"F_, aren't Beijing and Shanghai chicks all playing the games I was playing ten years ago? Sleeping with Westerners, hanging out at embassies, going out to bars, all thinking they're so 'alternative.' But it seems to me they come pretty cheap. Häagen-Dazs ice cream and T.G.I. Friday's are expensive in their eyes. Foreign men can get laid just by paying for one meal at the Hard Rock Cafe or offering ten minutes of English tutoring! In those days, I had my birthday party at the Norwegian Embassy. Imported beer was shipped in by the truckloads. The rock star Jian Jian wanted to come to my party, but even he had to queue up outside in the cold.

"I really have contempt for these local chick writers. They write about oral sex or Western boyfriends and think they're so cutting-edge, so brave, so feminist, so superior, so revolutionary, and so scandalous. From old Chinese books, we know that Chinese have been doing oral sex since ancient times. The girls think they are westernized, but they are just hillbillies. It really is a case of when there are no tigers on the mountain, the monkey is king. We, the tigers of China, have all either left the country or gone into business. They talk of women's liberation? I'm the original liberated Chinese woman! I'm the one young women should be worshipping! My next move will be raising money for making a film about my experiences. The movie will be called A Chinese Woman ' s Sexual Adventure in North America. We'd need white, black, brown, and Eurasian male actors!"

The hairdresser is coloring Colorful Clouds' hair, and the chemical smell makes us all a little dizzy. Lulu and Beibei, their heads hidden under the hair dryers, listlessly inspecting their fingernails, refusing to give Colorful Clouds the attention that she desperately wants. I'm also silent because I've heard these same words too many times.

Finally, the hairdresser mutters with contempt, "It sounds like the UN General Assembly. Will those actors be shipped in by the truckload or will a freight train be necessary?"

As I'm getting impatient with Colorful Clouds and her bragging, my boss Sean suggests that I tie her story into a feature about the moral decline and opportunism in China resulting from the rapid growth of the economy and the slow progress of democracy.

So I have to hang out with Colorful Clouds again.

"Rich and nice-looking, I can have a good time in China." Colorful Clouds starts our day by telling me this as I pick her up from her hotel. Knowing that she's my subject, she demands that I show her around and pay for everything. This time, she says, "Take me to the Red Moon. I've heard this place is famous for its good-looking waiters and male patrons."

This kind of place sounds not too bad to me. So I agree to drive her there and spend a few minutes sitting with her.

As soon as we sit down at the Red Moon, a tall, athletic young man gets Colorful Clouds' attention. She winks at the man. The man smiles back. She feels flattered. So she becomes bolder. She wiggles her finger to invite the man to come over to join us. As the man walks in our direction, she whispers, "Niuniu, I am who I am. Although I'm a mother of three children, this man cannot resist the temptation to meet me. Don't I look young!"

I have noticed that Colorful Clouds never wears her wedding ring in China.

"You'd better be careful." I warn her about the existence of xiao yazi, male prostitutes, before she takes off.

On the way home, I receive a phone call from Colorful Clouds, proudly saying that the man is not a little duck, but a college student who is intrigued by her elegance. She is going to take him out for dinner.

Half an hour later, I join my usual friends Lulu and Beibei at a teahouse. My phone rings again.

"Guess what? I can't believe Beijing people are still as rude as they were when I left here many years ago." It is Colorful Clouds on the line.

"What happened?"

"The waiter came and asked, 'Are you and your son ready to order?' How dare he?" She' s angry. "I do not look that old. I use Estée Lauder every day."

I tease Colorful Clouds. "Perhaps the waiter is jealous of your friend?"

"Perhaps!" says Colorful Clouds cheerfully.

After I hang up, my friends Beibei and Lulu ask me, "Who was that?"

"Colorful Clouds," I admit.

"The woman who thinks she's a double for Gong Li, but is really only double her size?" asks Beibei.

"The peasant woman who thinks she can become a member of the aristocracy by marrying her American grandson?" asks Lulu.

They both dislike Colorful Clouds.

I don't know what to say. I don't see Colorful Clouds as a friend, but she always contacts me. I don't want to offend her, a run-around full-time gossiper, because of possible reprisals.

Around midnight, I'm awakened by Colorful Clouds' phone call.

"Niuniu, help me! I've been robbed!"

"Where are you?" I can't help but feel a little sorry for her.

"I'm in a hotel room. I took the young man here after dinner. We were going to do it, so I said I'd take a shower first. But when I walked out of the shower, he was gone! My purse and money were all gone! Please come and get me!"

I sigh, thinking to myself, "This is what I get for always saying yes to people like Colorful Clouds."

"Bring some clothes on your way. He even stole my clothes!" says Colorful Clouds.

"He probably thinks they'd fit his mother well!" I say to myself as I head out the door, cursing Colorful Clouds' massive reluctance to harness her pumped-up ego and act her age.

A typical Saturday late morning. I'm hanging out at Lulu's apartment. We have just finished working out to Cindy Crawford's aerobics video and had taken a sauna in the new clubhouse. Lulu is teaching me how to baotang, make soup, Cantonese-style. Soup is the gem of Cantonese cuisine. Cantonese people believe that soup functions as a tonic and can do amazing things for the human body.

"My father is from Canton," says Lulu. "He told me that to be a good wife in Canton, a woman has to learn to baotang. Cantonese put everything into their soup. They believe snake soup can reduce one's fever and turtle soup acts as an aphrodisiac for men."

Baotang takes time, often over three hours. The woman who makes it has to be patient. Lulu is very patient as she makes soup. Her dream is to be a good wife for a man she loves, but such a simple dream is hard to fulfill. She keeps bumping into married men and liars.

As we are making soup, Beibei arrives, bringing a big stack of music videos and live-concert DVDs. "Girls, I need you to cehua how to position our company's newest band, the Young Revolutionaries."

Cehua is one of those fashionable new Chinese words that can be used as a noun or a verb. When used as a verb, it means to plan, to promote, to publicize, to create a certain image. When used as a noun, it means people who work in such fields. A cehua can be an advertising campaign director, a movie producer, a publicist, or a marketing director. Cehua and entertainers' agents are two of the new white-collar jobs created by the market economy.

Beibei uses Lulu and me as her clients' cehua from time to time.

"Let's follow our usual custom. Makeover first, and then cehua," Lulu says as she goes to the bathroom to get the materials.

All three of us make a face pack. I choose a seaweed pack. Beibei selects black mud. Lulu uses milk and almond. Our faces are each a different color, like three witches sitting together. We eat fresh peaches and lounge on the sofa watching music videos, both classic and contemporary groups.