http://www.jia.li jia li Wed, 30 Nov 2011 21:57:23 +0000 http://www.jia.li en http://jia.li/Yang-Li-Wei http://jia.li/following/jia.li/Yang-Li-Wei Wed, 30 Nov 2011 21:57:23 +0000 jia li 2389272 <img src="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2389272/5_1_2048.jpg" border="0" width="1250" height="546" width_o="1250" height_o="546" src_o="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2389272/5_1_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2389272/5_2.jpg" border="0" width="368" height="428" width_o="368" height_o="428" src_o="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2389272/5_2_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2389272/5_2_b.jpg" border="0" width="356" height="1057" width_o="356" height_o="1057" src_o="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2389272/5_2_b_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2389272/5_3_b_2048.jpg" border="0" width="1203" height="351" width_o="1203" height_o="351" src_o="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2389272/5_3_b_o.jpg" align="left" /> "I haven't thought about finding a boyfriend. The only thing I think about is trying to switch jobs. The most important thing, what am I going to do in the future? But I don't know. " Yang Li Wei works in an IT firm in northern Beijing, outside of the fifth ring road. It's an area choked with office buildings and young people trudging to and from work with laptop bags and headphones. The company she works for is prestigious and foreign-owned. The men in the company are coveted by women, who sometimes send flattering messages that get tossed into the pile of pamphlets offering takeaway services. "These kind of IT guys are known as economical men. They have a good job and stable income," she explained, while passing groups of guys all dressed in identical dark outfits. "In my research lab, I'm the only person that's in this age range. I don't know most of the people here. They are all men, most of them are married. " Yang just turned 27. Fresh-faced and casually trendy, she looks much younger than most people at her workplace. "A lot of people here work all day, go eat dinner, then go back to their desks to work overtime. They don't get paid extra unless they work on Saturday. Most people work overtime out of habit. It's a lifestyle. " Yang spends most of her days at work too. She works from morning to late evening, then tucks into a local shop for a bowl of noodles. After dinner she comes back to her desk to read a bit, sometimes stretching or doing light exercise in her cubicle. "I never leave work early, because the buses are too packed. After 10pm I can get reimbursement for a taxi ride home." At noon, the company gives an hour and a half to eat lunch and relax. The network proxy is lifted and workers can surf the Internet as they please. Yang speed-eats through her lunch, takes a brisk walk and spends the rest of her lunch hour reading entertainment and political websites normally restricted outside the firewall. "My job now is a software engineer. I make an average salary as a software engineer, but better than an average college grad. I don't really like my job. When I chose it I didn't understand what it was. I just wanted a good job with a good path. My first boyfriend chose my major for me." Her first boyfriend was a high school sweetheart with whom she had a relationship for seven years. The first two years were in high school, when they saw each other daily. After that he moved to Zhengzhou to join the military academy, and Yang moved to Xi An to go to college. They still maintained a long-distance relationship, seeing each other three times a year. "At the time I thought that was plenty of boyfriend. So long as I had someone who cared about me, and someone who I could say was my boyfriend, I could be free to do other things. My classmates were in relationships where they were constantly glued together. I didn't like that. He was in military school, I was in college in Xi An. At first we missed each other, but then we got used to it. " Chinese students choose their upon entering college. Yang studied communications engineering from undergraduate to graduate school, without any interest in the subject. "I've never thought too much about these things. It seemed natural at the time. My boyfriend took it upon himself to do the research for me. He studied Computer science." Yang's childhood was spent in Dong Bei, the northeastern region of China, cooking for her parents while they farmed. "When I was little the only thing I could think about was getting into college. " Her family slowly saved up enough money to put Yang through school. Her poor background made a significant impact on her during college. She felt the weight of her financial burden on her family constantly. Her major guaranteed her a job after graduation, and that seemed to be enough. In college she went through bouts of intense homesickness. School holidays would come and she'd go home, not wanting to come back, while her classmates all complained about how boring their home towns were. After graduation, she moved to Beijing and the homesickness got better. "We talk on the phone a lot. They started giving me pressure about marriage." "I've never thought about my most ideal type of boyfriend. Probably the one you meet that changes your heart would be that one. My first boyfriend and second boyfriend were completely different. I think finding different types of people means that in your heart you have many different needs. My first boyfriend was someone that after spending time together we started to have feelings for each other. It was a dependent relationship, more like having a brother or father. That was his attitude to me. At the same time he seemed very protective. He would want me to text him when I went places. I told him this was unacceptable behavior but he said he couldn't change it. I had to consider my future and family with him. Because he was a soldier I would have to follow him and go to his town, and figure out what my job would be there. That was not what I wanted. " Yang met her second boyfriend while traveling after college. After saving up for a long time, she was able to travel around China for two months. He was a foreigner. They traveled together the entire time, then came back to Beijing together. She didn't tell her parents. "We weren't suited to each other. We lived together too quickly and it was a little uncomfortable. I didn't have my own time or space to do what I wanted, and later became accustomed to this kind of lifestyle. " <img src="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2389272/5_4_b_2048.jpg" border="0" width="1202" height="594" width_o="1202" height_o="594" src_o="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2389272/5_4_b_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2389272/5_4.jpg" border="0" width="647" height="473" width_o="647" height_o="473" src_o="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2389272/5_4_o.jpg" align="left" /> http://jia.li/lily http://jia.li/following/jia.li/lily Wed, 30 Nov 2011 19:14:49 +0000 jia li 2388138 <img src="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2388138/4__2048.jpg" border="0" width="727" height="607" width_o="727" height_o="607" src_o="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2388138/4__o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2388138/4_2.jpg" border="0" width="506" height="637" width_o="506" height_o="637" src_o="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2388138/4_2_o.jpg" align="left" /> A friend exclaimed, "She has the body of a twenty year old!" That much was evident from the vacation albums Lily had posted on her website. Here she was...bikini-bared on a beach in Vietnam, petting a dog in Turkey, and plucking fresh fruit from a tree in California. Earlier this year, Lily had quit her career as a manager in the import/export industry to devote herself to full-time husband hunting. "My two biggest pressures are marriage - having my own family, and my aging parents' health. It's not housing, money, or a job." Citing her strong work ethic and open personality, she was a natural leader in her company. Her younger years passed quickly as she completely devoted herself to her work, located in Shenzhen. Her job put her in contact with lots of foreigners. Although her English was poor, she found herself having much more relaxed conversations with them than with Chinese men. <img src="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2388138/4_3_c_2048.jpg" border="0" width="1240" height="610" width_o="1240" height_o="610" src_o="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2388138/4_3_c_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2388138/4_4.jpg" border="0" width="368" height="558" width_o="368" height_o="558" src_o="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2388138/4_4_o.jpg" align="left" /> Passing quickly into her 30s, she started thinking about finding a boyfriend. A native Beijinger, she returned home at age 34 to settle down. She was introduced to a professor who taught at Renmin University. "He was an impressive man, very well known in China," she said. She asked her parents for approval of their relationship. They balked at the age difference: he was 15 years older. "We didn't see each other very often because he was busy teaching but we had a special relationship nonetheless. At the time he was lecturing about intellectual property, a very new idea in China then. He would talk to me about these things and I was like a sponge, soaking up all of his knowledge. Every time I spoke to him it was extraordinary. But at the time I didn't think it was love." The subject of marriage came up when his mother started pressuring for marriage. Almost 50 years old, he was still very much his mother's son. His mother wanted to see her son get married and not waste any more time. "At the time I reacted, how could this be? He wasn't my dream prince on a white stallion, handsome and great in every way. I initiated the break-up." Lily spent a month mulling over her decision and realized that, compared with all the men she's encountered, no one else could measure up to him. She tried to go back to him, but he refused to see her again. "From 1999 to 2009, I couldn't face anyone else. During these ten years I spent every weekend writing poems and letters to him. I drew out all of my dreams. My entire existence at that time was grey. I spent the whole time writing him, designing every envelope, every letter. He never responded once, the entire ten years. In my heart I thought, he can't not respond, at least he can tell me. I held onto this belief for ten years. Those were the best years of my womanhood. " "I like smart men. There were other men that people tried to introduce to me but I felt that no one could understand me. They don't know what I want. I don't want to be taken out to dinner, or to go to a movie. Chinese men don't know what you want. All they know is to take you out to a good restaurant, thinking that is a big deal. Actually women don't care about that. Even just having a nice chat, having someone listen to you. Even though my English is poor, my interaction with foreign men seems different because they seem to know what I want. " In 2009 Lily started a website. <img src="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2388138/4_5_b.jpg" border="0" width="319" height="694" width_o="319" height_o="694" src_o="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2388138/4_5_b_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2388138/4_6_2048.jpg" border="0" width="801" height="672" width_o="801" height_o="672" src_o="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2388138/4_6_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2388138/4_7_2048.jpg" border="0" width="853" height="647" width_o="853" height_o="647" src_o="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2388138/4_7_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2388138/chicken.jpg" border="0" width="303" height="604" width_o="303" height_o="604" src_o="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2388138/chicken_o.jpg" align="left" /> http://jia.li/Lulu http://jia.li/following/jia.li/Lulu Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:10:51 +0000 jia li 2386914 <img src="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2386914/3_1_2048.jpg" border="0" width="786" height="521" width_o="786" height_o="521" src_o="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2386914/3_1_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2386914/3_2.jpg" border="0" width="398" height="521" width_o="398" height_o="521" src_o="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2386914/3_2_o.jpg" align="left" /> Hao Lu Lu's office is tucked in a corner wing of Evercare's plastic surgery hospital in Beijing. It's a standard office with dark carpets and modular furniture. Lu Lu arrives early at work, bouncing in her chair with excitement about "having her first real job". She takes fifteen minutes before everyone arrives to apply mascara and check her makeup. A native Beijinger, Lu Lu became famous in China in 2003 for undergoing extensive plastic surgery, sponsored by the Evercare cosmetic surgery clinic. At the time, it was an extravagant cost of $36,000 USD. Her transformation was known as "The Beauty Dreamwork Project" 治造美人. At the time, she had surgery to her eyes, nose, chin, breasts, buttocks, abdomen, legs, and skin. She would have a new appearance for three to five years. As a well-publicized transformation, Lu Lu and Evercare received a great deal of criticism. "When I first got surgery it was the biggest deal ever. But it was my decision, it's not like I hurt anyone else. Now as society is opening up, it's more accepted. Everyone thinks it's normal. After my surgery, a lot of my friends really thought I was brave. but I think I'm brave in that respect but in others, like if there's a mugging on the street, maybe I'm not." <img src="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2386914/3_3.jpg" border="0" width="398" height="324" width_o="398" height_o="324" src_o="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2386914/3_3_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2386914/3_5_b_2048.jpg" border="0" width="1203" height="700" width_o="1203" height_o="700" src_o="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2386914/3_5_b_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2386914/3_5.jpg" border="0" width="368" height="568" width_o="368" height_o="568" src_o="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2386914/3_5_o.jpg" align="left" /> In 2003 Lu Lu was dating a Chinese-American man who supported her through the surgery. "My boyfriend thought it was great...I don't have to spend money and my girlfriend will be more attractive. How can there be such opportunities in the world? Every man would want it." Giddy femininity comes to mind when meeting Lu Lu. She's flattering and chatty at once, offering warm advice to anyone she encounters. She only wears dresses, and loves shoes and bags. Upon finding out she had 300+ pairs of shoes, her boyfriend at the time asked a mutual friend to find out how much Prada shoes cost, to see if he could support her. He was 19 years older and very well-off. He told Lu Lu that she didn't have to go to work, she could just do whatever she wanted. Soon after her transformation, they parted ways. "The most important thing is fate. I used to have a boyfriend but we weren't able to get married, I think, because it wasn't meant to be. I think I'm still unmarried because my fate might not have found me yet." Lu Lu now works for the Evercare company as a sponsored personality. She spends most of her time on Weibo, giving advice to anyone interested in plastic surgery. She goes through company-sponsored regimens to diet and lose weight, and injections to make her facial muscles smaller. To maintain her current status, she takes Chinese medicine and specially prepared herbal teas to slim down and cure her pimples. The tea makes her intestines gurgle while the doctors give her a stomach massage. "I'm the kind of person who is very self protective. I'm slow to warm up to someone. By the time I'm warm they'll be cold. I don't meet strangers. I use these dating websites sometimes. I usually try to chat with them first. Some people are eager to meet face to face, but it's waste of time if you can't talk together." "I don't have many pressures, but I would like to marry. You can't buy true love, contentment, friendship, family, but with money you can buy more experience, more world views. I have no parental pressure to marry. My dad says two people together being miserable is not better than one happy person alone. " <img src="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2386914/3_6_b_2048.jpg" border="0" width="1240" height="545" width_o="1240" height_o="545" src_o="http://payload4.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2386914/3_6_b_o.jpg" align="left" /> http://jia.li/why http://jia.li/following/jia.li/why Tue, 29 Nov 2011 11:07:12 +0000 jia li 2379775 <img src="http://payload3.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2379775/1_1.png" border="0" width="254" height="197" width_o="254" height_o="197" src_o="http://payload3.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2379775/1_1_o.png" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload3.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2379775/1_2.png" border="0" width="584" height="197" width_o="584" height_o="197" src_o="http://payload3.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2379775/1_2_o.png" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload3.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2379775/1_3.png" border="0" width="150" height="197" width_o="150" height_o="197" src_o="http://payload3.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2379775/1_3_o.png" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload3.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2379775/1_4.png" border="0" width="368" height="389" width_o="368" height_o="389" src_o="http://payload3.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2379775/1_4_o.png" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload3.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2379775/1_5.png" border="0" width="584" height="389" width_o="584" height_o="389" src_o="http://payload3.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2379775/1_5_o.png" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload3.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2379775/1_6.png" border="0" width="150" height="389" width_o="150" height_o="389" src_o="http://payload3.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2379775/1_6_o.png" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload3.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2379775/1_7.png" border="0" width="224" height="204" width_o="224" height_o="204" src_o="http://payload3.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2379775/1_7_o.png" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload3.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2379775/1_8_2048.png" border="0" width="687" height="203" width_o="687" height_o="203" src_o="http://payload3.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2379775/1_8_o.png" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload3.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2379775/1_9.png" border="0" width="150" height="204" width_o="150" height_o="204" src_o="http://payload3.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2379775/1_9_o.png" align="left" /> http://jia.li/ling-lu http://jia.li/following/jia.li/ling-lu Wed, 09 Nov 2011 07:52:33 +0000 jia li 2277515 <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2277515/2_1.jpg" border="0" width="368" height="330" width_o="368" height_o="330" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2277515/2_1_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2277515/2_3.jpg" border="0" width="368" height="390" width_o="368" height_o="390" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2277515/2_3_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2277515/2_4.jpg" border="0" width="368" height="277" width_o="368" height_o="277" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/52047/2277515/2_4_o.jpg" align="left" />