Summer Books
Book Issue 2005

Beyond the Dragon

Lesa Griffith

During 15 years of living in places such as Cambodia and Hong Kong, where she worked for Agence-France Presse, and covering Asia as a senior news editor for BusinessWeek, New York–based journalist Sheridan Prasso discovered a world a lot different from the western preconceptions of the land of Forbidden Cities and ping-pong-ball-popping barmaids. In her first book, The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls & Our Fantasies of the Exotic Orient (Public Affairs, $27.95), Prasso attempts to lift the perfumed shroud.

She visits the Globe & Anchor Club at Camp Butler in Okinawa to talk to koku-jo, “black-(loving) girls,” who wear hip-hop gear and cornrow their hair. She hangs out with prostitutes in Bangkok (“I want nice guy, good heart, big dick, lots money, buy me everything,” says one 21-year-old from a provincial village). Prasso details the lives of Chinese women in Shanghai and Guangzhou —a hardcore Communist Party college student and the editor-in-chief of China 's most respected weekly business magazine. In Manila , she goes bar-hopping with Cherry, who's looking for a European husband. And in Kyoto , Prasso spends time with Mineko Iwasaki, the geisha who inspired Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha (which Iwasaki hates).

Prasso traces Asia's exotic reputation back to ancient Greece, looks at Hollywood's treatment of Asians, and addresses the West's feminization of Asian men—including powerful leaders—and countries.

The Asian Mystique is a fascinating cultural read, but as China lurches toward economic world domination, it's also a useful business tool. Released in April, the book is already on the University of Southern California fall syllabus for an East Asian studies course. Dartmouth 's Tuck School of Business and the University of Pennsylvania 's Wharton School are also using it.

And in Hawai‘i, where a steady flow of new arrivals from the mainland mix with Asian Americans and recent immigrants from all over Asia, The Asian Mystique is especially timely. Hawai‘i residents may be surprised to find how entrenched we are in western views.

Over lunch at Republic, a pan-Asian dining hall in Manhattan , Prasso talked about breaking down walls.

How has your book been received, especially in light of you not being Asian?
At a reading in San Francisco , an Asian woman said thank you so much for writing this—it's about time. It happens all the time.

What prompted you to write it?
Asian women's voices were never really well represented. Madame Butterfly , Memoirs of a Geisha —these are male versions of Asian women's thoughts and feelings and they're completely wrong. I wanted to tell Asian women's side of the story, what they think, their perspective. So many Asian women feel so misunderstood by Western culture and I wanted to explain why.

Why do you think no Asian woman has done this?
I think it takes an outsider, a Westerner to see it objectively. If I were Asian I would be really angry because of everything that goes on, the pervasive racism, particularly directed towards exoticization and sexualization of Asian women. In my book I have an interview with a woman in Java and I asked her a question about herself and Javanese women and she said it's like the fish swimming in the aquarium, it takes an outsider to see in, the fish can't describe itself.

How long has it been in the making?
I first went to Asia 15 years ago, and one of the first things that one sees is the phenomenon of older, overweight, balding Western men, a lot of them German, with very petite, very young Asian women. I always wondered what is going on from her perspective. It's easy to figure out what the guy is getting out of it.

Over the years you see more and more instances that cause you to question stereotypes. I've had my Asian women friends ask me questions like “Why do Western men expect us to pour their drinks and serve their food when we go out with them? What do they think we are? Where do they get these ideas?” [To answer them] I went back through history, all the way to the European colonial period, the first contact between European missionaries and traders and Asians. And even before that, Marco Polo. You can trace it all the way back to Ancient Greece to find the idea of the exotic, romantic, decadent incense-shrouded Orient. It permeates everything that we think about Asia today.

Was there anything you discovered in your research that surprised you?
Yes. Because I set out to counter a stereotype of Asian women being submissive and docile, I expected everyone I encountered would be really tough, and that's not true. The reality is that people are people and some are tough and some are not.

Another thing that surprised me was I found that young women with older European men really did hope for true love—it wasn't just an economic situation. They also to some degree felt attracted to these men because an older man is someone who can provide and care for you, and having a pot belly, particularly in Thai culture, is a mark of prosperity.

Another thing surprised me—particularly in China where economic development has raised living standards to more or less what we have in the U.S. At dinner with some Chinese professional women friends in Guangzhou , we talked about marrying western men. They all said no, we would rather marry a Chinese man—if you marry a western man you have to clean your own house. I had lunch with a Japanese woman in Tokyo , and she said, “You know, the problem with you American women is you disagree far too quickly. I would never disagree with a man for at least three years…because control takes time.”

One of the reasons that our stereotypes about Asian women persist is that our interactions are too short.

How do these stereotypes affect Asian Americans?
All of the stereotypes that we have about Asians affect Asian Americans the most profoundly because they're American and certainly don't act in a way that we see on TV or in movies. The result is that in the work force Asian Americans feel held back from creative positions because they're supposed to be good at math, Asian-American women feel that they have to act nice because if they don't that affects their careers. And a lot of Asian-American women feel affected by fetishism or “yellow fever,” that is perpetuated by images we have from Hollywood and TV.

One thing I say in the book, and it's probably not my most popular point, is that Asian Americans are also affected by the mystique. They grew up watching the same TV shows and movies and they have the same view of Asians that westerners, Caucasians and Blacks do. Being Asian American doesn't make you immune. It makes you more aware of your own personal and family situation, but that may not apply.

For example, in Vietnam , I've met Viet Kieu—overseas Vietnamese—who have gone there to meet wives because they think that Vietnamese-American women are too assertive, and they want a nice traditional wife. They are the same as the big fat German men going to Thailand to meet their wife.

You can't take an entire group of people, like Japanese women, and think that they're all going to be a certain way. If you do that, then you suffer from the Asian mystique.

Is there a country where women are overcoming stereotypes?
As Americans have more interactions with Chinese women, a lot of stereotypes we have will change. But the problem is that we can't seem to see Asian women in any other way than as the submissive geisha/China doll or the opposite, the dragon lady/martial arts mistress. If we can't put women in a box of submission we tend to put them in a box of domination. Rather than the world changing, we're getting stronger versions of both dichotomies—a stronger view of submissiveness and a stronger view of domination, often in the same person, like [actress] Zhang Ziyi's character in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon .

That's why the subtitle of the book—it represents the dichotomy that we can see of Asia as a whole, not just women but also countries. China is either an economic threat or a market we have to conquer, penetrate and dominate. We can't seem to see it as an equal partner or with the nuances or realities that it really is.