China Rich Girlfriend

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Handbags, Cars, and Watches

These items function in the novel as symbols of wealth that point to The Importance of Image and Status. The more exclusive or hard-to-procure the brand, the better it serves as a status symbol. Carlton and Michael both deal in antique cars, though Carlton is interested primarily in speed and has developed an import business, while Michael wants to put his cars on display to show off his wealth. Richie brags about his watch to Nick, pointing out all the special features he will never use, suggesting that he is not interested in function but display. Nick, on the other hand, is wearing his grandfather Sir James Young’s watch, less out of fashion than sentiment, showing Nick’s own priorities and set of values. When Shaoyen wants to thank people for helping with her son, she gives them Hermès handbags, which are distinctive mostly for being elaborately expensive. When Rachel is in Paris, she protests at the cost of a designer bag, and then watches a wealthy Chinese woman buy an entire wall display full of them. These high-value, designer items symbolize aspirations of cultural sophistication but are more overtly used as social currency, signaling the status their owner is eager to display.

Food

Food also functions in the novel as a marker of class and wealth. Eddie is not surprised, in the prologue, to run across his aunt Eleanor in the restaurant where he’s bringing Bao Shaoyen for dinner, as wealthy Asians in London tend to choose one of three places to eat. Various characters brag about their private chef, for instance Colette’s sushi chef and the sommelier solely employed by the Bing family. Kevin Kwan adds a footnote that the best food in Singapore is found not in restaurants but in the swanky private dining clubs (109). Colette tries to impress the Baos with her sophistication by ordering an expensive delicacy, bird’s nest soup, asking that hers be sprinkled with 24-carat gold shavings.

Kwan uses the dining habits of various characters to explore a spectrum of attitudes toward the use of food as a symbol of status. As with Colette’s example, the pursuit of good food is occasionally mocked by the novel as a pretentious tool utilized to convey a character’s taste or status, while others find true enjoyment in food found in humbler contexts. For example, Carlton takes Rachel to a restaurant where the posh gather in humble surroundings to get home-cooked food. While Richie Yang tries to impress his guests with an expensive restaurant, Colette’s older relatives, visiting her in Paris, make ramen on a hot plate in their room, choosing to spend their money on items they can display, not luxuries that will disappear.

Throughout the novel, food also provides an opportunity for social and familial bonding—demonstrating an alternative set of values independent of wealth and status. Nick and Rachel’s affection for street food or regional dishes indicate they are down-to-earth and unpretentious. They enjoy good food for its flavor, texture, and nourishment, not for what it conveys to the people around them about their status. In this way food serves to symbolize a character’s attitude toward wealth, its uses, and its display.

The Palace of Eighteen Perfections

In China Rich Girlfriend, the distinction between the vulgar rich and the sophisticated rich is marked, in part, by the appreciation for art. Michael’s display of wealth is considered vulgar because he’s only interested in valuable cars and antique weapons, while Astrid is sophisticated because she can recognize artistry and historical value. The priceless Chinese painting known as The Palace of Eighteen Perfections becomes an object of contention among various parties, who want it for different reasons. Araminta wants it to display in one of her mother’s hotels. Astrid wants to donate the painting to the art museum. Corinna’s clients, Lester and Valerie Liu, want to show their taste and sophistication by acquiring the painting. And Kitty simply wants to win, which is why she pays the amount of money she does. The piece is just one of many acquisitions in the collection of Jack Bing, displayed to impress guests.

Kwan’s invention is a tribute to the actual piece known as The Palace of Nine Perfections, a work completed in 1691 by Qing dynasty artist Yuan Jiang. This detailed and colorful painting, stretching across 12 separate silk scrolls, depicts a legendary 8th-century imperial residence located near present-day Xi’an, said to be so vast one required a horse to travel between halls. The artwork is currently held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Kwan plays on, and one-ups, this classical masterpiece by making his Eighteen Perfections a work of 24 scrolls, each seven feet tall, completed by Yuan Jiang in 1693 and thought to be removed from China during the Second Opium War in 1860 (23-24). The invented piece, then, is even more valuable than its supposed predecessor. At the end of the novel, when Kitty is having the painting hung in the historic and exclusive Singapore house that Jack bought for her, the painting symbolizes that she has arrived where she wishes to be, and she’ll be an envied and admired hostess for having it in her house. This competition reduces culture and history to just another proving ground for the very rich, rather than art having intrinsic value.