The Paperback Release of Shanghailanders

And completing my "TikTok Residency"

I’m so happy to share that the paperback of Shanghailanders is now available. They are even available to me, having safely traversed that treacherous journey across continents and sea.

It’s been a really tough time getting my personal copies from my publishers through to China. I even had an entire box of hardcovers confiscated by customs last year, because they thought I might distribute for profit. Imagine the heartache.

This year somehow they’ve managed to arrive from the UK, after many emails and calls, including a request for “proof” that I am the author of this book. Proving this becomes more complicated year after year. I sent photos of myself signing books on tour, posing with my editors, even snapshots of my contract. How easy it has become, I think, to pose digitally as someone else. It was a lovely little trip down memory lane, though. And they are here. I have them in my hands!

And here are the newly dressed copies my US publisher sent to my mother’s home. I am so eager to possess these the next time I visit.

US paperback, in her alternative cover design, which I adore

In other celebratory news, I have completed my TikTok residency.

By completed I mean that I will no longer really be browsing or engaging with the app, other than to sometimes post Booktok-esque content that will be shipped and scheduled via a separate editing app. I’ve taken TikTok off my phone.

Let’s take a step back. It’s been about two months of TikTokking for me. Upon the advice from my assistant, book professionals, and some author friends, I took up the app (again) this spring. I had opened an account and posted a handful of things over a year ago, around the hardback release when I was stateside for pr activities. But upon return to Shanghai I could not figure out how to access the international version. After some gentle peer pressure earlier this year, and a bit of concerted finagling, I finally reconnected.

Generally, I dislike being on social media. A year or two ago, I asked my husband to set a random screentime passcode on Instagram, give me fifteen minutes a day, and forget the code. I don’t dislike sharing my life (haha, she admits, on her personal newsletter), but I hate wasting hours scrolling. I do read a good number of Substacks. I do enjoy following my friends, for those fifteen allotted minutes a day. A light, healthy internet snack. But I feel impoverished, unhappy, if I’ve fallen into, then crawled out of a deep social media black hole.

I started out on TikTok focused and happy. I followed BookTok accounts. I was sent a spreadsheet of bookish content ideas and trends to try. As someone who is anxious about social media, and also who is not very good at it, this was the help and support I needed. (My assistant is so good.) BookTok I was really excited about. I felt like I’d found a place where I could happily play. I mean, there is an entire trend of TikTok influencers talking through their experience of reading Russian literature. Could this be any more my jam? Nyet.

But then, I was sent my first beatboxing video. I discovered suddenly my incredible passion for beatboxing. Not doing it, no god no, but watching, with my heart in my teeth, beatboxing challenges and even other admirers watching beatboxing videos while reacting melodramatically, their disbelief magnifying my own. And then, I was sent my first skincare routine. Next, it was the curly hair training. How had I lived my entire life not understanding the step by step mechanisms that it requires to squelch and mousse and diffuse hair into perfect little ringlets of joy?

Hence began the purchases. If you know me or have ever seen me or even guessed about me, you know that I have straight black hair. And yet, this past month I convinced myself that I had secretly curly hair that only needed a good dose of discipline. I purchased curl cream treatment, curly girl gel. I did the scrunch! I browsed diffusers. My curls were joyless.

I hate having most anything on my skin, and yet I was putting into my swollen virtual basket so many different formulations of primer and foundation and glitter and bronze. This is not right. My natural color is snow, occasionally lobster, and then in summers, snow leopard. Bronze should not come anywhere into the mix.

My wallet was not happy. My eyes were tired. But I could not deny that I was, on some level, learning something. About skincare, about the artistic technique of painting the face and setting the hair. It was still, on some level, a form of creative play: playing with femininity in its gloriously various forms. Or maybe: it made me feel seventeen again, like I could change the world (my life) with a single stick of gloss.

But then I discovered #richtok, and with it, too my final tolerance limit for the app. I spent a few hours watching inordinately wealthy and occasionally beautiful women show off their wealth. Not bragging, so to speak, but literally showing it off to their viewers. I do not hate them for their wealth; I understand that every human on the planet has her humanity and her secrets. I mean, I wrote an entire novel about crazy rich Asians and their deeper domestic, emotional troubles.

And yet, I couldn’t stand what I was seeing. Nothing informative, nothing interesting, nothing new. In a word: nothing creative. What I had enjoyed seeing with the makeup, the skincare, the hair, the books was the work and the time and the effort required for the cultivation of individual taste.

Suddenly with richtok there was nothing that felt interesting or individual. Nothing new. Nothing to learn. With billions of dollars anyone might buy a gaudy penthouse and luxury clothing straight off a runway. So what? It took no talent, no taste. You know what’s harder, more interesting, more generative? Making one’s own clothes, or even trawling through vintage shops, curating a style not dictated by LMVH’s latest season.

I realized that I had descended into the blackest of black holes. (Of course there are blacker, bleaker, but I suppose my search history is innocent enough.) This was a black hole of value, a black hole of creativity. But I had descended, and I knew that if I stayed around I would descend again.

I stan my booktok girlies. I enjoy the skincare, the makeup, the curls, the beatboxing. But I don’t really need or want it, at least right now. Do you know how much time it takes to be a creator? Or how much money and attention it costs to be influenced? TikTok is one long, continuous commercial break. Buy this, try this, read this, wear this. I looked around myself, around my newly full bathroom shelf of inevitably useless makeup and curly hair product, and I looked at the books I’d neglected to read in the past three hours a day of my precious spare time. I am too old, too settled to be influenced, I realized. Maybe it was fun for a few weeks, to play act the impressionable youth, to pretend that facial contouring has real transformative power. But it doesn’t. Not for me anyway, not anymore. There on the bookshelves lined up quietly, waiting for me patiently, was my heart’s true desire, the material of my preferred form of play, the makers of my value and identity and self worth.

I tried to set my phone’s screentime settings to include TikTok, but my husband so long ago had truly understood the assignment and forgotten the random passcode. I did the best that I could - which was to hide the app from my screen. Luckily I am luddite enough to not know how to find it.

I will still occasionally make videos about publishing, post my tbr, or recommend a solid read. I’m told it can matter, in the formation of the public career of an author. I’ll schedule these missives out to post automatically via a feeder app. Maybe I’ll hop into the fray and encourage the masses to try some Leo, some Fyodor. Whatever I want, whenever I want. Sort of like this Substack, I suppose. (:

For now, in conclusion, please enjoy this five second video of me transforming into an AI mermaid, which was the trend du jour that I participated in the last day of what I will henceforward call my two-month TikTok Residency. Who knows? Maybe this and not #richtok was actually the moment of utter pointlessness that pushed me over the edge. Or maybe because I was doing it while sitting on the couch with Maxi but not really being present with him. Or maybe it was because afterward, he insisted on doing it, too. Maybe it was the reminder that I don’t want my kids near any of these apps, not for a long time.

Welcome to the real world, my Shanghailanders paperback baby. And goodbye to all that.