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An Aimless Beautiful Life

The book is a collection of essays, comments, features, tales, and Q & As about life in today’s urban Beijing, especially about the avant-garde lives of the media circle. In one article, the author wonders: “What is fashion anyway?” and discusses the subtle differences between fashionable, trendy, stylish, a la mode, in vogue, hip, and chic. In another article, she can be a feminist strongly questioning what different numbers of sexual partners might mean to a healthy woman, or, she may suggest an exact location to put a bath tub to maximize sexual appeal.

In a time when everybody is busy calculating investments and returns, the author advocates indulging in life without any obvious purposes or aims, that is in living “an aimless beautiful life.” “All the fun is in the process, although all the purpose is the ecstasy that lasts for one second, you know, after the long process,” she writes in the “Preface.”

In the book there are some extremely amusing illustrations. In one illustration, an agitated Loch Ness monster declares that he has had enough of the obscured underwater life, and decides to “seek the spotlight.” In another illustration, a long-legged tall boy announces that his dream is to become “an excellent flooring man” when he grows up. These remarkable illustrations may help us understand the meaning of the so-called “aimless beautiful life.” They at least demonstrate strong characters, irony, satire and wit that the author recommends and favours.

A woman with multiples roles, Hong Huang is a publisher, a blogger, an ex-wife of a famous film director and a daughter from a prodigious family. In her “Self-Introduction,” she describes herself as a business woman in the culture industry, who occasionally likes to play some other roles, such as to write a mix and match book like this.