The People’s Republic of Desire

8 The Tragic Love of Jeremy Irons

Who is your favorite male actor?

This is the question my girlfriends love to ask one another.

Among our group, 30 percent are Ricky Martin fans, including me – by far the largest group. Richard Gere and the Irish-born Pierce Brosnan have the second and third biggest following. Tom Cruise and Leonardo Di Caprio arguably rank fourth and fifth. The fans often meet in online chat rooms, gossiping about their idols: whether Ricky Martin had seven children with different women, how Tom Cruise likes women that are taller than he, how the color of Pierce Brosnan's eyes changes in different James Bond movies.

Fans of different actors form their own factions to fight against other factions. Ricky Martin haters circulate e-mail rumors regarding Ricky's sexual orientation. Tom Cruise haters call him a big-butted dwarf. Richard Gere haters post his anti-China comments and mock his narrow eyes. It's ironic to imagine a group of Chinese sitting around mocking Richard Gere for having narrow eyes. They expect their idols to look European, not like them. It's part of the inferiority complex the Chinese nation suffers from.

However, one fan club does not bother to attack others. Instead, they totally indulge in themselves. It's the fan club of Jeremy Irons, the English actor with the fatal elegance of an aristocrat and a voice that comes from heaven and hell. The group, which was formed over the Internet by me, is small but exclusive. It does not take a detective to realize that the women in my club share many of the same characteristics: city girls (40 percent from Shanghai, 40 percent from Beijing, and 20 percent from Guangzhou); educated (all have B.A. or M.A. degrees); like to wear straight black long hair or short gelled hair; prefer to wear black or white outfits in cotton or linen fabric. They look mild, favor dark lipstick, but are sometimes neurotic, arrogant, and narcissistic. They are also romantic. They read Marguerite Duras, listen to Irish music, buy prints of Van Gogh's paintings, drink cappuccino, shave their legs (most Chinese girls don't), have several cyber names, own a bottle of imported perfume (the size of the bottle depends on how much money they make), and are open about sex, though they may fake orgasms during intercourse.

Jeremy Irons! He is not particularly handsome, but tall, pensive, cultured, and complex – the complete opposite of the cowboy-styled George W. Bush. He's not an actor who is well known in China since he doesn't play in films that are popular here, except Chinese Box. The girls know about him through pirated DVDs.

In Damage, he is a middle-aged man infatuated with his son's fiancee, whose damaging love destroys his son's life, his family, and his promising job. He shifts from being a successful politician with a happy family to being a hermit who relives the passionate moment in his memories.

In Chinese Box, he is a dying English journalist, who falls in love with a Chinese woman, the manager of a bar. He uses his camera to record his own death.

In Lolita, he is the notorious middle-aged French-language professor who marries an American woman, but secretly falls for her twelve-year-old daughter, Lolita. His love and desire for the girl destroys both him and Lolita's innocence.

In Waterland, he is a history teacher who lives in the traumatic memory of his past.

In M. Butterfly, he portrays a French diplomat who falls in love with a male Beijing opera performer. The diplomat lives with the performer for eighteen years and believes for the whole time that his lover is a woman. When he finally realizes that his lover is a man and a spy, he commits hara-kiri.

In all of his movies – from Damage to Lolita, from The French Lieutenants Woman to Chinese Box – he brings to life men whose love is insane and perverse. These men often combine the evilness of a serpent and the purity of an angel.

Lulu, Beibei, CC, and I are all fans of Jeremy Irons. Lulu claims that Jeremy Irons "is the secret signal of thinking women and women of taste."

After CC and I settle into our courtyard house, we invite our fellow Jeremy Irons fans around for dinner. Mimi, a lawyer and an alumna from Cal Berkeley, and Harvard M.B.A. graduate Lily are two die-hard fans who show up at the get-together.

I make cold appetizers, sliced cucumber, tiger salad, cold tomatoes, and deep-fried peanuts and cook some three-delicacy dumplings. After growing up with a maid in my house, I was forced to learn how to cook during my seven years living in the United States, a country that advocates an independent spirit. In the States I lived alone, and I had to learn how to cook and clean. Now I am self-sufficient. I don't need a cook or a maid, and I certainly don't want to be a cut above others.

Beibei thinks differently. She teases me: "Niuniu, why do you have to cook? I'd order catering service if I were you. There are so many Chinese people who'd work for very little money. You've got to give them job opportunities. You can't just think of entertaining yourself by cooking." She has brought Starbucks coffee and a pound of caviar.

CC has bought beer and Chinese corn liquor called Erguotou.

Lulu has brought some candied chestnuts.

Lily has brought all the DVDs of Jeremy Irons's movies.

Mimi has brought a ch eesecake.

We sit under the pergola in the courtyard, eating dumplings, drinking beer, watching DVDs, and talking about Jeremy Irons.

CC, who grew up in London, comments, "I love his madness, his passion, his English accent, his pain, and his heartbreaking gaze. His English gloominess reminds me of the rainy days in England."

I remember CC had said before that modern Chinese men lack any poetic quality. Perhaps that's why she always prefers English men.

Mimi analyzes Jeremy: "He is a mature and successful man, but becomes obsessive-compulsive when it comes to love. His lack of control leads him to despair and damage. I knew a man like this once, too."

Lulu cuts in: "Nowadays, men are all cowards. Before they fall in love, they ask if they will be hurt. If there is a chance of getting hurt, they won't fall in love in the first place. But what type of love doesn't hurt? I've had three abortions for love!"

"We love the Romeo and Juliet story because modern people are not that romantic anymore," says Lily. "Especially men. They always want to know what they can get from their women. They are takers, not givers." She frowns.

"Jeremy Irons can be cruel, even sinister," Beibei says, "but when it comes to love, he gives his all. I dream of this kind of passionate lover and dramatic soul-stirring love! But I don't have any. The men I've met are not romantic. They want to use either my connections or my money." Even though she complains, everyone knows Beibei likes to mention her connections and her money.

"The reality is that such men don't exist," adds Lulu. "Perhaps that's why there are more and more single women like us now."

"That's why we need Jeremy," I say with a dreamy smile. "He can make us fantasize we would fall madly in love at least once in our lives."

I think of Len again. Len had Jeremy's introspection, gloominess, and fervent hope. When the movie Lolita was showing in the States, everyone talked about it. Many people disliked the film because they thought it was immoral. But Len liked it. He said that he was fascinated with destruction and perversity. Perhaps this was a sign of how things would turn out between us. I was falling into my own morbid love with Len back then.

It snowed a lot that day, in the little town called Jackson Hole, by the Rocky Mountains. I was in a cowboy bar with country music playing in the background and Budweiser on tap. I called Len on my mobile phone. We were talking about Lolita. He said to me, "Perhaps because I'm a doctor, I pay particular attention to pathology. Often, I think illness is the principal part of life. Lolita allows us to see the abnormality beneath normal people."

Len has the pensive look of the cellist Yo-Yo Ma. He never spoke much, and had an air of elegant despair about him. Although he may have seemed stone-faced and emotionless, his eyes betrayed the passion and intensity with which he lived his life. When he did speak, the whole world listened.

Perhaps I never truly understood Len. He told me that he wasn't a healthy person. He wasn't a man who could give women happiness. "If you are smart, you'll keep your distance from me."

In the States, I had taken advantage of being far away from my parents and my rigid culture. I was like a free bird until I met Len, the man who taught me about pain, cruelty, madness, and suffering.

When I was a child, a Buddhist master who passed through my house told my mother that I had some affinity for Buddhism. They call it huigen,wisdom roots. He could see the halo behind my head. Because I had a round, smiling face, all of the adults called me Little Buddha. It's strange that the little me could sometimes see many things. I had premonitions about my primary school language teacher's suicide, my math teacher's lung cancer, and the disappearance of the retarded boy from down the street. I even predicted my parents' separation. They divorced when I was eleven years old – I was so calm people found it incomprehensible. I wonder when I lost the ability to see things as a child. The Little Buddha with wisdom roots couldn't resist the intensity of Len's ardent but melancholy gaze.

There is this Buddhist asceticism: "Free from human desires and passions; physical existence is vanity." I discover that as I grow older, I'm further and further away from being "free from human desires and passions." Why did I succumb to obsession, violating the greatest taboo in Buddhist doctrine? Why did love so confuse my heart and mind? Beibei says I'm a qingzhong, the seed of emotions. I don't object to it. After all, my parents pursued their forbidden love out of their mutual irresistible attraction. I'm a product of passion.

Here, in this entertaining, ever-changing China, all those memories of Len and the times we shared seem so far away – as far away as America itself. I sometimes find myself going days, or even weeks, without thinking about Len at all. When I do think about him, it is as if he is a burglar who has somehow snuck past the security of my busy mind and is robbing me of the peace I came to China to find.

I, the young female journalist, seem to have it all here: good pay, a nice job, a busy social life. But I still get bored easily, and I constantly look for excitement. Seek pleasure, avoid pain: perhaps I'm becoming a hedonist like Beibei. Even if a hedonist's life has no meaning, at least it is comfortable. Comfort, home, for me are vital.

ERGUOTOU: Fiery Chinese corn liquor.

QINGZHONG: The seed of emotions; refers to awful romantic partners.

HUIGEN: Wisdom roots, affinity with Buddhism.