It would be nice, wouldn’t it? If only you weren’t sleeping with the enemy.

I should know. As close as China and the US have come in recent years, they aren’t putting their arms around each other like the US and Britain. And yet, even with all of the strides we have made, somehow somebody (such as Tim Geithner) has to pull out the China unfairness card (in this case, on the artificial value of the RMB) and, before you know it, we all feel like enemies again.

I wouldn’t necessarily mind it, save that this silent quarrel wreaks havoc upon our lives in curious ways.

As I think about my future — which currently means a move back to China with the husband after gaining his PhD — there are so many bizarre details that no couple should ever have to face…but we will. Take for example, having kids. If we go back to China and, say, decide to have children, the kids can either be US citizens or Chinese citizens, but not both (and if they are US citizens and then I take them out of the country, they need a visa to come back in). Then there’s the fact that merely being married to a Chinese man does not automatically grant me a green card. Fortunately, there is at least a Chinese green card system, but in China I have to live there continuously for five years before I’m even eligible.

I could only imagine how more horrendous it would be if our two countries were at war.

Except, I don’t have to — Pearl Buck imagined it for me, and for the rest of us, in her book Patriot, which follows the world of I-wan, a smart young man who faces the unthinkable: being married to a woman from Japan, a country invading China.

I-wan is not only married the the enemy – he works for them too.

I-wan’s father sends him to Japan, after being outed as a revolutionary, to work for his longtime friend, Mr. Muraki, an import-export businessman who lives in Nagasaki. His love for Muraki’s daughter (who eventually becomes his wife) blinds him to the reality behind the antique Chinese vases and scrolls and jewelry that pass through his inspections in the warehouse (let’s just say, this merchandise probably wasn’t bought gently, or even at a fair price). But by the time he realizes the betrayal, things are already headed for disaster. His best friend in Japan is sent over to China for battle, and, in a drunken stupor, admits to mindless acts of hatred, such as ravaging teenage Chinese girls to death. Meanwhile, once the war is underway by Japan, Muraki, who I-wan’s father had long praised as an upstanding citizen, is quietly confiscating letters between father and son. As for the media, the headlines in Japan are filled with mindless propaganda, such as how the Chinese welcome the Japanese invasion, leaving out footnotes of horror like the Rape of Nanjing.

As I-wan’s anger grows, it becomes even harder to reconcile reality with his domestic life. He dearly loves his wife, an obedient, thoughtful woman who eschews politics, and instead puts her energy into providing I-wan with the best food, family, and relaxation. Yet, can he see beyond her country to embrace her for the person she is, and not her nationality? Worse, he fears that his sons, growing up in Japan, will never love and experience Chinese culture.

While I-wan considers what to do for his country, his revolutionary communist past could jeopardize all of his efforts, and even put him at risk of being labeled a traitor by Chiang Kai-Shek.

There are ultimately no easy answers for I-wan, though I will say he follows his heart without betraying his family.

There are no easy answers for me and Jun, either. But one thing I know is this — he’s the best thing that ever happened to me, and he’ll never be my enemy.

Sadly, the title, and the cover, are a little misleading. Which is unfortunate, because a lot of people who pass on Foreign Babes in Beijing might actually miss out on a rather informative read on China. That’s because Rachel DeWoskin’s account of her life in Beijing — a PR account exec by day, and soap opera star by night — is sprinkled with some of the most thoughtful insight into Chinese culture. Given that DeWoskin’s father is a revered sinologist — and she spent much of her formative years in China — she has some credibility to stand on in this department.

Okay, about the title of Foreign Babes in Beijing. It’s actually the title of the soap opera she stars in, which features lovely foreign women who fall in love with Chinese men. As she describes it, it’s the ultimate power play for China: the tall, handsome Chinese man conquers the West…sort of. DeWoskin plays Jiexi (pronounced like “jay-shee”), a foreign seductress who falls for a married Chinese man, and who ends up becoming the most popular character on the show.

The story starts out a little slow, even though it begins in medias res — in the midst of her director requesting that she drop her trousers on set. It’s an unfortunate place to start — just as misleading as the cover and title — because it suggests a certain salaciousness that never really plays out in the book. But by the fourth chapter or so, I was pretty much hooked, and desperately turning the pages to follow DeWoskin through her exploits. It’s not just her self-effacing nature, which is refreshing coming from an Ivy-league grad like her. Nor the narrative, which is captivating on its own. It’s how much you learn along the way. Even with all of the years I’ve spent in China, I was impressed with her hundreds of references to Tang-dynasty poems, which neatly illuminate the circumstances at hand. She also references history and politics quite confidently, often delving into lesser-known tidbits about China. All of this as she stumbles through the culture, hilariously at times.

I was nodding my head as I read about some of her bizarre encounters. I never had to walk up 18 flights of stairs in the dark because the elevator lady was sleeping, or was chided for not living at the studio (where the managers would push the limits of privacy by waking unsuspecting actors and actresses to film at night) — but I’ve known my share of equivalents. Such is the life of a foreigner in China, where even today, as modern as it may seem, there is always something to make you raise an eyebrow.

But yes, to speak to the “Babes” side of this, there are plenty of cross-cultural relationships in the book. DeWoskin and her American friend Kate — a serial dater of Chinese men — find boyfriends in the great northern capital of China, as do a number of other foreign women. And they connect with some high-profile people along with way, including the famous rock star Cui Jian (the head of China’s most celebrated rock n’ roll band). Sometimes the book seems to hover dangerously close to name dropping. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the portrayal of strong, feminist women in China, living over there and loving it.

Once the soap opera is over, the narrative does seem to take a turn, along with DeWoskin’s life. She becomes an overnight star, and, before you know it, she’s moving on to other jobs — the more bizarre the job offer, the better. This perhaps is what drove the NY Times book review to declare that:

It becomes a Chinese version of “Friends,” as the author, expertly playing the role of the bemused American, lurches from one cultural misunderstanding to another, then huddles with pals at cool restaurants to chew things over.

DeWoskin also declares, by the end (1999 — ironically, the year that I first entered China), that Beijing is no longer some cool, hidden place. Which is bound to happen as any country opens up. Still, I’m not convinced that more openness means a country or city is less cool or that there isn’t something left to discover. I discovered a lot in those years after DeWoskin left China.

Overall, Foreign Babes in Beijing is worth reading. And if you — or your questioning wife/girlfriend — still can’t get past the cover and title, just put a paper cover around it, and give it a new title. Something with more Beijing in it…and less babes.

Clissold gets the China bug when he first travels to Hong Kong as a young man. What others describe as utter chaos becomes instead a fascinating challenge and paradigm of living:

I’d go into a restaurant and they’d tell me that there was no rice or I’d go to a bar and they’d pretend to be out of beer. I even found a restaurant in Xi’an that closed for lunch. But after a while, I learned to probe and question, cajole and persuade — and never to give in! So I barged into kitchens in restaurants to find something to eat and went upstairs in hotels in search of an empty room….Even going to buy vegetables was a challenge but I sensed a rapport with the people I met; it was almost as if they enjoyed the game of wits and they often gave me a laugh or a smile once they finally gave in. I never felt any malice from them; it was more like a bad habit that no one seemed able to break.

Clissold was, in essence, spellbound by the country, as most aspiring “Old China Hands” usually are. So much so that he found himself bored with his stomping grounds of London. In a desperate attempt to re-engage with China, he tries to persuade his managers to set up an investment office there, but ends up being all but written off as a nutcase. There was only one thing for him to do: quit his job and go to China to study Mandarin.

As the saying goes, be careful what you ask for. Just after the Tiananmen Square massacre, China warns against “spiritual pollution” making those few brave foreign souls on Chinese campuses — such as Clissold — largely ignored by the student population. Clissold’s foray into a life of Mandarin study is also short on creature comforts, from monotonous meals of cabbage and rice to a grubby winter existence of few hot showers, little heat and just-washed jeans that freeze instantly.

After a year of studying, shrinking finances force him to find work. As luck would have it, his former employer in London — Arthur Andersen — is hiring: they need someone to help investors find worthwhile projects in China. And so begins Clissold’s journey into the unchartered territory of financing the new economy.

He assembles a team to help him along the way: Pat and Ai Jian. Pat is a larger-than-life career banker who made a name in investment in Hong Kong and sees opportunity knocking in the great frontier of China. Ai Jian is an “ex-Red Guard and forced-peasant-turned-bureaucrat” relegated to a desk job at a hotel after getting into some trouble at Tiananmen, but he’s hungry to make a difference and has the contacts to prove it.

Working through Ai Jian’s contacts and beyond, the team travels across China, from the rivers of Sichuan to the frozen oil fields of the Northeast border with Russia, in search of investment opportunities, and discovers a hidden and sometimes perplexing world. There are mountaintop military factories looking to transition to civilian goods with unexplained colossal explosions in the background, and elaborate drunken banquets with high-ranking government officials where animal genitalia is a delicacy.

After over three months of traveling to visit factories across China — and days that “ended at one or two in the morning in the upstairs room of some awful karaoke bar with cracked mirrors and faded Christmas-tree decorations Scotch-taped to the walls” — then it was a matter of getting the investors on board. Pat introduced a number of interested Wall Street money managers to the team and, following several tense meetings in China, they eventually agreed to a deal: $158 million to be invested in manufacturing plants throughout China as joint ventures. Contracts were signed and money was wired to their chosen partners in China.

This is where the fun begins — not for Clissold, but for us — when every imaginable thing that can go wrong does. The businesses start falling behind budget, and closer investigation reveals more problems than the team bargained for. Millions of dollars disappear overnight, unaccounted for (in one case secretly laundered to unknown offshore locations). New unauthorized factories spring up, some as direct competition to the joint venture, and others manufacturing products that investors didn’t approve. Reckless managers infest the factories, threatening complete shutdowns or utter chaos, and resist any extermination attempts. And then there are the grossly unqualified products, such as where a beer factory churns out a bottle with brown liquid inside and the words “soy sauce” scratched out on an old label.

But it isn’t the situations that make this book fascinating — it’s how Clissold and his team responds. In doing so, Clissold ends up making every mistake imaginable and, from our retrospective viewpoint, the results are quite often nothing short of hilarious. It all comes down to assumptions:

Wall Street’s theory of “private equity investment,” investing in private companies like we had done in China, was based on two principles. First, that the system of law and other controls are reasonably effective in dissuading business managers from helping themselves to the cash, and second, that a management team will work hard over long periods for clear incentives. Under these conditions, the theory goes, the management team can be left reasonably free to run the business and report to a board of directors that sets budgets and reviews progress. We had applied this model in China — and it was obviously not working.

His egregious mistakes become lessons for the rest of us as he and his team scramble to bring order back to their nascent investment projects. Clissold battles with bankers, the legal system, the anticorruption bureau (which famously asks for a car and money before providing assistance), complicated personalities, misplaced employee loyalty, and hidden assets. If we pay close attention (after wiping our eyes from laughing so hard) we’ll be the wiser next time we set foot in China.

Even while we have a good time at his expense, Clissold teaches us a wealth of knowledge about China. Clissold has a passion for Chinese culture — a passion so deep that, at the nadir of his misadventures in China (just as he is about to turn his back on the Middle Kingdom) it beckons him once again to this rich country. He graciously shares cultural anecdotes, a primer on the beauty of the Chinese language and delightful insights into what makes China so fascinating for outsiders. With Clissold as your guide, you come to peel back the layers of this country, seeing beyond the grueling banquets and puzzling bureaucracy, and are left with a sense of respect and admiration for a country that we can only hope to understand and appreciate, not conquer.