China High: A Beijing Memoir

A swaggering true tale of sex, drugs and money in the new young professional class in China, a go-go country seen through the entrepreneurial and personal experiences of ZZ, an American-educated Chinese national who returned to his native land to start a business, live large, and get a piece of every lissome girl, line of coke, and bottle of Champagne China had to offer.

ZZ is the perfect guide to the new Beijing: he's got insider cred but an outsider's eye for the uniquely bizarre aspects of Chinese life. ZZ's parents got him out of Red China, but with an American education under his belt, Beijing is now his capitalist playground. ZZ starts his own company by day and by night lives large in Sanlitun's clubs, bars, and dim sum emporia. He has a gift for using guan xi (a network of favors) to carve out a coveted spot in the nighttime world of clubs and cafes frequented by the new young professional class. But in this freshly morphing world, it's not clear who can be trusted no matter how much guan xi you spread around-and ZZ's glam urban life comes to a crashing halt when he's picked up by the police for his 007-worthy "Zigarette." Suddenly there's an entirely new and gritty pecking order-and ZZ better find a way-FAST-out of a Chinese prison!

A swaggering true tale of a young man rediscovering himself in today's China, ZZ's voice is hip and fresh, and the on-the-ground looks he gives into the world's next superpower is more than just a rice cake of sex, drugs and Rock 'n Roll.