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Ms. Ming's Guide to Civilization
What would it take to make a whole nation of CEO’s and bankers wake up one morning in an existential funk, then decide they’ll be much happier if their share their wealth? Ms. Ming’s Guide to Civilization is a tale of two young women, Ming and Zoe, who do just that— in the hyper-capitalist nerve center of the world, contemporary China. Their feat requires some sleight-of-hand, a lot of private equity, and the talents of a handsome mythical character who just happens to believe one of them is his immortal love. But all is not what it seems in this land called the New China, where business leaders look up to artists and thinkers, calling them society’s civilizers, and the strangest words you can hear are, “I can’t afford it.”
The rebirth begins in the ghostly Sichuan village where Ming was born in 1976, the same year Mao Tse Tung died. In Ming’s mind, the improbably named Sunshine Village is the worst place on earth. The changes afoot in China allow Ming’s family to move away, but by the time she’s in her early 20’s she isn’t much happier in a country where much of the population have become born-again believers in the pursuit of money. Ming’s parents want her to go to America and get an MBA, like her brother has done. For Ming, business school is a ploy to escape to New York and become the writer and love vagabond she’s always wanted to be.
But New York turns out to be running on capitalist excess too, aside from a small struggling-against-extinction circle of friends Ming meets there. Among her friends is Zoe, who grew up with an actress mother in a home that was like an off-off-Broadway stage set with perpetual funding problems. A search for her real father has led Zoe to become a China scholar, however, and she happens to have a plan to write her dissertation on the fog-shrouded outpost where Ming was born. Both twenty-somethings are finding that their dreams get second billing to their 24/7 worries about how to get by when everything costs so much. But when they travel together to Sunshine Village, they discover a mysterious Chinese immortal hanging out in the shadows who just might be able to help them. That immortal, albeit in human form, is none other than the thousand-year-old Monkey King, a popular Buddhist character in Chinese mythology.
The mischievous immortal is equally fed up. Long ago, when he reached Nirvana, it was a place where philosopher kings lived the good life, and he spent his days contemplating the universe and indulging in the occasional menage-a-trois with Virginia Woolf. Since then, though, developers and investment professionals have taken over even this sacred territory, and now you have pay exorbitant prices to occupy your cloud. Confucius himself has been evicted and lost his mind.
Ming first met the Monkey King when she was young girl in the village. She knows his tricks, and she figures out a secret he’s hiding: he’s in love with Zoe. Though he’s down on his luck and living in the body of an emaciated beggar, he can still turn himself into everything from a gnat to a man with the eyes of an accomplished seducer. And he has a plan to use his shapeshifting body to radically alter the society they live in. The only problem is that, like almost everyone with a great idea, he needs an investor to make it happen. Making use of nanotechnology from Sunshine Village Silicon Works Enterprises, capital from the private equity firm that Ming’s brother runs and the Monkey King’s ability to morph into a tiny bug, the three co-conspirators are able to implant a few privileged brains with nanochips. As a result, one morning Ming’s brother and other financiers and CEOs all over China wake up wondering what’s missing in their lives. Hyper-capitalist China becomes a paradise for Ming and Zoe’s ilk. A short-lived paradise, anyway. Artists can grow drunk with power too, and for the rest of the population it’s a lot easier to be a capitalist than a thinker.
The rebirth begins in the ghostly Sichuan village where Ming was born in 1976, the same year Mao Tse Tung died. In Ming’s mind, the improbably named Sunshine Village is the worst place on earth. The changes afoot in China allow Ming’s family to move away, but by the time she’s in her early 20’s she isn’t much happier in a country where much of the population have become born-again believers in the pursuit of money. Ming’s parents want her to go to America and get an MBA, like her brother has done. For Ming, business school is a ploy to escape to New York and become the writer and love vagabond she’s always wanted to be.
But New York turns out to be running on capitalist excess too, aside from a small struggling-against-extinction circle of friends Ming meets there. Among her friends is Zoe, who grew up with an actress mother in a home that was like an off-off-Broadway stage set with perpetual funding problems. A search for her real father has led Zoe to become a China scholar, however, and she happens to have a plan to write her dissertation on the fog-shrouded outpost where Ming was born. Both twenty-somethings are finding that their dreams get second billing to their 24/7 worries about how to get by when everything costs so much. But when they travel together to Sunshine Village, they discover a mysterious Chinese immortal hanging out in the shadows who just might be able to help them. That immortal, albeit in human form, is none other than the thousand-year-old Monkey King, a popular Buddhist character in Chinese mythology.
The mischievous immortal is equally fed up. Long ago, when he reached Nirvana, it was a place where philosopher kings lived the good life, and he spent his days contemplating the universe and indulging in the occasional menage-a-trois with Virginia Woolf. Since then, though, developers and investment professionals have taken over even this sacred territory, and now you have pay exorbitant prices to occupy your cloud. Confucius himself has been evicted and lost his mind.
Ming first met the Monkey King when she was young girl in the village. She knows his tricks, and she figures out a secret he’s hiding: he’s in love with Zoe. Though he’s down on his luck and living in the body of an emaciated beggar, he can still turn himself into everything from a gnat to a man with the eyes of an accomplished seducer. And he has a plan to use his shapeshifting body to radically alter the society they live in. The only problem is that, like almost everyone with a great idea, he needs an investor to make it happen. Making use of nanotechnology from Sunshine Village Silicon Works Enterprises, capital from the private equity firm that Ming’s brother runs and the Monkey King’s ability to morph into a tiny bug, the three co-conspirators are able to implant a few privileged brains with nanochips. As a result, one morning Ming’s brother and other financiers and CEOs all over China wake up wondering what’s missing in their lives. Hyper-capitalist China becomes a paradise for Ming and Zoe’s ilk. A short-lived paradise, anyway. Artists can grow drunk with power too, and for the rest of the population it’s a lot easier to be a capitalist than a thinker.
291 pages, Paperback
Published September 17, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
January 27, 2020
A fabulous romp about two adventuresses, together seeking to surf the roaring wave of capitalism sweeping through China, New York and other places and leaving broken families, broken hearts and broken villages in its wake. Can Ms. Ming, born in one of the poorest and most backward villages of Szechuan, and her American ally, Zoe, of uncertain parentage and numerous skills of seduction, martial arts and computer programming, save civilization? Possibly, Ming believes and fervently hopes, but only with the aid of the Monkey King, come back to earthly existence as the dapper William Kingsley Sun.
And together, they do transform pseudo-Communist China from its voracious, dog-eat-man capitalism to a land of generous, solidary Civilizers, by trickery and clever propaganda and a computer chip slipped through the ear into the brains of the most disgusting exploiters — for a time. But even the magical Monkey King, despite his ease at making 72 transformations and at creating near duplicates of himself, and his thousands of years of history, cannot foresee or forefend the counterforce: Ming, Zoe, and William Kingsley Sun's counter-influencers stir themselves and — well, read the book and see what happens.
Ming may not save the world, and Zoe may not (or maybe yes) unravel her parental mystery, but on their way each enjoys abundant sex. When hyper athletic kick-box artist Zoe gets it on with the flying and self-transforming Monkey King, they sometimes even levitate in ecstasy, while Ming in her days as a high-class, high-priced prostitute (to make money for her new teeth and for saving the world) not only seems to enjoy her salacious encounters, but exploits them for her popular erotic blog.
The latest news from China will make you think that the Monkey King's nemesis are still hard at work, blasting out false news and creating a virus to frighten us all —rather like the mysterious flu that appears late in this adventure.
In all, it's a book to make you laugh and to think a little harder about where we're going as technology and venture capital gnaw or crumble traditions we had thought eternal — and to be grateful that, spite all that happens, the Monkey King is immortal and we may need to call on him again to save us.
And together, they do transform pseudo-Communist China from its voracious, dog-eat-man capitalism to a land of generous, solidary Civilizers, by trickery and clever propaganda and a computer chip slipped through the ear into the brains of the most disgusting exploiters — for a time. But even the magical Monkey King, despite his ease at making 72 transformations and at creating near duplicates of himself, and his thousands of years of history, cannot foresee or forefend the counterforce: Ming, Zoe, and William Kingsley Sun's counter-influencers stir themselves and — well, read the book and see what happens.
Ming may not save the world, and Zoe may not (or maybe yes) unravel her parental mystery, but on their way each enjoys abundant sex. When hyper athletic kick-box artist Zoe gets it on with the flying and self-transforming Monkey King, they sometimes even levitate in ecstasy, while Ming in her days as a high-class, high-priced prostitute (to make money for her new teeth and for saving the world) not only seems to enjoy her salacious encounters, but exploits them for her popular erotic blog.
The latest news from China will make you think that the Monkey King's nemesis are still hard at work, blasting out false news and creating a virus to frighten us all —rather like the mysterious flu that appears late in this adventure.
In all, it's a book to make you laugh and to think a little harder about where we're going as technology and venture capital gnaw or crumble traditions we had thought eternal — and to be grateful that, spite all that happens, the Monkey King is immortal and we may need to call on him again to save us.
December 8, 2019
We need guides to civilization. It's unraveling and rereeling with churning ways of living, ideals, media.... Particularly do we need guides to China, a capitalist, communist, rural metropolitan ancient empire imprisoned within its own Internet. How are we to deal with it? How are we to feel about it? How are we to feel about capitalism, which seems to penetrate everything we care about? Ms. Alexander, a financial writer with special interest in China, shines a penetrating light on it in this novel by describing it, first as it is, and then, as it isn't, and then as it might not be. She begins with two young women of Chinese ancestry more schooled in Wall Street than they want to be. They seek refuge in rural Chinese village where they bond with an iconic mythical figure out of Chinese literature, the Monkey King. They find him in the modern China alive but not flourishing. With their conniving he flourishes and sews a meme of anti-capitalism. China turns into something rather like the ideal society only vaguely imagined by Marx. But it fails to flourish. It is easier to be a capitalist than an artist. Lively plotting, lively characters, laughs and tears, and the pause to think.
January 29, 2020
A charming, funny, poignant read that is rich and evocative, telling the stories of two young women - Ming and Zoe, thrown together seemingly by chance - and their journey to find meaning and fulfillment in their very different lives. The characters are flawed but believable; damaged but infinitely loveable. The author paints a beautiful, descriptive view of rural China- everything from the complicated family dynamics and complicated, nuanced political struggles down to the sometimes decadent descriptions of scenery and food- as well as a stark, realistic view of the life of a young, idealistic American academic and the privileges (and blind spots) they often take for granted. You can't help but to root for Ming, despite her mistakes, despite her sometimes selfish naivete. The same goes for Zoe, whose every foolhardy decision is rooted in a desperation to know who she really is.
This novel is a love letter to China, but also to young womanhood and how growing up means coming to terms with the complicated relationships we have with our men, our families, and sometimes, our very culture. It's a love letter to women's potential, to dreaming outside your means and imagining a better world. Beyond that, though, it's a gut-bustingly funny, futuristic, imaginative work of fiction, teeming with characters that fly off the page with their sometimes whimsical, sometimes heartbreaking shenanigans.
From the very first moment young Ming meets the mythical, larger than life Monkey King, you know you're in for an adventure.
This novel is a love letter to China, but also to young womanhood and how growing up means coming to terms with the complicated relationships we have with our men, our families, and sometimes, our very culture. It's a love letter to women's potential, to dreaming outside your means and imagining a better world. Beyond that, though, it's a gut-bustingly funny, futuristic, imaginative work of fiction, teeming with characters that fly off the page with their sometimes whimsical, sometimes heartbreaking shenanigans.
From the very first moment young Ming meets the mythical, larger than life Monkey King, you know you're in for an adventure.
December 19, 2019
Dares to imagine a post-capitalist utopia.
To me great books are those that leave no perspective unquestioned. Definitely not the protagonists’. And not the author’s own either. In Ms. Ming’s Guide to Civilization, Jan Alexander dares to imagine what would happen if two precocious young women—one from a Chinese village, the other from New York City—envisioned an enlightened, post-capitalist world as well as the technology to make it a reality. But Alexander doesn’t stop there. Ms. Ming never stops questioning. How might a utopia inspired by an artsy Brooklynish neighborhood go horribly wrong? When capitalism, communism, and authoritarianism start blurring together, what’s a young woman who just wants to write all day to do? With an operatic and often hilarious cast of characters—including the far from flawless Ming, her green-card husband, a rapper from a rice paddy, and the legendary Monkey King himself—Alexander crafts a farsighted novel on a grand international scale with a discerning eye for vivid details and unintended consequences.
A favorite bit: "The more questions he pondered, the freer he felt."
To me great books are those that leave no perspective unquestioned. Definitely not the protagonists’. And not the author’s own either. In Ms. Ming’s Guide to Civilization, Jan Alexander dares to imagine what would happen if two precocious young women—one from a Chinese village, the other from New York City—envisioned an enlightened, post-capitalist world as well as the technology to make it a reality. But Alexander doesn’t stop there. Ms. Ming never stops questioning. How might a utopia inspired by an artsy Brooklynish neighborhood go horribly wrong? When capitalism, communism, and authoritarianism start blurring together, what’s a young woman who just wants to write all day to do? With an operatic and often hilarious cast of characters—including the far from flawless Ming, her green-card husband, a rapper from a rice paddy, and the legendary Monkey King himself—Alexander crafts a farsighted novel on a grand international scale with a discerning eye for vivid details and unintended consequences.
A favorite bit: "The more questions he pondered, the freer he felt."
Read
March 19, 2020A tale of two young women, one from China and one from New York, who team up with the immortal Monkey King to remake a world in which capitalism has gone far out of control--today's world. Ming, an aspiring writer from a remote Chinese village, has made it to her dream city of New York, where instead of getting her business degree she gets involved in a crime ring and has to leave the country. But first, she's made friends with Zoe, a grad student studying China. And so, once both are in China, they find themselves remaking that nation's mood and economy--but they, their leader, and their friends find that success in the short run may not mean long-term change. What seems to be a utopia may not be after all.
It's a romp--a pair of poor but feisty friends plus a love-sick shape-changing immortal with a technological utopian plan for the world. Get yourself a copy!
It's a romp--a pair of poor but feisty friends plus a love-sick shape-changing immortal with a technological utopian plan for the world. Get yourself a copy!
March 8, 2020
I love when I stumble upon a good literary novel. This one drew me into rural China and an encounter with an otherworldly creature, then held me as I followed two women through NYC Academia, and back to China. The story has a lot to say about human nature, politics, and post-capitalist idealism, but it was the father-longing journey of Zoe that hooked me emotionally. Also the prose. This book is gorgeously-written, and somehow manages to make you smell, taste and touch everything in it. Definitely worth checking out this magical novel.
July 17, 2020
Both whimsical and sobering, Ms. Ming's Guide to Civilization explores the phenomenon of globalization, consumerism, and economic inequality in the context of China's rise to global dominance. The storytelling is fresh and fun, and the author manages to integrate her deep knowledge of China's financial markets and the powerful forces therein, with the folklore and myth of a rich and ancient culture. Though the tale has an epic sweep, spanning two continents and thousands of years, the writing never loses its intimate embrace of these charming characters.
April 15, 2020
Jan Alexander fearlessly lampoons capitalism, communism, and the self-delusions of the entrepreneurs who would be Gods. This book -- a magical realist romp -- covers a lot of territory, from Brooklyn, NY to a rural town in China; from organized crime to nanotechnology. Heady ideas co-mingle with romance and lust, to create a book that manages to be quite informative despite being wildly entertaining.
November 16, 2019
I blame Ms. Ming’s Guide to Civilization for the bags under my eyes. I was riveted from the first line to the last by this twisted tale of two unlikely female friends, their adventures in and out of China, and how money enchants and corrupts. Ms. Ming’s is a timely, rich and layered tale deftly handled by this gifted storyteller. I didn’t want to turn the last page.
November 20, 2019
what a story! I had no idea what I was stepping into, but it gripped my and I stayed gripped till the last page. Not only a wonderful and well-told tale, it opened up a new way of looking at the world through the eyes of finance. It has some of everything I want in a book.
April 3, 2021
One bit of advice for prospective readers of Ms. Ming’s Guide to Civilization: Don’t blink. From the moment Jan Alexander’s protagonist, Ming Cheng, meets a minor god called the Monkey King in Yang Guang, China to the moment she drives off with her compatriots into the blazing American sunset, events unfold at breakneck speed, traveling through time, leaping across continents, even shifting shapes.
Alexander’s highly entertaining, bi-cultural gambol through the darkest depths and brightest highs of human civilization, from Chinese and US prisons to Nirvana, with references to Siddhartha selling short on the celestial stock exchange and tourists clamoring for Rilke’s poetry along the way, never breaks stride. Part ribald satire, part polemic, Ms. Ming at various turns brings to mind Gore Vidal’s Kalki, Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, and some shades of grey E.L. James missed.
The battle waged on two continents throughout Alexander’s story and through the individual adventures of her characters is for the hearts and minds of humankind. Just as the continents are plagued by the human passions of power-mongering and greed, so her characters struggle with setting their personal passions aside for a perceived greater good. The pace and scope of the exploits of Ms. Ming, the Monkey King, and his one true love are designed to open your eyes. Don’t blink.
Alexander’s highly entertaining, bi-cultural gambol through the darkest depths and brightest highs of human civilization, from Chinese and US prisons to Nirvana, with references to Siddhartha selling short on the celestial stock exchange and tourists clamoring for Rilke’s poetry along the way, never breaks stride. Part ribald satire, part polemic, Ms. Ming at various turns brings to mind Gore Vidal’s Kalki, Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, and some shades of grey E.L. James missed.
The battle waged on two continents throughout Alexander’s story and through the individual adventures of her characters is for the hearts and minds of humankind. Just as the continents are plagued by the human passions of power-mongering and greed, so her characters struggle with setting their personal passions aside for a perceived greater good. The pace and scope of the exploits of Ms. Ming, the Monkey King, and his one true love are designed to open your eyes. Don’t blink.
March 27, 2025
Wow, what a ride it was to read Jan Alexander's book, MS. MING'S GUIDE TO CIVILIZATION. If you have ever thought of changing the world, Ming and Zoe make it possible. This is a book you have to be able to take your "fact checker hat" off and ride with the wind as the two 20-year-old ladies master the world of finance, emotions, flight, multiple personages,, and so many other fun options.
I won this book in a contest and was excited to read it. It blew me away. I can't wait to share it.
Thanks Regal House for the opportunity to preview this fun and stunning book.
I won this book in a contest and was excited to read it. It blew me away. I can't wait to share it.
Thanks Regal House for the opportunity to preview this fun and stunning book.
May 11, 2024
I don't finish a lot of books, so I took a huge sigh of relief when I started Ms. Alexander's novel. The sentences are beautiful and swept me away on an imaginative, twisty journey that I loved. The characters are grounded while the story floats on puffy clouds, but somehow the two work together perfectly. I'm very happy I stumbled on this book.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews