The most hated woman in China becomes a manicurist in a Brooklyn salon... and she's still on the hunt for Mr Right

Often, I think I know China well. However, just as often, it occurs to me that I don't really know what I thought I knew. The visions and experiences collected and stored in my mind while I am awake are gone after I have slept. Reasoning and understanding seem to last only for a few hours before becoming illusory: the images and meanings disappear one by one, stolen from me by apparitions and secreted away, never to be returned in their original form. The understandings that I have assiduously acquired are nothing more than banal when bound together to try and shape the oldest continuous civilization on earth. Experience, learning, and proudly possessed knowledge, gained from many sources and from interaction with its people, are taken from everyone who thinks they know China and passed on to others who share them smugly, use them with confidence, reverently broadcast them as Gospel for a few praiseworthy moments. "I know China." Then, time and circumstance mangle them until they are beyond comprehension. These ,too, will be passed on and shared as truth, only to be proved wrong again. The enigma is this: China never changes, but China always changes. Its people beset by burden, affected with melancholy, inured to bewilderment, and suckled on uninterrupted millennia of incalculable hopelessness and sorrow. "There is chaos under heaven and things could not be better", said Mao Zedong. This is the real truth: "China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese" - Charles De Gaulle. China: don't ask, it is what it is... ,,,,,,,,W.D. Box

09/27/2011

The most hated woman in China becomes a manicurist in a Brooklyn salon... and she's still on the hunt for Mr Right

Still searching: Feng Luoyu, pictured in Brooklyn after her relocation, became a web sensation in China after her infamous hunt for a husband

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Pin up girl: Feng Luoyu made billboards and TV ads to get the word out in China

New York is a Mecca for American stars of stage and screen, but rather than seeking attention at the city's hot spots, one Chinese internet sensation has been hiding out in a nail salon in Brooklyn because of the backlash she received in her own country.

Feng Luoyu, 27, who became a national laughingstock in China, now lives and works in Brooklyn as a manicurist.

She shot to fame two years ago when she handed out flyers in Shanghai with specific demands for potential suitors.

Sep 27, 2011 11:03:06 PM | Culture, Current Affairs