Beijing’s Expat Brat Pack





Alec, James, Clarissa, Christina and the rest – the new generation of foreign authors and reporters in China you can’t quite keep straight. But their daddies are influential, so they’ll always get bylines and book deals. They’re what we are told middle-class white people want to read, and what aspiring expat writers are told they should be.





It was a Sunday afternoon, and like all the Sunday afternoons in all the bookstores in all the cities in all the world where young people live, the Bookworm brimmed over with boys and girls. This was an exclusively expat bookstore in Beijing, so the foreign boys wore beards and polo shirts with upturned collars and cargo shorts and flip-flops, and the foreign girls all had dyed hair and nose rings and wore the latest Uniqlo tops with yoga pants.





Over the blare of Nickelback’s greatest hits, the foreign boys and girls were shouting “fuwuyuan!” (waitress) in between telling stories about their encounters with the Chinese, talking about their teaching jobs and their Mandarin classes and their failed dreams back in their home countries, drinking overpriced craft beers and weak espressos. The only native in the entire venue – the waitress – frowned as she floated from table to table to serve those who have no responsibilities and no country to return to.





At one table in the middle of the room sat a group of expats who seemed to exude a magnetic force. As they chugged their coffees, newbie foreigners would find some excuse to walk by the table, and they would eye those expats languorously, hoping for an invitation to join them. The expats knew that they had this force, and they stared back with equal vigor.





There were many foreigners in the Bookworm that Sunday, some of them as elite as those at this one round table, but these expats – these rich younglings, decked out in retro-Risky Business sunglasses and scarves and blazers with pulled-up sleeves – they were the main event.





A foreigner named Ray straightened his white t-shirt over his blue cargo shorts, brushed his prematurely graying hair away from his eyes, patted his hips with his hands, and walked slowly to the table. He went to the prettiest of the group, a young woman with the best-shampooed hair and the darkest sunglasses.





He knew that she was Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore and that she worked at Time Out Beijing, and he probably also knew that she belonged to Great Britain’s ultra-elite House of Sebag-Montefiore. Her famous grandfather had written history books; his granddaughter now wrote nightclub reviews. But from the open, white-toothed smile she gave Ray as he walked over, he felt confident.





“Hi,” Ray said. “Nice to meet you,” Clarissa said, offering him a Queen’s Fingertips handshake. “My name is Ray,” he said, “and I wrote a book called South Ch –...”





But Clarissa had already turned back to the table, where her friends had once again lifted their coffee cups in a toast: for no reason, with no prompting, for what must have been the twentieth time of the afternoon, the expats were about to clink cups and unite in a private pact, a bond that could not be broken by all the foreigners in the room.





As the cups clinked, the expats cried together at the top of their lungs, “Ganbei!” - Chinese for “empty your glass,” but really something else, a private signal among the famous expats that only they understood. After they finished their French roast toast, they turned their attention back to Ray and the other lowly newbies who surrounded the table, and smiled superficially.





If Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore seemed to be inviting all too much attention from the newbies, James Palmer acted as though he wanted nothing to do with it. His fame, too, helped attract them – they recognized his surname from his father, the late pop star Robert Palmer, and sought his attentions.





But as Ray sat down in an empty chair next to him to tell Palmer about his book, the corpulent expat announced to anyone within earshot, including Ray, “There is a red line. When someone crosses the red line, I get angry. And when someone sits down at the table, they have crossed the red line. You can let them get close” - he looked around at Ray and the swarm of newbies – “but you can’t let them sit down.”





Only one of the famous young expats seemed to take the attention in stride – perhaps because he grew up the son of a world-famous scholar and Time magazine’s “100 most influential people.” Just 22 years old, the bespectacled Alec Ash looks like his father, Timothy Garton Ash, beard and all, and is a local star on his own; he recently authored Wish Lanterns: Young Lives in New China. His thick beard drew still more newbies to the table, and he could not resist adding them to his WeChat group...with a not-so-subtle reminder to like and share his book’s latest reviews.





“He writes for City Weekend magazine,” Ash whispered as a young man in a purple shirt took a seat next to him and smiled like an old friend. “The last time he was here, I was telling him about a Chinese millennial I profiled for my book who had passed their Gaokao national entrance exam, and he said, ‘I didn’t know you needed to take a test to become Chinese.’” Alec laughed at the naivety. But then he turned his attention to him because he wanted the young man to write a review for Wish Lanterns.





This is the Beijing Expat Brat Pack. It is to millennials what the Old China Hands once were in the 1980s and ‘90s – an SNH48-like "idols you can meet" super-group of young Western reporters and authors on the prowl for bylines, book reviews and Twitter followers.

And just like Graham Earnshaw, Mark Kitto and Paul French in 1980s Shanghai, Peter Hessler, Michael Meyer and Rob Schmitz in 1990s Sichuan, and Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn and Bill Bishop in ‘00s Beijing, these guys huddle closely together, too – they’ve carried their working relationships in the media over into a real-life clique, their struggles and dreams reflecting the larger issues confronting China today.





The Brat Packers all arrived in Beijing post-Olympics, once the city had been scrubbed clean and the “hutong” (ancient alleyway homes) gentrified beyond recognition, specifically to write major books for big publishers. They have top literary agents and influential parents. They have legions of followers on social media who re-tweet even the most mundane post. Their articles are often shared or liked dozens of times, and the more shares, the more online followers they get, and the more self-important they become.





The Beijing Expat Brat Packers act exclusively together whenever possible to leverage their own popularity, a sort of circlejerk of retweeting only each other’s posts, sharing only each other’s articles, and reviewing only each other’s books.







Alec Ash is the youngest, yet the unofficial president of the Beijing Expat Brat Pack (he is also the unofficial treasurer; other members who don’t live off of an Oxford trust fund seem to conveniently forget their Alipay when they go out together, and Ash usually picks up the bill). Ash may get his best notices yet for his first book, Wish Lanterns.

“I’ll bet if you ask any China Watcher who the king of feral Sinologists is,” says David Moser, a token foreign talking head on CCTV, “they’d all say Alec Ash. He’s that kind of guy.”





Here are the most notable members of the Beijing Expat Brat Pack:

The One Most Likely to Replace Peter Hessler – Alec Ash. He is the son of Timothy Garton Ash, an Oxford scholar/author who uses his credentials to get Alec bylines, interviews and book reviews from the world’s major press agencies, so as to bypass the usual amateur writer vetting process. Alec, who doesn’t have any kind of actual day job, spends his free time ingratiating himself with Beijing’s best-known foreign correspondents.





The Most Beautiful One – Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore. Hails from Britain’s one-percenter House of Sebag Montefiore, descended from a wealthy line of Sephardi Jews who were bankers, diplomats and scholars. She came to Beijing in 2012 to “slum it” as a Time Out magazine book and bar reviewer.





The Overrated One – Mitch Moxley. He first made his mark in The Atlantic with the article “Rent a White Guy,” which earned him an offer from Harper Perennial in 2013 to write Apologies to My Censor, about his experiences as a China Daily newspaper polisher. However, the memoir failed miserably, and now Moxley struggles to get bylines in any major media.





The Conflicted One – James Palmer. The son of “Simply Irresistible” 1980s pop singer Robert Palmer, he authored The Bloody White Baron in 2008, short-listed for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and The Death of Mao in 2012. He writes for neocon rag Foreign Policy, tweets radically liberal personal views yet also edits the English-language edition of State-owned newspaper The Global Times (“just for the work visa...and maybe someday a tell-all memoir, but better than Mitch’s”).





The Only One With a J-Visa – Christina Larson. She moved to China in 2011 as the Technology Correspondent for Bloomberg after writing for Foreign Policy magazine and Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, where she befriended Ash junior and senior. Her Amy Smart-ish looks caught the eye of James Palmer and the two eventually married.





The Most Professional One – Isaac Stone Fish. Asia Editor for Foreign Policy magazine and, recently, a senior fellow as Asia Society, he served on the board of the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of China and worked as a correspondent for Newsweek. He is as privileged and well-connected as the others, not to mention triple-monikered, which is how he ascended so quickly to such prominent positions. AKA “The Bigger Fish,” he is currently working on his first book.





The One Least Likely to Replace Peter Hessler – Eric Fish. Everyone thought “The Smaller Fish” could do it back when he published his first book, China's Millennials: The Want Generation, in 2015. But Alec Ash furtively co-opted Fish’s niche idea about profiling Chinese millennials for Wish Lanterns and then stole all his media thunder. Fish, wishing to remain in the Pack, quietly accepted defeat and eased into lower gear writing blog posts for Asia Society.





The Second-Most Beautiful One – Jemimah Steinfeld. She graduated uni in 2012, then caught the first plane to Beijing to hastily write Little Emperors and Material Girls: Sex and Youth in Modern China, based on some passing encounters with millennial natives. Her blonde hair and model-esque smile got her in tight with the privileged class of expats, but looks alone were not enough to sustain her neophyte writing. She reportedly returned to the UK in tears after receiving the following crude comment at the bottom of a self-penned Guardian plug for her own book: “Oh God. I can’t take it anymore. The endless bukkake of articles about sex.”





The Not Quite There One –Robert Foyle Hunwick. AKA “RFH,” Hunwick’s role is the Pack’s Sergeant at Arms, preferring to stay behind-the-scenes and behind his computer as editor-in-chief for various expat webzines, where he can elevate his friends. He hopes to someday publish his own book, The Pleasure Garden, yet another foreigner’s narrative about sex and vice in China. He hopes the better-connected Brats will hook him up with a book deal.





Why "Expat" Media SUCKS!







The Ethnic Chair – Anthony Tao. The baby-faced Chinese-American first made a name for himself with his scurrilous Beijing Cream blog, co-edited with Robert Foyle Hunwick, which they used to roast (in the exact same way this article is doing to them, which we can be sure they will kick and scream to be deleted) enemies of the Pack such as The Baron of Coigach Chris Devonshire-Ellis. Tao is also the poetry editor of Ash’s Anthill blog, and co-hosts Ash’s Whiskey and Writers nights at the Bookworm.





What distinguishes these young writers from generations past is that most of them have skipped the one step toward success that was required of early expat writers like Peter Hessler: years of on-the-ground reportage. Young foreign correspondents used to live in smaller Chinese cities of interior provinces teaching and exploring before venturing into writing let alone book publishing. Today, that step isn’t considered so necessary.





Nobody from the Beijing Expat Brat Pack has ever lived anywhere else in China. Most flew straight from their home countries to Beijing, where they used their parent’s money to buy up renovated courtyard properties in gentrified neighborhoods (Ash and Palmer and Larson are neighbors in the Xiguan Hutong, a Western-hipster paradise dubbed “Writers’ Block,” get it?).





Most also know each other from Asia Society or Foreign Policy magazine or Ivy League connections such as Oxford. And most have well-connected scholar/historian/author/celebrity parents. As such, the Brats found that they didn’t need any experience first in “real” China to succeed; it was all arranged even before they landed.





Ash and the others admire the work of those journalists and authors who spent years breaking ground in China, but they do not consider Hessler, or even Kaiser Kuo or Jeremy Goldkorn, role models for their careers. There is a spiritual father of the Beijing Expat Brat Pack, but it is not an established star. It is a grizzled 65-year-old expat publisher named Graham Earnshaw.





Earnshaw has been a familiar foreign face around China and a cult hero among expats since the 1970s, but has only lately become a real success, as a folk singer. The Brats admire Earnshaw for his musical gifts – but many have also befriended him in the hopes that he will publish their not-for-mass-market projects, such as Ash’s Anthill anthology While We're Here.





Earnshaw lives a solitary life in Shanghai’s former French Concession. As he sits on a rickety bamboo chair in his wooden red doorway dressed in an old mandarin’s robe (“This once belonged to Carl Crow,” he remarks) he says of these young writers, “I don’t act as their publisher but as their father, because they all have daddy complexes.”





Rubbing sleep from his eyes, Earnshaw thinks for a minute and then adds, “I would have loved to have had everything these guys have when I was 22. That would have been great.”





It was a hot summer day in Beijing, perfect weather for lazing in a breezy courtyard while sipping on iced green tea, and the leader of the Brats wanted to read Lijia Zhang’s new novel Lotus. But it would not behoove one of the Brats to fork over $20 to the same industry that made them authors to begin with. So Alec Ash stood outside the Bookworm considering various ways he might obtain the book free.

“I have a friend who works here who’ll get it to me,” Ash said, swiping his mobile phone. Within three minutes, Peter Goff, the Bookworm’s manager, was at the bottom of the steep lime-green staircase with several complimentary copies of Lotus for Ash and his friends. “Thank you,” Ash said, and with a smile he dashed off to check if he was mentioned in Zhang’s acknowledgments.





Ash, who is only five foot two (157 cm), nonetheless stands as a vivid prototype of the expats he seems to lead. Barely 22 years old, he is already accustomed to privilege and appears to revel in the media attention his father’s friends have heaped upon him. Just seeing his name in the newspaper is all he needs for motivation; someone re-tweeting one of his posts is more fulfilling than a hair salon happy-ending.





Sexpat discusses why he goes to the Philippines







Many fempats and native Chinese women have attempted to latch on for brief affairs, but just like Peter Hessler and Evan Osnos, Ash’s romantic life remains strictly off-limits to his writing. His sexual orientation is questionable even to those around him. As Shanghai Cocktales author Tom Olden once asked in a scathingly hilarious video response to Ash’s hostile review of Cocktales, “Are you above sexuality...a beta-male bitch? Peter Hessler may not have a penis, but I do. What do you have, Alec Ash?”





He may not surround himself with girls, but he is living the life that any aspiring expat author might dream of. The Beijing Brat Packers are smart, and Ash, perhaps the smartest of all owing to his Oxford upbringing, recognizes that with his fame and fortune comes a responsibility to preserve them. So he works harder than the others to build a large following on Twitter, Facebook and WeChat, and collect, trophy-like, a substantial number of media interviews and reviews, to keep the momentum behind the Ash family fan economy going.

He also started up, at his father’s advice, the Anthill writer’s colony blog in order to surround himself with “commoner” expat writers who could later be tapped as his own private ant-like army of promoters, all the while suppressing the fact that he was the son of a renowned author.





“He never told us anything about his family connections,” one Anthill regular said on the condition of anonymity. “He pretended like he was just another hipster expat-bro. He only admitted it once his book came out, when he and his dad started doing author appearances together to get bigger audiences and more media coverage. He’s a nice chap, but in hindsight it was rather insincere and disingenuous of him.”





In between collecting fawning followers on social media whom he could get to like, share and review his latest work, and befriending high-profile reporters who also could later be of use to him for reviews, endorsements and blurbs for his future book, Ash began venturing out of his anglicized courtyard to profile young natives for Wish Lanterns.





When Ash showed an early draft to Wasserstrom, the reaction was so positive as to assure him a career as a China Writer.

“When I was reading it, I thought it was so insipidly mainstream that I had written it,” said Wasserstrom the other day, granting a brief interview over Skype. Self-proclaimed “China Expert” Wasserstrom is a Chancellor's Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, where he authors books about China (based on research compiled by a team of TA’s) from his ivory tower; he visits China once a year, but only to attend literary festivals. Two of Wasserstrom’s books were published by Oxford University Press, where Ash Senior is a Professor of European Studies.





“Kind of like Chinese ‘yangchengxi’ (those who are nurtured) pop idols, we are also grooming and nurturing Alec to become the next China correspondent for The New Yorker now that Hessler and Osnos have exited China, even though Alec doesn’t have any actual journalism experience,” said Wasserstrom.





“But I believe that, between his perfectly politically correct writing, his father’s connections, frequent re-tweets from high-profile China Watchers such as myself, and the glowing media reviews for Wish Lanterns written by his friends, he will get the job.”





Pass HSK 4 in 1 Year!!







It was almost noon, and James Palmer and Alec Ash were looking for some literary fun. So Ash summoned an Old China Hand he’d always wanted to meet, Isham Cook – the notorious “sexpat” author of Massage and the Writer: Essays on Asian Massage.

Massage was 2014’s most controversial book about China, documenting Isham’s bisexual appetite for bathhouse boys and bottom-of-the-food-chain female prostitutes. Not exactly the sort of lowborn person someone of Ash’s stature should be seen with publicly, but at the same time perhaps giving Ash a much-needed boost in “street-cred” among ordinary expats due to his silver-spoon image.





Isham, a large, balding, 40-something American, showed up at the Bookworm around 11:30 A.M. in a mostly unbuttoned shirt. Ash was wearing a pink polo with an upturned collar. Palmer was wearing a scarf, a gray jacket, a dark tie, a gray pullover and a shirt almost hidden from view due to his rotund stature. It was 30° C and Palmer was sweating profusely, but insisted on keeping all his clothes.

They all shook hands, with Isham looking mystified that he had been invited. Neither of the Brats seemed interested in actually talking to Isham, who was salivating over an illustrated edition of The Carnal Prayer Mat.





Palmer walked up to the loudspeaker and started dancing, his musical roots finally revealing itself, perhaps hoping a native would film a secret video and upload it onto WeChat or Weibo, where it might go viral, giving Palmer a spike in his popularity poles. Nobody did. After a few minutes, the anonymity appeared to be too much for Palmer; he sat down with a dejected look and started complaining about what a horrible book store it was. Then he suggested they leave.





“There’s a new wine bar open today across the street,” Palmer said. “Let’s go.” So Ash and Palmer and Isham left. A long line of “tuhao” (nouveau riche Chinese) and bearded foreigners snaked through the entryway and out the door, and two large bouncers stood at the foot of a long staircase to the bar, not letting anyone inside.





“Some people have no shame about such things,” Ash muttered when Palmer suggested that he approach the bouncers and inform them that three expat authors would like to get in. “I have shame; I learned about ‘losing face’ during my anthropological-like observations of the Chinese for my book.” And so Ash made no movement. But the rest of the people in line began to notice him, and murmur reached the bouncers.





“The manager would like to speak with you,” boomed one of the bouncers – but not to the Brats. Instead, a well-known local vlogger and a girl who posted WeChat photos of Korean cosmetics were waved in. “I guess we’re not as important as they are,” muttered James. “Of course not,” said Alec, “bouncers don’t read books.”

After an hour of waiting, the trio were finally admitted. Isham, an expert on wine and decadence – he hosts monthly, invite-only Caligula-style orgies in his 5th Ring Road villa – ordered a bottle of Chateau Margaux 2009 Balthazar. Palmer, however, whined upon entering the wine bar that there did not seem to be a VIP lounge on the premises. Ash nodded and bemoaned the hordes of ordinary people around them.





In New York, Ash grumbled while glaring at the vlogger, authors are ushered into private rooms, served free drinks and photographed by people with iPhones who will hopefully upload their pictures on Twitter to help keep them relevant. Ash will be flying to New York this month to promote Wish Lanterns at Asia Society.





Each new expat-penned book carries with it an increased burden – if it is not a success, younger unknowns come up from behind and replace them. And that would mean the end of bylines, reviews and interviews for Ash and his crew.





“I think China expat memoirs should continue forever,” says Palmer. His name is also being tossed around as the next China correspondent for The New Yorker. But the job would require anyone who takes it to get out of Beijing more often to learn about “real” China, the way libertine Isham, who has no desire to write for a mass-market audience, has on his own.





Palmer and Ash did not, however, bother to learn anything about writing or “real” China from talking to Isham that day. After summoning him to their book store cruising and shouting a few comments to him over the wine bar din, Ash and Palmer ditched Isham while he was chatting up a young Chinese man. He rode a Mobike back to his villa by himself.





Strict New Rules For Foreign Students in China







The leader of the Brat Pack ordered two slices of gourmet pizza and a tossed kale salad at Gung Ho! Pizza in Sanlitun, the capital of the latest generation of expats who have enough money to dine at foreign-owned eateries. There is an enormous foreign restaurant or imported food store at practically every intersection in Sanlitun. So for Alec Ash to show his face in this neighborhood was to invite the stares of countless book lovers, and as he wolfed down his slices, the rest of the Gung Ho! customers watched in silent respect.





Moments after he’s sat down, a tall, lanky, greasy-bearded foreign male approached the table. “Hey, Alec, howyoudoin’?” Ash looked up expecting a fan, perhaps even a real-life Chinese person, but the man he saw standing above him was another member of the Beijing Expat Brat Pack, Mitch Moxley. “Oi, Mitch, how are you, mate?” “Okay, dude. What’re ya up to?” “Not much. How ‘bout you?” “Nothin’.” Pause. “You seen Stoney?” Moxley was referring to Isaac Stone Fish. ‘No. I heard he is summering in the Hamptons with his parents,” Ash said. “Oh...well, take it easy dude.” “Right...s’ long mate.”





Moxley and a small entourage of Chinese girls walked back through the pizza joint and into the kitchen to try to score some free slices. After they were out of earshot, Ash wanted to make it very clear that he and Moxley do not know each other well. Members of the Beijing Expat Brat Pack whisper that Mitch Moxley has committed several near-fatal mistakes in his fledgling writing career that threaten to get him banished, idol girl group-like, from the club:

1) He doesn’t keep secret his trysts with Chinese females, a major no-no among Caucasian expats of good breeding.

2) His attempt at a beard was not nearly as thick nor well-trimmed as Ash’s or Stone-Fish’s.

3) His book Apologies to My Censor failed to get more than 27 customer reviews on Amazon or any write-ups in major media.





Asian Model Arrested For Murdering Canadian Man





“For writers so imbued with the expat spirit, the Beijing Brat Pack members are clearly out for themselves,” growls a death-metal-type voice from out of the shadows of the Bookworm’s smoking patio. A long-haired ethnic man clad in a black leather jacket, old blue jeans and motorcycle chaps emerges from the darkness. He is Kaiser Kuo, perhaps Beijing expatdom’s most recognizable face (and voice).





It's Not China, It's You, India Tells Aussies







The Wednesday crowds had arrived at the Bookworm. It was about 8 P.M. and the Brats were in full swing. On this night, Ash and his personal hype-man, Anthony Tao, were hosting one of their “Scotch & Stories” open-mic events cleverly designed to help Ash subtly promote himself. As such, the small circle of writers had graciously expanded to include other foreign pseudo-celebrities introduced to them through acquaintances. One of them was Winston Serpentza Sterzel, but he is no writer.





Sterzel instead creates YouTube videos of his life in China. He seems to have most of the credentials necessary to join the Beijing Expat Brat Packers: moneyed, triple-monikered, the makings of a beard, ridiculously handsome, a grandiloquent attitude and fluent Mandarin. Yet he is looked down upon by Ash and his posse simply for his lack of writing ability.





WeChat is eating the Chinese internet





Nonetheless, on this day Sterzel seemed especially ebullient – and the reason, no doubt, was that his latest YouTube video just surpassed half a million views. He lives very comfortably off the monthly YouTube revenue, as reflected in the designer suits he always wears. But China Watchers agree that his videos just do not fit into the same league as Wish Lanterns, failing to pass through the filter of proper opinion and establishment approval that Ash’s work has.





Blaming expat vloggers like Sterzel for their demise, the same expat print magazines that once seemed to be the private PR machines of the latest “it boy” foreign author like Ash are, one by one, shutting down and their editors returning to their home countries due to video’s new dominance among the ADD and Adderall generation.





And so, when a newbie foreigner approached Sterzel later that morning with her phone asking him to add her on WeChat, he looked immediately at his more locally famous foreign friends with a skeptical grin. “One of you put her up to this right?” he asked.





And the Beijing Expat Brat Packers just shook their heads and watched, without a trace of a smile, and suddenly it was clear to everyone that they were as surprised as Sterzel to see the girl leave the table with his WeChat info, smiling to herself, not bothering to get theirs too.





-THE END-

Written by and for users of reddit.com/r/China by /u/ Exoticflavorz





“The powerful have been trying to suffocate the spirit of satire...comedy and satire have license to transgress.” - Timothy Garton Ash,





READ MORE

ADVERTISE WITH GLOBALNEWS ! 🆕

🔽 all news