Beijing Doll

This is how seventeen-year-old Chun Sue warns readers of what is to come in her autobiography, Beijing Doll. But page 61 is too late to make a confessional soliloquy, because no matter how bad a book is, a book about a Chinese high school girl’s sexual escapades is too enticing to give up.

Chun Sue—the name she chose herself—is what her friends call her and what she uses as her pen name. Her school calls her Lin Jiafu. Chun drops out of high school, because it’s boring. She dyes her hair constantly, as if it will change her life.

Her occupation as a music journalist brings her into contact with musicians from all over China—many whom she becomes romantically involved with, all almost all of them are college age. Chun’s constant talk of music and interjections of lyrics brings a High Fidelity tone to Beijing Doll, but not quite the substance. It’s rushed, and seems more of a chronological account of how she meets one guy, sleeps with him, meets his friend, wants to sit in his lap, and sleeps with him rather than a self-study and resolution of her own issues.

It seems almost every romantic relationship is fatally flawed. The men are in their twenties; she’s a freshman in high school. She’s eager to touch them, because she wants to establish a close bond. She looks for love in all the wrong places.

Her naïveté of love and sex is frustrating, but she seems to recognize that flaw herself, as she details numerous accounts of men telling her she knows nothing about love. “What does a fifteen-year-old know about love?” one asks.

In one situation, she sees a foreigner sitting by himself. She thinks he looks interesting, and goes over to talk to him. Jann is Finnish, and although they have language barriers, they meet almost every day he’s in Beijing. Towards his departure, he tells her to have a nice, happy life, since after all, they live in different worlds.

And with the drama that infuses every incident in the book, she cries and becomes angry; and he quotes the title of a Doors song: “You’re Lost Little Girl.”

It’s hard to feel sorry for Chun, as her parents support her, do not punish her for going out all night, take her to psychiatrists, and do everything a parent could possibly do to help an angst-ridden teenager. The reader can’t help but wonder: what is she so troubled about, exactly?

Chun seems to have forgotten the other lines to “You’re Lost Little Girl”:

“I think that you know what to do, girl/I`m sure that you know what to do.”