Foreign Babes in Beijing: Behind the Scenes of a New China

by Rachel DeWoskin

“For a real insider’s look at life in modern China, readers should turn to Rachel DeWoskin.”―Sophie Beach, The Economist Determined to broaden her cultural horizons and live a “fiery” life, twenty-one-year-old Rachel DeWoskin hops on a plane to Beijing to work for an American PR firm based in the busy capital. Before she knows it, she is not just exploring Chinese culture but also creating it as the sexy, aggressive, fearless Jiexi, the starring femme fatale in a wildly successful Chinese soap opera. Experiencing the cultural clashes in real life while performing a fictional version onscreen, DeWoskin forms a group of friends with whom she witnesses the vast changes sweeping through China as the country pursues the new maxim, “to get rich is glorious.” In only a few years, China’s capital is transformed. With “considerable cultural and linguistic resources” ( The New Yorker ), DeWoskin captures Beijing at this pivotal juncture in her “intelligent, funny memoir” ( People ), and “readers will feel lucky to have sharp-eyed, yet sisterly, DeWoskin sitting in the driver’s seat”( Elle ).

Genres: China, Nonfiction, Memoir, Travel, Asia, Biography, Biography Memoir

338 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2005

About the author

Rachel DeWoskin is the author of Foreign Babes in Beijing, a memoir about her inadvertent notoriety as the star of a Chinese soap opera, and a novel, Repeat After Me. She lives in New York City and Beijing and is at work on her fourth book, Statutory.

Reviews

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't let the title and the cover fool you, because this book is not as salacious as it sounds. (Aside: This was the first book I put on hold at my library, and when the librarian handed it to me, she was all, "Woohoo, look at those fishnets! I thought it said 'Foreign Babies' but I guess not." She thought I was some kind of pervert. While that may be true, she did not have evidence of it in her hand at the time.) This is the true story of the author, who went to Beijing in 1995 to work for a PR firm and have some adventures. She ended up staying for five years and managed to play a main character on a very popular Chinese primetime soap opera, called Foreign Babes in Beijing. This book is about her experience living in China, working with and dating young Chinese people. She also expounds upon the Chinese relationship with the West, and in particular views of the USA and the ascent of capitalism. If you are interested in China or foreign travel, this might be a book you would like. Check it out.

[Diane in Australia · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 Stars = It definitely held my interest.

From the title I thought this book was going to be a kind of "American Girl Goes Wild in China" tale. I was SO wrong! Rachel goes to Beijing in 1994, to work for an American public relations firm, and ends up staying for 5 years. The title refers to a Chinese soap opera that she ended up acting in, playing the part of an American in China.

I felt that she gave a very authentic view of her life in Beijing. The life of a foreigner in a new country has so many layers to it that it is hard to convey all of them, but she does an excellent job of it. I very much liked this book.

[Lena · Rating 3 out of 5]

As memoirs go, this story of a recent Columbia grad who ends up starring as a Western hussy in China's most popular soap opera is a fascinating one. I learned a lot about what modern day life in China is like from this book. It was particlarly shocking for me to read that some people there don't keep journals out of fear what they write might be used against them by the government. Still, the tone did get a little academic for me at times and I wish the author had included more of her own personal joureny within her very compelling observations about modern China.

[Eric Klee · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I travel, I like to bring a book with me that would be considered "light reading." I picked up FOREIGN BABES IN BEIJING because it was described as a "Sex and the City" set in China on the dust jacket. The author moves to Beijing to work in PR and suddenly finds herself on a Chinese soap opera called "Foreign Babes in Beijing." Sounds fun, right?

As I started to read it on the airplane, I was suddenly transported back to my freshman foreign governments class in college. I wasn't expecting a dull history lesson on Chinese government, culture, and word definitions. I'm sure the information presented is fantastic...if that's what you're looking for. I, on the other hand, was looking for humorous stories and adventures in China, a la Chelsea Handler. I felt quite misled by the book's title, summary, praises, and photo on the dust jacket.

After 50 pages in, I realized that the memoir wasn't going to be full of lighthearted humor and debauchery as I was led to believe. I gave up and said zài jiàn (goodbye) to Foreign Babes.

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book a lot. China in the 1990s was a special place and Rachel DeWoskin had the good luck to be involved with a very interesting group of people. I'm married to a Chinese musician, and many of his tales of that period of time are similar to what DeWoskin talks about in her book. For that alone, and the fact that I somewhat know the feeling of being a "foreign babe" in China, I found it easy to relate to her book. China memoirs aren't that uncommon, but I was excited to come across one written by a young American woman (without a religious agenda), and would recommend it to all female expats in China.

Of course, the China she portrays is already a thing of the past, so the book shouldn't be looked at as a commentary on today's post-Olympic "new China," but rather the new China as it really was, back in the days when China was practically a new frontier and anything and everything seemed possible.

[Matt Holloway · Rating 4 out of 5]

So this girl graduates college and goes to China to work for an American PR firm, but also gets cast in a cheezy Chinese sitcom (same title as the book) about slutty American chicks and how badly they long for Chinese guys. It's watched by like 40 million people. I'd give the book 5 stars but she doesn't string out the sitcom storyline long enough. Her cultural reflections and stories about Chinese friends are great and illuminating, but they can't compare (in my eyes) to the stories about the sitcom.

[Peter Kalnin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written by an expat who knows Chinese and is learning about the various nuances of Chinese society, customs and language; well written and light enough to keep the reader's attention moving through many different situations. Good fun

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

DeWoskin went to Beijing in 1994, prepared to take any job she could find in order to get to the country she loved. It's important to keep in mind that she was no ‘innocent abroad’ or stranger to China having spent much of her childhood on family holidays in China with her father who was a Sinology professor (Sinology – study of China, just in case you didn't know). Unlike many people choosing to work in Beijing, she arrived already speaking Chinese which gave her a far greater degree of access to local people than could be achieved by those without her language skills. She accepted a job in a PR company, working for an American woman boss who needed her as an assistant and go-between to help her communicate with the local team. PR, we learn, is a homophone for a local word 'piyar' which is slang for 'a**hole' which is the sort of nugget of information that possibly tells us more about the profession than we need to know. Little gems like that are scattered through the book and made me stop and laugh frequently. One of my favourite insights was when a local taxi driver tells her that Americans have no human rights. When she asks why, he tells her that President Clinton isn't allowed to have a mistress.

When she's not working on writing briefings for foreign business leaders on how not to offend the locals, or trying to come up with slogans that don't translate into something too bizarre, DeWoskin spends a lot of time hanging out at parties with her cosmopolitan friends, both Chinese and ex-pat. As a result of meeting lots of media folk, DeWoskin gets asked to audition for a Chinese soap opera – the 'Foreign Babes in Beijing' of the title. Playing the part of racy Jiexi, the 'open minded' American (we learn open-minded equals slutty), she represents a lot of the clichés that locals believe about western women. The other 'American' girl is played by a German and the two girls’ characters fall in love with two local brothers. Playing Jiexi means that every Chinese thinks they know her and what she's like, sometimes in negative but often in surprisingly positive ways.

This is not a sensationalist book though admittedly the first chapter does start by telling us how to ask someone to drop their trousers in Mandarin and we do learn a lot about what Jiexi’s character can and can't get away with in the TV series and how the programme-makers can circumvent the rules of the censors by including moralistic storylines. What I found even more interesting than those tales of life on the film-set were her stories about her friends. There's local girl Anna who was disgraced in her home city for falling in love with a Muslim from the middle east, American Kate who has thrown in her lot with western men and only goes out with Chinese, and Zhou Wen, DeWoskin’s Americanised Chinese-born boyfriend who worked hard to eradicate his Chinese accent and become more American than the Americans.

I learned a lot about the behaviour of Chinese people in a business setting, much of which I recognised or which make me think 'Aha, so that's what that was about'. Her observations about life in the office are fascinating – the conflict between trying to be 'one of the girls' and having to boss around people who are older and more experienced than her, the things people will tell you straight and the things they'll never say to your face. I loved the way the office ladies reacted when she arrived - “She can't be American, she's too thin” - through to their analysis of her first night's appearance in the show “You film fat!” There are many handy and intriguing observations about how the Chinese language works – for example, she explains that nobody asks direct questions like 'Are you hungry?', preferring to offer alternatives 'Have you eaten or not eaten?' The origins of many words and terms are explained in a way I found fascinating and enlightening whereas I'm often a bit resistant to being 'taught' in the course of an autobiography.

Admittedly 99% of the book is about Beijing so you won't find out anything significant about rural life or life in other cities. Those looking for a 21st-century account of life in the twenty-teens may be disappointed that the period covered is 1994 to 1999, and some will criticise that a lot of what she reports might be a little outdated in a country evolving and changing as fast as China. They have a point but a writer can only write about what they know and the period of her time in China is still an important one. It's the not long post-Tiananmen era, in the relatively early days of economic (if not political) emancipation. Much may have changed but I'm willing to bet that much is just as it was at the time she lived there. Don't buy this if you're looking for a 'how to' book about living in Beijing or if you're looking for a step by step survival guide because it's neither of those things. But what it is instead is a well-written, fascinating account of DeWoskin's life in Beijing and equally importantly the lives of many of her friends.

DeWoskin's story is not an 'everywoman' tale because she's not a typical expat. This isn’t one of those patronising books that treat the locals like zoo animals, giving a 'Hey look at how funny the locals are' approach to the writing. Her language skills open doors that are slammed to most and her role as Jiexi earned her a place in the hearts and minds of not just millions but hundreds of millions of people. She's thus both an observer of and a participant in Chinese culture in a way that few people could manage. Most importantly, she's also – and I thank goodness for this as I read so many awful travel memoirs – an absolutely excellent writer. I am reminded of another of my favourite writers, Tama Janowitz, who has a similar type of self-deprecating humour – something we Brits are hot on but not typically an American trait – and great sense of observation. DeWoskin writes so well that it almost doesn't matter what she's writing about, I am fascinated by what she has to say.

If I were to recommend this book it would be to people like me who enjoy reading about other cultures as seen through the eyes of 'people like us', to those who have an interest in China or who need to spend time in China for work and could use some basic insights into what the heck is going on. However, I think most visitors and tourists will struggle to have even a tiny fraction as much fun as DeWoskin and her friends.

[zeynep]

Rachel DeWoskin was, seemingly mostly by chance, cast in a 90s Chinese soap opera (the titular Foreign Babes in Beijing) playing an adulterous American student who seduces a married Chinese man...but her heart ends up faithful to him and the two get a happy ending. In this book she recounts her coming to China, the inevitable cultural/linguistic awkwardness, how she filmed the show, how she later watched the show as it aired, her friendships in China etc.

I overall found this book entertaining, especially everything relating to the show itself. Every now and then there would be the brief ~cultural critique~ moment, some of which didn't land for me, but is maybe inevitable in a genre like this (experiences of a Westerner in Asia). I give it a B+.

[Dennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm glad that I didn't judge this book by its cover, although I cannot deny that the shapely pair of fish-netted legs did catch my attention. Truth is this book is far less sensually provocative than it is evocative of expatriate life in the heart of an awakening economic powerhouse. Rachel DeWoskin's memoir about her adventures as a 20-something college grad working in Beijing for an American PR firm paints a vivid portrait of life as a foreigner in China during the 1990s.

Rachel is not just your average expat, however. Armed with a Columbia degree and some knowledge of the Chinese language and people, Rachel seems to meld fairly well into Beijing life right from the start. She rather serendipitously collides early on with an opportunity to star in a Chinese soap opera, Foreign Babes in Beijing, as the rich American girl, Jiexi, who steals the heart of the married Tianling. The role instantly shoots her to stardom and makes her recognizable by the greater part of some 600 million viewers. (Rachel ponders, "It was too huge a number to think about. If we all held hands would we cover the planet?")

Rachel utilizes the soap opera role as a device for contextualizing her own experiences as a young western woman living in Beijing vis-à-vis the Chinese' views romanticizing their country's new openness in the world.

Throughout her years in Beijing, Rachel easily makes friends with other expatriates and a variety of activists, artists and intellectuals, all who provide her with starkly contrasting approaches and attitudes to a modernizing China. The author's humor is as astute as it is self-deprecating. She offers thoughtful and sometimes cheeky perspectives on everything from Americanized boyfriend Zhou Jun's Jeep that he named Kelindun after the American president (Clinton), to her commanding Ugly American boss Charlotte's insistence on throwing an American Thanksgiving dinner for bewildered and oft-times intimidated Chinese staff, to the fear and uncertainty attendant to the fervent patriotism that swelled amidst the international kerfuffle-cum-crisis NATO provoked when it bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.

This book is thoroughly enjoyable and provides a remarkably insightful first-hand view of the rapidly changing, and increasingly important and powerful society of China.

[Louise · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I first saw the title of the book, Foreign Babes in Beijing, I didn’t know what to expect. Its cover was racy but facetious. I was confused about the title. Was it implying local Chinese women weren’t babes?

The first few chapters cleared up the confusion. This non fiction book is about the author, Rachel, and her first few years as an expatriate in China. Foreign Babes in Beijing is actually the title of a Chinese soap opera she acted in.

I had read and grown tired of the usual books I read about China. Mostly written by Chinese Americans, the stories they shared were good and usually touching, but after reading so many of them, they soon started melting together in my mind. Foreign Babes, written by a western hand offered a different perspective of China. Sometimes I identified with Rachel, since I’ve lived in the US for most of my life, and sometimes I identified with the Chinese locals.

Rachel’s view of China shows Chinese perception of foreigners and their treatment of them. It’s something that I had an inkling of, but not the full details. Each chapter contains an excerpt for the script from the soap opera. Some of them are amusing because of the Chinese stereotype of how foreign women are like.

Foreign Babes in Beijing is an entertaining and eye-opening read and is a nice change of pace from the usual books on China written by Chinese Americans. It made me think about moving back there, but not living the typical expatriate life — I’d rather live like a local.

[Sigrid-marianella · Rating 5 out of 5]

It looks like chick-lit but don't judge a book by it's cover.

I'm absolutely loving this book, but I suspect it might be because I myself lived in Beijing for some years and can relate to a lot of what she is writing. I'm not sure someone who hasn't lived there would be as captured as I was so for that I give it four stars.

Having arrived in China 10 years after Rachel I enjoyed reading her descriptions of the city as it was and getting an image of how it has transformed (and in many ways remained the same). How living outside second ring was considered the outskirts of town, and a reference to one of few foreign bars (comparing to the booming nightlife culture today), the suppressed love-relations between foreigners and Chinese (today a common sight).

I am always fascinated by the stories told to me by people who lived in Beijing in the 80s and 90s, this book gives you a good insight to the new China on a personal level back in the 90s. If you lived or live in Beijing/China, I am certain you will enjoy this book.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Felt it was a more "authentic" view than others of how Chinese feels towards expat Western colleagues.

[Leanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stupid title, stupid cover, thoughtful engagement with China and her position as an outsider during the 90s.

[Peter Corrigan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my normal 'fare' but picked it up on whim whilst considering a possible trip to China (still have not decided). It was mildly entertaining and I learned some interesting things about China and it's people One is that China and especially Beijing is changing so fast that this book was pretty dated, even though published in 2010 it centers around the 1990s. There are amusing anecdotes related to food, drink and social customs. Everyone loves to throw around the racist theme, but actually the Chinese come off fairly intolerant and xenophobic themselves. Not that I really care, it probably comes from about 2,000 years where they pretty much thought they were the only race worth much on the earth. Everyone else was just barbarians. It is sort of normal when that is all you are used to and probably every race suffers from it to some degree. The response she describes of the general Chinese reaction to the Belgrade Chinese Embassy bombing in 1999 was certainly an eye-opener. When (not if) there is U.S.-China incident in coming years whether over Taiwan or some island in the South China Sea, the government through it's controlled media is sure to whip up the same frenzy they did then. You can do that when you control all the media in a country and there is no opposition party to possibly object to an overreaction (sometimes just for political points but that itself can be useful in defusing a situation). And the speed with which the Chinese population was more than willing to embrace the worst interpretation of U.S. motives was pretty dismaying (although truthfully a lot of populations might react in the same way). I think it really opened Ms. DeWoskin's eyes about how great the Chinese were, although she was careful not to state that outright.

[LM Huffman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting memoir of a young American woman working in Beijing in the 1990s. I learned a great deal about China and how it has changed since the revolution (and since the 1990s). My only wish is that the title (which comes from the name of a Chinese soap opera in which the author acted) and the picture on the cover wasn't so tawdry - it makes the book sound like it's going to be so much less than it is; which is an insider's account on being an outsider in China, told with intelligence and insight.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was much more than a memoir. I leaned a lot more about Chinese language and culture than I anticipated. I appreciated the author’s inclusion of various terms and history. I also appreciated her self-reflections throughout.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun read that goes way beyond hilarious stories of propaganda-making.

[Bryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this some time ago & remember enjoying it but wanting more about almost everything.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny to read this after living in China.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great memoir!

[T · Rating 3 out of 5]

Updating GR account - Book Club read Jan 2006

[Ginette · Rating 3 out of 5]

Une découverte de la Chine à travers le vécu d une américaine. Surprenant !

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun book

[Candice Walsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 - I liked the author’s journey but I guess I was expecting more of a story.

[Lizzy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed this read but I would’ve loved more about her time on the soap opera and less about her time afterwards

[Genevieve Campisano · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. DeWoskin provides a truly unique insight and she approaches her subject with nuance and care. Her memoir is as engaging as it is informative. I learned a lot and I learned that there's so much more I need to learn about China and perceptions of Americans in China (and perceptions of Chinese people in America). It's not as salacious as the cover might suggest.

[Neil Pierson · Rating 3 out of 5]

With a newly minted BA in English, Rachel DeWoskin moved to China in 1994. China was just beginning to open itself up to commerce with other countries, and foreigners living in China were still relatively uncommon. Although she had studied Chinese and traveled in China, she was looking for an intense, exotic experience. Boy, did she get it.

The recurring theme is Rachel trying to figure out what the hell is going on. In spite of her studies and experience, she struggled to understand or speak with the Chinese. (You need to be careful with any language that uses the same word for "business" and "sex." Or one where a minor mispronunciation turns, "My teacher was strict," into "My teacher was castrated.")

She lands a job with a public relations firm that helps foreign companies develop their business (as in "business") in China. She doesn't know anything about public relations and not very much about China, so there's a lot for Rachel to figure out. Most of her coworkers aren't much help.

Through the merest chance, she is cast in a new TV soap opera called "Foreign Babes in Beijing." For several reasons, Rachel is mostly bewildered. There are her language limitations; she has no experience as an actor, much less in acting as it's done on a Chinese soap opera; and the show is being filmed from the end of the script to the beginning. It's no glamour assignment, either. She gets calls at 3:00 am to show up at the freezing cold studio where she may not even be needed, she's paid far less than her co-stars, and she still has that PR job.

The show, it turns out, is about a couple of American women--one played by a German, but who cares?--who fall in love with Chinese men, one of whom is married. To attract viewers, the producers use whatever they can, including the reputation of western women for being "open-minded."* The motives of the government for allowing the show are more mysterious. Maybe they expect that as international commerce grows, there will be an onslaught of foreigners and strange ways, and they want to prepare their people? Or maybe somebody got bribed.

The native population doesn't come across very sympathetically, which is a little unusual in this type of book. Most of the Chinese disdain foreigners, resent them, or envy them. Verbal faux pas are not greeted with laughter or explanations. They embarrass the Chinese, who shun the speaker. Rachel spends quite a bit of time with Chinese intellectuals, who have the same complaints about their culture as any other intellectuals.

I didn't really connect with this book. Maybe it's because in the period covered, the author never did find solid footing. It's hard to explain something to a reader when the author isn't sure of it herself.

* Apparently, Chinese use the same word for "open-minded" and "slutty."

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

**Edited to say that I totally dropped this down to two stars. I've read/been reading solid three-star books since then, and realized how much more I disliked this one compared to them, so two stars is a truer reflection of how I felt about it.**

This is purely in the "meh" category. I never really got who DeWoskin was throughout the thing, and found myself super bored - especially considering that the story should have been really interesting. I'm not sure how long after the events it was that she wrote this, but it had a lack of personality/depth that I think means it was a long, long time in between her stay and her writing. It felt sort of squashed together; I rarely felt like I had a hold on the sequence of events, and then she'd put in a bunch of facts about China. While these were most certainly useful and interesting, it took me out of her own story at times and I found myself confused as to where we left off.

When DeWoskin does show her personality, she . . . kind of annoys me. There's this naivete she puts across that I don't really buy, to be honest. I mean, I think it's reasonable to be overwhelmed by a place so different from where she grew up, but she has this "Aw, shucks!" mentality that was irritating, especially considering her father was a sinologist and she had traveled to China frequently as a kid. This is especially so when she discusses how embarrassed she was by the TV show. Oh, come on. If you didn't want to do it, then fine, don't, but how can you possibly be so awkward? It's like she wants to come off as this awesome adventuress AND a humble, thoughtful foreign girl just trying to sweetly make her way through Beijing.

The only reason I'm not just giving it two stars is because I feel like my irritation at the voice was purely subjective. (Edited to say: Perhaps, but the review is my own opinion, so whatevs.) Honestly, if you have an interest in China, this is a light way to start understanding some of the history. The rest is so muddled, though, that I would take her cultural observations with a grain of salt.

[Karen Germain · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first heard of Rachel DeWoskin a few weeks ago, when I picked up her one of her works of fiction, "Big Girl Small", which I loved. I immediately looked up other books by DeWoskin and discovered that she had written a memoir about her time living in China in the mid-90's. The title of her memoir "Foreign Babes In Beijing" refers to the title of the very popular Chinese soap opera that DeWoskin found herself cast in as Jiexi, an all American girl and temptress to one of the married Chinese male characters.

This memoir is just plain crazy and impossible to put down. DeWoskin did not move to China with any interest in acting, but went to the audition on a lark and she just seems to go with the flow with regard to experiences and people that come her way. She probably embraces a foreign culture in the best possible way, making many friends that lead her multiple opportunities.

She has interesting things to report regarding stereotypes ( both through her TV show and in the general public) and how they can perpetuate false ideas. The stereotypes on the soap opera are often completely ridiculous, but shine a light on how even minor perpetuated falsehoods can cause damage when trying to break down cultural barriers. Sometimes people want to believe what they have been told, rather than listen to the person in front of them and form a real relationship. This is not to say that DeWoskin doesn't form many real relationships with Chinese friends, but she is often finding herself having tread lightly and defend her culture and misrepresentations. This theme is rampant throughout the book.

This book was endlessly interesting and a great read if you love memoirs or travel journals.
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