Post by Bozur on Dec 30, 2007 16:33:38 GMT -5
A Joker Woos a President, and Keyboards Clatter
Christie Johnston for The International Herald Tribune
"Chinese People lack a sense of humor." Yang Erche Namu
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By JOYCE HOR-CHUNG LAU
Published: December 29, 2007
Hong Kong
YOU never know what to expect from Namu.
She’s a sex symbol who wrote a best seller. She’s a TV star and lingerie designer, an ex-model and ex-singer. She opened both a museum dedicated to tribal culture and what she calls a “love hotel,” outfitted with opium beds. She’s a jet-setter and perennial gossip-magnet, and sometimes it seems as if all of China either loves her or loves to hate her.
Yang Erche Namu, 41, cultivates an image of fearlessness with stories like how she fled her isolated village in the Himalayas at 14 as her mother hurled rocks at her back. But something had obviously unnerved her the other day, even as she made her usual entrance, with long swinging hair, tight black dress, jangling jewelry and teetering heels.
Her mobile phone was beeping madly, which was nothing new. Nor was it that she had provided the masses with yet another juicy tidbit: a video of her marriage proposal to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, which was posted on a news Web site just days before news media reports linked him with the Italian ex-model Carla Bruni.
But this time, Namu, as she calls herself, seemed genuinely taken aback by the vehemence of the Chinese public’s reaction.
“I’m a bit scared,” she said. “Well, maybe not scared. A bit uncomfortable. Every single newspaper has ‘Namu has proposed to Sarkozy.’ They are saying that this woman has made the country lose face.”
COMMENTS about her on Chinese blogs are full of obscenities, condemnations and threats. It does not help that she once caused a stir by saying she preferred Western lovers to Chinese ones.
Namu is well aware that, particularly in China today, small actions have the power to set off mass discontent. Mobs of Web users have been known to identify, locate and harass people they read about, usually for what are seen as moral lapses, like sexual infidelity. Cybervigilantes send huge volumes of abusive messages to the phones, faxes and electronic mailboxes of their targets; some victims have even been stalked by thugs.
Being a provocateur has its downside. The government has been known to clamp down on almost anything that becomes suddenly too popular and outside its control.
Namu noted that “Super Boy,” a talent-hunt program on which she was a judge, had been removed from Chinese television; she said it was a move against her “for being too famous.” The Sunday Times of London had run an article with the headline “How Yang Erche Namu gave China the right to vote,” and the subtitle “Hundreds of millions of Chinese are voting for the first time — for their TV idols.”
She was hoping her latest publicity stunt, wooing Mr. Sarkozy in public, would not cause problems, particularly since having married and divorced an American photographer for National Geographic, she is now an American citizen. “Chinese people lack a sense of humor,” she said.
Then, as dramatically as she had begun, she changed tone. She cracked a wide smile and explained that it had started as a joke.
Several months ago, the Chinese edition of Cosmopolitan asked her to write an article about eligible bachelors and gave her a list, mostly actors from Hong Kong or mainland China. She responded that she had nothing good to say about any of them. “I never date actors,” she said. “After all, I was one myself. They can be self-centered and in love with their own image. Male actors can be stingy, both financially and sexually.”
She was reading in the bath when she came across an article about Mr. Sarkozy’s divorce. “I thought, ‘I have my idea!’ What a great eligible bachelor. I’ve always loved the way he dresses, the way he talks, the way he takes his mother traveling with him. I think he must be a good kisser.”
Soon after, she made the video.
She joked that her name, pronounced somewhere between “namoo” and “lamoo,” sounded like the French “l’amour.”
“It’s a song in France,” she said, and started to sing “L’amour, l’amour, l’amour, l’amour,” while tapping her fingertips on the table. “If I become the first lady of France, they will already have a song for me,” she said. “I will be a historic first, the first Chinese French president’s wife. I will have giant parties in the Louvre’s gardens and serve yak butter tea.”
LIKE many other aspects of her life, the proposal was out of step with Namu’s ethnic heritage. She comes from the Mosuo, a tiny minority group of about 40,000 people who have their own language and religion. They are rare among Chinese ethnic groups in that they are matrilineal and do not believe in wedding vows. Instead they have so-called walking marriages, a system of serial monogamy. As long as they stay within the Mosuo community, women can choose and change lovers at will, have children with multiple men and raise their families in extended, female-headed households.
After leaving her village, where there were no telephones or flush toilets, Namu made it to Shanghai, where she pursued her pop-star career. But she has often used her background to draw attention to herself. In 1997, she became known in her home country for her Chinese-language memoir, “Leaving the Kingdom of Daughters,” whose description of her foreign lovers caused ripples among more conservative segments of society.
NAMU made her name internationally when her English-language memoir, “Leaving Mother Lake” (Little, Brown, 2003), became a best seller. She worked with an anthropologist, Christine Mathieu, to tell of her upbringing among the Mosuo near Lugu Lake in a remote part of southwestern China. She became better known to American and British audiences when she was featured in a 2004 documentary about the Himalayas by Michael Palin, formerly of Monty Python.
Namu says she used these opportunities to bring tourism and much-needed development to her people. Her detractors accuse her of sensationalizing the Mosuo and exploiting her roots to further her own celebrity. Criticism increased when sex tourists began flooding in. “Now we have a road, and we don’t have to walk seven days to get out,” Namu said, defending her work in the area. “Kids can go to school. But people still say bad things about me. How can I be responsible for everything? I am exhausted from their needs and criticism.”
She said she tried to counter negative stereotypes. “That’s one of the reasons I built a museum,” she said. “Tourists were not really seeing the place.” Still, she has no qualms about also profiting from tourism. Her own Web site, Namu.com.cn, features advertisements for the two guesthouses she built, including her so-called love hotel.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, “and is based on the 14 positions.”
Which 14 positions?
“You know, like in the Kama Sutra, only Chinese,” she said, adding, “I was thinking of drawing a map to show the 14 positions, but I didn’t have time.”
www.nytimes.com/
Christie Johnston for The International Herald Tribune
"Chinese People lack a sense of humor." Yang Erche Namu
Article Tools Sponsored By
By JOYCE HOR-CHUNG LAU
Published: December 29, 2007
Hong Kong
YOU never know what to expect from Namu.
She’s a sex symbol who wrote a best seller. She’s a TV star and lingerie designer, an ex-model and ex-singer. She opened both a museum dedicated to tribal culture and what she calls a “love hotel,” outfitted with opium beds. She’s a jet-setter and perennial gossip-magnet, and sometimes it seems as if all of China either loves her or loves to hate her.
Yang Erche Namu, 41, cultivates an image of fearlessness with stories like how she fled her isolated village in the Himalayas at 14 as her mother hurled rocks at her back. But something had obviously unnerved her the other day, even as she made her usual entrance, with long swinging hair, tight black dress, jangling jewelry and teetering heels.
Her mobile phone was beeping madly, which was nothing new. Nor was it that she had provided the masses with yet another juicy tidbit: a video of her marriage proposal to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, which was posted on a news Web site just days before news media reports linked him with the Italian ex-model Carla Bruni.
But this time, Namu, as she calls herself, seemed genuinely taken aback by the vehemence of the Chinese public’s reaction.
“I’m a bit scared,” she said. “Well, maybe not scared. A bit uncomfortable. Every single newspaper has ‘Namu has proposed to Sarkozy.’ They are saying that this woman has made the country lose face.”
COMMENTS about her on Chinese blogs are full of obscenities, condemnations and threats. It does not help that she once caused a stir by saying she preferred Western lovers to Chinese ones.
Namu is well aware that, particularly in China today, small actions have the power to set off mass discontent. Mobs of Web users have been known to identify, locate and harass people they read about, usually for what are seen as moral lapses, like sexual infidelity. Cybervigilantes send huge volumes of abusive messages to the phones, faxes and electronic mailboxes of their targets; some victims have even been stalked by thugs.
Being a provocateur has its downside. The government has been known to clamp down on almost anything that becomes suddenly too popular and outside its control.
Namu noted that “Super Boy,” a talent-hunt program on which she was a judge, had been removed from Chinese television; she said it was a move against her “for being too famous.” The Sunday Times of London had run an article with the headline “How Yang Erche Namu gave China the right to vote,” and the subtitle “Hundreds of millions of Chinese are voting for the first time — for their TV idols.”
She was hoping her latest publicity stunt, wooing Mr. Sarkozy in public, would not cause problems, particularly since having married and divorced an American photographer for National Geographic, she is now an American citizen. “Chinese people lack a sense of humor,” she said.
Then, as dramatically as she had begun, she changed tone. She cracked a wide smile and explained that it had started as a joke.
Several months ago, the Chinese edition of Cosmopolitan asked her to write an article about eligible bachelors and gave her a list, mostly actors from Hong Kong or mainland China. She responded that she had nothing good to say about any of them. “I never date actors,” she said. “After all, I was one myself. They can be self-centered and in love with their own image. Male actors can be stingy, both financially and sexually.”
She was reading in the bath when she came across an article about Mr. Sarkozy’s divorce. “I thought, ‘I have my idea!’ What a great eligible bachelor. I’ve always loved the way he dresses, the way he talks, the way he takes his mother traveling with him. I think he must be a good kisser.”
Soon after, she made the video.
She joked that her name, pronounced somewhere between “namoo” and “lamoo,” sounded like the French “l’amour.”
“It’s a song in France,” she said, and started to sing “L’amour, l’amour, l’amour, l’amour,” while tapping her fingertips on the table. “If I become the first lady of France, they will already have a song for me,” she said. “I will be a historic first, the first Chinese French president’s wife. I will have giant parties in the Louvre’s gardens and serve yak butter tea.”
LIKE many other aspects of her life, the proposal was out of step with Namu’s ethnic heritage. She comes from the Mosuo, a tiny minority group of about 40,000 people who have their own language and religion. They are rare among Chinese ethnic groups in that they are matrilineal and do not believe in wedding vows. Instead they have so-called walking marriages, a system of serial monogamy. As long as they stay within the Mosuo community, women can choose and change lovers at will, have children with multiple men and raise their families in extended, female-headed households.
After leaving her village, where there were no telephones or flush toilets, Namu made it to Shanghai, where she pursued her pop-star career. But she has often used her background to draw attention to herself. In 1997, she became known in her home country for her Chinese-language memoir, “Leaving the Kingdom of Daughters,” whose description of her foreign lovers caused ripples among more conservative segments of society.
NAMU made her name internationally when her English-language memoir, “Leaving Mother Lake” (Little, Brown, 2003), became a best seller. She worked with an anthropologist, Christine Mathieu, to tell of her upbringing among the Mosuo near Lugu Lake in a remote part of southwestern China. She became better known to American and British audiences when she was featured in a 2004 documentary about the Himalayas by Michael Palin, formerly of Monty Python.
Namu says she used these opportunities to bring tourism and much-needed development to her people. Her detractors accuse her of sensationalizing the Mosuo and exploiting her roots to further her own celebrity. Criticism increased when sex tourists began flooding in. “Now we have a road, and we don’t have to walk seven days to get out,” Namu said, defending her work in the area. “Kids can go to school. But people still say bad things about me. How can I be responsible for everything? I am exhausted from their needs and criticism.”
She said she tried to counter negative stereotypes. “That’s one of the reasons I built a museum,” she said. “Tourists were not really seeing the place.” Still, she has no qualms about also profiting from tourism. Her own Web site, Namu.com.cn, features advertisements for the two guesthouses she built, including her so-called love hotel.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, “and is based on the 14 positions.”
Which 14 positions?
“You know, like in the Kama Sutra, only Chinese,” she said, adding, “I was thinking of drawing a map to show the 14 positions, but I didn’t have time.”
www.nytimes.com/