays a role. Amusing footnotes translate colorful Chinese phrases and explain the bewildering variety of noodles, dumplings, and buns upon which the characters feast.

To the extent that there is a plot here, the storylines wrap into one big soap opera, which isn't my kind of story. I was nevertheless so amused by the characters and their pretensions, and so taken with Kwan's ability to turn a phrase and to create vivid backgrounds, that I thoroughly enjoyed the novel, notwithstanding its shallow content.

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