By Audrey Fong
Within the public consciousness, stories of leaving one’s home country for the U.S. are perfectly understandable; rarely do people question why one would leave their motherland for the land of the free.
In his 2019 Netflix special, Asian Comedian Destroys America, Malaysian comedian and actor Ronny Chieng posits one explanation for this when he says, “America is the NBA. Do you guys know that? You guys live in the NBA. In Asia, we think of America as the NBA. It’s where you go to be the best at whatever you’re doing. You come here to do it with other people, who are the best at what they’re doing. Like, the Chinese name for America is mei guo. That directly translates into English as ‘beautiful country.’”
Yet, what about those from the U.S. who emigrate? Even in today’s polarized political climate, it seems unfathomable that anyone would want to leave.
In her debut novel, River East, River West, French Chinese American writer Aube Rey Lescure draws from her own experience growing up in Shanghai and northern China to explore the life of one Chinese American teenager, Alva Collins, whose white mom, Sloan, did the unfathomable–she left the U.S. to seek a better life in China.
The novel alternates between Alva’s life in 2007 Shanghai and Chinese businessman Lu Fang’s life in 1985 Qingdao when he had an affair with Sloan. The central conflict of the novel is Alva’s desire to be more like the American teenagers she watches in shows like Gossip Girl and her mother’s efforts to keep her away from the dangerous, decadent lives of American expats. This conflict is only exacerbated by Sloan’s marriage to Lu Fang at the beginning of the novel in the 2007 Shanghai part of the narrative. At first, this union appears to be nothing more than a move towards financial stability to Alva, who doesn’t know of Lu’s and Sloan’s previous affair.
Upon first glance, the novel reads like a quick-paced adventure through the neighborhoods of Shanghai, the changing face of China, and the irresponsible, brash behavior of teenagers. However, the most interesting part of the novel is how Rey Lescure juxtaposes Sloan and Alva, both Americans, with the local Chinese and other expats.
While Alva feels Chinese, having only lived in Shanghai her whole life, Alva is picked on by her public school classmates who refer to her as a laowai (a foreigner) and call her sao, a derogatory term similar to slut. Even though she imagines herself Chinese like her classmates, instances like this and when her friend, Li Xinwei, explains to her that she has an easier life because she could leave for the U.S. whenever she likes, remind Alva that she is not actually Chinese in the eyes of her classmates. This difference even manifests itself in Alva’s body–“Her body was too sao for Chinese school, but surely not skinny enough for American school. Half-and-half, but entirely different from the rest of us, as Li Xinwei had said”–leading her to feel even more confused about her identity and sense of belonging.
This parceling of Chinese-ness versus American-ness, of privilege versus lack of advantage, of who has power and who does not, underscores the novel in every scene, even if not explicitly stated. Rey Lescure plays with these ideas of who gets to be Chinese or who gets to be American by having Sloan, a white woman, scorn American expats and actively look down on colonialism and the influence of the West on China.
On one hand, Sloan sides with the Chinese and looks down on colonialism, explaining to Alva that expat magazines like That’s Shanghai and City Weekend “were the Coca-colonization of China. People were kidding themselves if they thought colonialism was over, when it was all around them in Shanghai, as advertised by the mags. Embassy parties, French Concession bars, international schools.” Sloan also prefers 1980s China to 2007 China because it was “somewhere Westerners hadn’t yet touched” and claims this older China was “different, unspoiled, authentic.” But therein lies the irony: Who is Sloan, a white American, to determine what makes China authentic and what does not? Doesn’t her belief that she can measure this so-called authenticity lean into the trope of white people “being an expert on YOUR culture”?
Additionally, Sloan initially moved to China in her 20s because in the U.S. she was average, yet in China, she was considered beautiful and felt special. Chinese people would stop her for photos and admire her blond hair; she even modeled a bit in China. While Sloan looks down on other expats and doesn’t get to enjoy their decadent lifestyles, she is still an expat and as a white woman, is able to wield her newfound pretty privilege to get the attention she craves. She even uses her aggressiveness as an American to push her way to the front of restaurant lines. While she looks down on expats, who wield their power over the local population, and despairs when she finds out one did something awful to Alva, she is similar to them in the way she wields her power and pushiness to get her way, just to a lesser degree. This renders her similar to The Great Gatsby’s Tom and Daisy Buchannan in the way that all three of them “were careless people…they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” In Sloan’s case, she retreats back into her whiteness to draw in people who can protect her.
This stickiness of belonging, of Americanness versus Chineseness, of the degradations of power, is what makes River East, River West so interesting to talk about. Sloan is a walking symbol of America and all the outside world admires in it that makes them name it the “beautiful country.” Her golden hair draws Chinese people, like Lu Fang, to her and her own daughter, Alva, envies it, wanting to appear more white. Yet, like the promises of America and the American Dream, Sloan’s beauty and her blonde hair are fake. She is only considered beautiful because she moved to a country, which has few Westerners and which puts Western beauty on a pedestal; she is only blonde because she bleaches and dyes it; and her beauty gradually wanes as she implodes into a life of Tsingtaos, one-night stands, and middle age.
While River East, River West is sold as a coming-of-age novel and as a reversal of the east-to-west immigrant narrative, the novel is at its best when it explores Alva’s and Sloan’s status as in-betweeners. They are not the typical expats, who live in luxury and unlike many of them, Sloan has a Chinese-appearing daughter, Alva. But like the expats, they hold U.S. passports, which grant them a certain status, and as stated before, by simply being white, Sloan enjoys advantages and is able to move through China recklessly. Since most of the book focuses on Alva growing up and the changing face of China, it misses out on the opportunity to dig into and provide a more critical stance on what these boundaries mean in addition to analyzing what historical factors led up to this moment in China that Rey Lescure chooses to focus on.
On the surface, River East, River West is a coming-of-age novel for a teenager who craves American adolescence and is stumbling through her first taste of adulthood, yet it shines the most when weighing the impact of expats in China and contemplating on what makes one American or Chinese.
River East, River West is available from Bookshop, City Lights Bookstore, Elliott Bay Book Company, Greenlight Bookstore, Moon Palace Books, and Vroman’s Bookstore.
Audrey Fong is your stereotypical Southern Californian. She loves the beach, drinks more boba than the doctor recommends, and has an Insta-famous dog. She is the co-founder and co-editor of Soapberry Review.