Leftover in China by Roseann Lake

Author:Roseann Lake
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2018-02-15T05:00:00+00:00

Smoke and Mirrors

After filing her resignation, June decided it would be a good idea to take some time off to travel and think about whether she’d like to take another job in law or go back to school for a degree in art history. This decision was completely flummoxing to her mother, who didn’t fully understand why she left her job in the first place. Nonetheless, to catch up and celebrate her victory over her tyrannical former boss, we meet for dinner and are joined by Ivy, who arrives at the restaurant resplendent as usual.

When the three of us need to communicate, we use Weixin, or WeChat. A cross between Facebook, Twitter, Skype, WhatsApp, and Instagram, WeChat is a convenient way to chat with contacts and follow their lives through a microblog-like feed of “moments” in which users can post pictures, text, links, and other random musings peppered with a magical selection of emojis. I use WeChat daily—it’s essentially become my go-to texting app—but I had no idea that it was a key weapon in Ivy’s man arsenal.

“You need to post pictures of expensive things,” she explains to June. “So the men following you understand that you have exquisite taste.”

Ivy opens up the “moments” pages of a few of her protégés, to give examples. She’s now beyond this WeChat stage, but reassures June that it was very useful in getting her to where she was now.

“On your birthday, for instance,” she says, “post pictures of all the designer gifts you receive.”

June looks completely lost. She’d spent her last birthday at a Korean spa with a few of her best gal pals, but hadn’t gotten any extravagant gifts to flaunt beyond a few cosmetics. “And if you don’t get any expensive gifts, post pictures of other people’s gifts, making it seem like they’re yours,” Ivy continues. “With a few words of gratitude, of course, so it doesn’t seem like you’re boasting,” she adds. “Convincing pictures you can find online are also OK. You just need to make it look like the gifts were given to you.”

“The same goes for dinners,” she says, as if quoting The Confucian Analects. “If you go to a chic restaurant on a date, or even just with friends, post pictures of it. Men need to see you in nice places, so that they know to take you to them. They’ll cut corners whenever they can, but if you set the bar very high, their fear of coming up short will ensure they treat you well.”

I can see that June is excited to be learning this information, but not yet entirely convincd of the methodology.

“Next, you need attractive photos. Legs and cleavage. Nothing tasteless, but the pictures should be sexy.”

Since June doesn’t live far from the restaurant where we met for dinner, Ivy offers to help orchestrate a small photo shoot at her apartment that evening.

Once we arrive—Ivy drives over in her Porsche, June and I teeter over on my e-bike—Ivy proceeds to sit on the daybed in June’s apartment, which has a magnificent view of the Central Business District of Beijing.

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