Foreign Babes in Beijing, subtitled Behind the Scenes of a New China, is a memoir published in 2005 by Rachel DeWoskin. Production is also underway on a movie of the same name based on the book, to be directed by Alice Wu. The memoir details the author's personal experiences in Beijing shortly after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 as an actress in a Chinese soap opera. DeWoskin lived in Beijing from 1994 through 1999, and in that time watched the city grow and change as China modernized its economy.
The soap opera, entitled 'Foreign Babes in Beijing' (Chinese: 洋妞在北京, pinyin: yáng niu zài běi jīng) features two pairs of Chinese men and American women. In one of which, Rachel plays Jiexi, a seductress who lures away her married counterpart, Li Tianming. In another, a more demure and traditional exchange student falls in love and marries Li Tianming's younger brother. Foreign Babes was something of a cultural pheomenon in China, with a viewership of 600 million.
The memoir follows DeWoskin's life as well as her character's plotline, and with an attention to detail and cultural analysis she inherited from her father, Kenneth DeWoskin, who was a noted Sinologist at the University of Michigan. From romantic interactions to globalization, Rachel DeWoskin observes China from an outsider's perspective with candor and humor.
Famous quotes containing the words foreign and/or babes:
“We are apt to say that a foreign policy is successful only when the country, or at any rate the governing class, is united behind it. In reality, every line of policy is repudiated by a section, often by an influential section, of the country concerned. A foreign minister who waited until everyone agreed with him would have no foreign policy at all.”
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