"A posh hotel!" I say.

"She called me up and invited me to the free breakfast the hotel provided. I saw her act like a queen in front of me…"

"Who does she think she is? She only uses men," Lulu says.

"That is the whole point. No matter how we dislike her, through divorce and marriage, she could afford to stay in a nice hotel. What about me? I was a hard-working woman with a college degree, and a good and faithful wife, but I lived a poor hopeless life without even my own bathroom!" The art teacher cries out.

"Nowadays, the world is for bad girls. What is that saying again? Good girls go to heaven…" Gigi says. "Bad girls go everywhere," I add.

The art teacher nods. "I realized it, too. After ten years of marriage, I finally felt it was so stupid to be a good girl. Love and faith are meaningless when they can't give you a place with a private bathroom. I left my ex."

"What do you feel now?"

"It feels damn good to be a bad girl. I'm going to Australia with my new boyfriend next month!"

Lan Huahua tells her story. She is a new singer at Beibei's Chichi Entertainment Company.

"There was no particular reason for my divorce. Everybody I knew divorced, but I was still married, so it made me look boring."

"You divorced your husband just because you didn't want to look boring?" asks Gigi, sounding shocked.

"As a singer, the last thing you want people to think is that you're boring," says Lan Huahua.

"A good voice is not enough?" Gigi still can't believe her audacity.

"Of course not. To become a star, a celebrity, you have to have interesting things about yourself to tell the media. Divorce is just my first plan. If necessary, I should also be prepared to become a single mother, a lesbian, or a bi."

CHILE MA: Have you eaten yet? Traditional Chinese greeting, equal to "How are you?" This phrase expresses the importance that food plays in Chinese society.

LILE MA: Have you divorced yet? A new Chinese greeting, since the divorce rate in China is skyrocketing.

WAIQI: Foreign enterprise. With the market economy, those Chinese who are able to land a job with a foreign enterprise make several times more than their domestically employed countrymen. These people are both admired and resented by other Chinese.

Lulu, CC, and I have just finished drinks on the roof terrace of the Beijing Grand Hotel. As we come out of the elevator, we notice a forty-something American staring at us. His eyes almost pop out behind his thick glasses.

He clears his throat, as he walks toward us to make conversation, "Excuse me, ladies. I'm James, a banker from the States and new in Beijing. I haven't talked to any young Chinese people before. May I talk to you for a few minutes?" We think this curly-haired pointy-nosed guy is a geek, but nobody shows it.

Lulu speaks for the three of us, "Yes, sure. What can we do for you?"

"Where did you go to school?" James asks. None of us expects such a question.

"Are you looking for alumni?" CC asks.

James decides to introduce himself, "I went to school at Yale. Have you heard of Yale? It's a very old school, on the East Coast. I guess it's somewhat prestigious. Rupert Murdoch's wife graduated from there. She's Chinese, like you." James pathetically attempts to be subtle.

"Who is Rupert Murdoch?" We play dumb.

James has to switch the topic. "What do you like to do in your spare time?"

"Cooking!"

"Cleaning!"

"Sewing!"

We joke around.

"I guessed as much! Being a Chinese woman is difficult, isn't it? Because the society has many expectations of you! Do you want to know what I like to do in my spare time?"

James can't wait for us to say yes and starts to volunteer his long-prepared story.

"I love cars. I have a Mercedes E-class 420, a BMW 740, a Honda CRV, and an RV, but my favorite is my red Porsche convertible."

Look at him, trying to impress us with his Yale and his cars. I wonder if he thinks that we're local bar girls who have never seen foreigners before. I do a quick study of the hotel lobby. Most of the women are accompanied by men who look much older than they. Perhaps James has been standing in the lobby, eyeing the girls that pass by and awaiting his chance. He may think we're easy targets, but his pickup lines are lousy.

CC, Lulu, and I plan to go to The Den. James offers to hail a cab for us. After we get into the Volkswagen taxi, James squeezes in before we can say no.

He stares at us with shining eyes and says, "You are all very beautiful. It's a cultured kind of beauty, different from so many of the other Chinese girls I've seen in Beijing. You," he points to me. "You have that kind of innocent beauty, with a touch of punk, an extremely mysterious combination." He points to Lulu. "You are gentle, but your eyes have fire in them." He points to CC. "You look like Gong Li."

We look at one another, giving a what-a-nerd facial expression to each other. Nobody says a word.

The Den is located in Sanlitun, Beijing 's bar district. It's known as the Meat Market. Every night trendy Chinese girls with long hair and plucked eyebrows haunt The Den. They are willing to try anything, without any limits. They dance dirty and wantonly cast their eyes left and right, looking for an opportunity, looking for romance, the corners of their mouths twisted with desire and boredom. Nevertheless, we love to go to The Den once in a while because of the DJ who plays 1970s and 1980s retro Euro house music.

The decor is trendy and funky. The whole bar is decked out in red, reminiscent of the madness of the Cultural Revolution. Antique carved mahogany doors, copper door fittings, wrought-iron tables and chairs, carved lanterns, flickering candlelight, Cultural Revolution posters, Chairman Mao badges, HBO, EPSN, and MTV, Africans with braids, Japanese with small black-rimmed glasses and dyed-blond hair, Michael Jackson's androgynous wail, Ricky Martin's hot writhing Latin hips. This combination of cynicism and hysteria suits everybody's night mood perfectly.

Another reason my friends and I like The Den is because it isn't like other disco clubs, which are full of "head shakers" – teenagers who have taken too many yao tou wan pills, more commonly known as ecstasy.

As soon as we walk in, James realizes he is the only person in the place wearing a suit. Looking at the young Chinese girls in miniskirts posing flirtatiously in the lights, he is pleasantly shocked. "Am I mistaken? Isn't this a paternalistic society based on Confucianism? Not long ago, women still had bound feet, but look at this! Girls are wearing colorful sandals, with toenails painted a rainbow of colors, sexy, liberal, and seductive."

It goes without saying that James sticks out like a sore thumb, and the reaction from the club-goers is not one of acceptance. He is completely oblivious to the funny looks that are being sent his way by everyone that sees him. I hear all the kids joking about him in Chinese as he walks around completely clueless. "I didn't realize it was senior's night tonight." "Looks like someone's father came to pick them up." "Is that guy lost?" It was embarrassing just being around him.

Tonight it's a typical Friday night. It's twelve o'clock. People are still streaming in, like the day is just beginning.

James keeps babbling, "Look at these guys, Nike baseball caps on their heads, wearing Ralph Lauren cotton shirts and Calvin Klein watches. Where does their money come from? Or are all these things counterfeit? What kind of work do they do, to be able to come to a place like this? This is truly an unbelievable, illogical country."