Is it true that some Chinese will do outrageous things and cause controversy for fame? What are the craziest things you've seen lately?

People have redefined the definition of shame, a Confucian value. Now there is shamelessness. Before people were very modest. Now they just want to brag about everything. Why? People are very competitive and opportunities are still relatively thin. So people have to fight to get ahead. So you can't be modest anymore, and if you want to be very a good girl and very appropriate, no one pays attention to you. People are learning how to get attention very fast, and they are so creative. There's a woman who thinks she's the most beautiful woman in the world, and she talks about how many men have pursued her. Nobody believed her, but she was very consistent. Every day she posted tons of pictures to the Internet bulletin boards of Beijing and Shanghai universities doing all kinds of weird moves. She got famous and she got an endorsement from some company.

A sense of honesty isn't there anymore. People want to make money in all kinds of ways. I have a friend who just bought a Hummer, a long stretch one. He drove it around in Xintiandi (new chic area in Shanghai) and instantly got famous. His wife is in Canada taking care of their baby and I saw news about him going out with a movie star.

You discuss a new social stratum in China defined by income and status.

I used to live in Silicon Valley. People I have interviewed or was associated with have become billionaires back in China. And childhood friends that I was associated with in Beijing, the very privileged with all the right connections, became very rich. I was very surprised when I went back to see these nouveau riche. They are called xingui and they are at the top. They are real estate developers. High-ranking officials' daughters and sons are also a part of this group. They work for foreign enterprises or even a Chinese company and can make $100,000 a year.

Under them are the wannabes, xiaozi, or petty bourgeoisie. They make about $600 or $1,200 per month, but they know all the name brands. They don't necessarily possess them, but they know all of them. They want to live a good life like the nouveau riche and they work very hard for it. They like to drink coffee and from time to time they like to go to a Western restaurant. They like to spend one month's salary to go to a jazz concert or to the Rolling Stones show.

I'm a bobo, a bourgeois bohemian. I have a house in California, I have a house in China. I own a car there. I wear several brands, but I'm not rich.

What impact did your South China Morning Post column have?

I started to write the column in 2002 and quickly it became the most popular column in the Post and especially on the Web site. I got a lot of response from Europe, America, men and women. Among Chinese, and this is a little unfortunate, my columns have been used as a fashion bible. They looked at whom I made fun of, and people followed it to know where to go, or the brand they should wear, or the thing they should talk about. But it was a satire.

In the background of growing wealth in your book, you discuss the hardships of the poor. Protests are intensifying in the countryside. What do you see happening with this rising tension between rich and poor?

Sometimes I feel guilty going to American supermarkets or Wal-Mart. Things are so cheap for me. I think of the lives of workers and the migrant workers in Shenzhen I met. They are at the bottom of the global economic chain. They work 12 to 16 hours a day and they have maybe two or three days off a month. They live in a dormitory room with 8 to 20 people.

But still some of them are pretty happy because life is much better than life in the countryside. Right now the major conflict is land. Some of the villagers protest because local party sectors sell land to real estate developers and they get the lion's share. They give the peasants compensation next to nothing. So this has been the major conflict. The prices for things peasants produce are controlled and can be very unfair. The more they sell, sometimes the more they owe to the government.

But right now I like the job President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao are doing. Before, no one talked about AIDS or peasants' issues. Now they are starting to talk about these things. I think they know the situation very well and they know how serious it is.

Was it difficult for you to readjust to China after spending a decade in California, two years at Berkeley?

When I first came to the United States, I considered myself a Chinese nationalist, like many, many Chinese students. But then quickly I thought this was the right place for me. I thought maybe I became brainwashed in China. So I quickly found a difference between me and my Chinese friends here. They still sing songs, old revolutionary songs. They are very nostalgic about the Communist period. But I blended in well in America. I thought like people here. Individualism and freedom of creativity, these are things I really value. When I go back even now, I don't talk to some of my friends in China about politics. When we talk about politics, we talk about Taiwan. They wear all the Western brands, but they say the problem with the U.S. is they want to bully China. Some of them compare McDonald's and KFC to a conspiracy like opium. But their lifestyle, everything is American.

At Berkeley I was so anti-establishment. I went to Burning Man and burned gas on everything. Now I don't do that anymore, it's too low for me [laughs]. I've started using top brands, I've totally changed.

Pueng Vongs is an editor at New America Media in San Francisco. Her last article for the magazine was "The Long Afterlife of Chairman Mao."

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