Lulu's debut novel Lover's Socks is published with a first printing of 100,000 copies. Lulu is sent on a ten-city book tour. In every city, with every journalist and interviewer, she repeats the tales of her sad love story with Ximu who cheated on her and only wanted to take her as a lover, not a wife. She's heard on radio, seen on TV, and written about in newspapers.
Although Lulu enjoys the stardom of a rising new author, she cannot help but feel a sense of irony about the whole thing: Her relationship with Ximu almost destroyed her and made her look like a failure in front of her family and friends. But now, she is going to achieve some fame and make a fortune out of this story. She needs to smile at her readers as she signs her name on the flyleaf of the sad book they have purchased.
She calls me: "Niuniu, believe it or not, I'm selling my own pain. I guess everything is commercialized nowadays. The market is what counts."
I recently just finished reporting a story on the Chinese literature scene. I know exactly what she is talking about. I comfort her: "Nothing is wrong about making a living off one's pain. Mo Yan, the author of The Republic of Wine always writes about hungry peasants in his stories. Jung Chang, the author of Wild Swans, tells the stories of the three generations of women's suffering. Amy Tan is another successful writer who made a bundle by selling sorrowful Chinese stories to the West. Look at Hollywood – movies about the Holocaust always tend to win the awards. Selling pain is a good business model."
Lulu feels more at ease on the other end of the line. "After all, everybody else is doing it. What the heck? It's karma perhaps. I was wronged and now I'm getting paid back."
A few days later, I hook her up with a Hollywood-based Chinese film agent named Doug who is looking for cross-cultural projects.
We meet at Factory 798.
"The story line is great. A Chinese man is dumped in France by his Chinese wife and then he goes back to China and becomes a womanizer who takes revenge on Chinese women. You have done a great job exploring the psyche of Chinese women who abandon their Chinese husbands after moving to the West and the sense of defeat that Chinese men have in the West. But your story is not sad enough!" Doug tells this to Lulu as soon as we sit down, showing his American impatience.
"What do you mean?" Lulu asks.
Doug continues. "From Hollywood 's perspective, if a movie is about China and it is not about kung fu, it needs to have some cultural flavor. The sad cultural and political situations in other countries often make American audiences feel guilty about their own comfortable lifestyle. As long as you can pull on Americans' heartstrings, it will sell. So I suggest that you add in more about the low status of Chinese women. It's best to include the topics of prostitution and foot binding."
"But my story is a modern-day story. How can I write about foot binding? It's no longer practiced in China?"
Doug laughs. "What about creating an older woman whose feet were bound – the male character's grandmother or great-grandmother, for example. The whole point is to show how backward China was. "
"What about prostitution? Why is it needed?" Lulu asks.
"Nowadays, even a Nobel laureate says that prostitutes inspire him. You see, many Western men come to Asia to get cheap sex. So create an intriguing Chinese prostitute."
Lulu's anger is quite visible as she gets to her feet. "Doug, Richard Mason wrote The World of Suzie Wong fifty years ago. You Hollywood dream merchants need to update your collections."
Lulu then gives me a broad wink as she says, "Let's go, girl. We have to meet Beibei at the opium den."
The two of us giggle as we walk off arm in arm.