China High

Zhao Zhan (who goes by ZZ) is a Chinese national educated from middle school through high school and law school in the US. He’s in a unique position to translate for the rest of the world the sometimes stunning and often confusing country that China is today. ZZ returned to China and his life there quickly became a real life version of something a Bret Easton Ellis character might have done in 1980’s Manhattan: he gets all the glamorous girls he wants, lives in a sleek cutting-edge loft, and doesn’t have any problem getting drugs. He also starts a business - something like Urban Fetch was here in New York City about ten years ago - that sends out squadrons of deliverymen on bicycles to give the new moneyed class of Beijing-er anything they want, fast. But as stylish and successfully entrepreneurial as he is, ZZ gets caught: thrown into prison, no matter how hard he tries to bribe his way out of it (hey, it’s always worked before), and left to actually think about the life he’s leading. Studded with great, fast observations about the lives of the cool capitalist kids and the peasantry who make those lives possible, China High is swiftly written and surprisingly insightful about what urban China is like today. ZZ’s slang quickly gives you a feel for the types of people that fill the streets of Beijing, from the newly rich Armani Wongs to the poor and dirty Spit-and-Squatters.