Underplayed Gems

Foreign Babes in Beijing

Foreign Babes in Beijing poster
Country
United States
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this series is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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How it feels

An American woman in 1990s Beijing navigates her double life as a soap opera actress and an observer of China's rapid modernization. She recounts how her own experiences mirrored those of her on-screen character.

reflectiveobservantbittersweetpersonalcalmunderstatedcultural-dissonanceintimate

What happens

Foreign Babes in Beijing, subtitled Behind the Scenes of a New China, is a memoir published in 2005 by Rachel DeWoskin. The memoir details the author's personal experiences in Beijing from 1994 through 1999, during which time she lived in Beijing and watched the city grow and change as China modernized its economy. The book's title is a reference to a soap opera in which DeWoskin appeared, Foreign Babes in Beijing (Chinese: 洋妞在北京, Yáng niū zài Běijīng), which features two pairs of Chinese men and American women. One pair features Rachel playing Jiexi, a seductress who lures away her married counterpart, Li Tianming; and the other features a more demure and traditional exchange student who falls in love with, and marries, Li Tianming's younger brother. Foreign Babes in Beijing was something of a cultural phenomenon in China, with a viewership of 600 million. The memoir follows DeWoskin's life as well as her character's plotline, and has an attention to detail and cultural analysis which she inherited from her father, Kenneth DeWoskin, who was a noted Sinologist at the University of Michigan. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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