China Rich Girlfriend

I don’t understand. How can a credit card ever be rejected? It’s not like it’s a kidney!” Colette laughed.

I know the average outfit in your wardrobe costs more than a semester of tuition at Princeton, but it makes you look like a community college during summertime: NO CLASS.

Everyone claims to be a billionaire these days. But you’re not really a billionaire until you spend your billions. —OVERHEARD AT THE HONG KONG JOCKEY CLUB

The larger the diamonds, the older the wife, the more the mistress.

People are messy. Life gets messy. Things are not always going to work out perfectly just because you want them to.

Michael, don’t you know by now that my grandmother and Uncle Alfred are the largest private shareholders of Singapore Press Holdings? We’re not going to be in the papers. We’re never going to be in the papers.

now you have the body shape considered ideal to the women you seek to cultivate—delicately emaciated, with just a hint of a well-managed eating disorder.

I don’t understand. How can a credit card ever be rejected? It’s not like it’s a kidney!

What do you mean, 'boundaries?' You came out of my vagina. What kind of boundaries do we have?

*1 Literally translated as “meat bone tea,” this is not the name of a summer event on Fire Island but rather a popular Singaporean soup that consists of melt-in-your-mouth pork ribs simmered for many hours in an intoxicatingly complex broth of herbs and spices.

You’re an economist—don’t you know what HENRY stands for?” I racked my brains, but I still didn’t have a clue. Perrineum finally spat it out: “High Earners, Not Rich Yet.

Snobs by Julian Fellowes The Piano Teacher by Janice Y. K. Lee People Like Us by Dominick Dunne The Power of Style by Annette Tapert and Diana Edkins (this is out of print; I will lend you my copy) Pride and Avarice by Nicholas Coleridge The Soong Dynasty by Sterling Seagrave Freedom by Jonathan Franzen D. V. by Diana Vreeland A Princess Remembers: The Memoirs of the Maharani of Jaipur by Gayatri Devi Jane Austen—complete works beginning with Pride and Prejudice Edith Wharton—The Custom of the Country, The Age of Innocence, The Buccaneers, The House of Mirth (must be read in strict order—you will understand why when you finish the last one) Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh Anthony Trollope—all the books in the Palliser series, beginning with Can You Forgive Her?

St. Germain elderflower liqueur, gin, and white Lillet mixed with grapefruit juice create this classic effervescent aperitif. Chin-chin!

Beauty fades, but wit will keep you on the invitation lists to all the most exclusive parties.

the older she gets, the more she seems to be turning into an obsessive tightwad.

Posturing is posturing. Hong Kongers have just elevated it to an art form,

Shanghai and Beijing society would come to accept her, especially if she carries a different handbag.

In a city where people are almost as obsessed with food as they are with status, perhaps the best-kept secret of the dining scene is that the finest cuisine arguably isn’t found at the Michelin-starred restaurants in five-star hotels but rather at private dining clubs.

Why do all these ABCs talk to you as if they think you are their best friend?

This little girl needs to be raised properly-by a team of sensible Cantonese nannies, not interfering parents!

Hainanese chicken rice, which could arguably be considered the national dish of Singapore. (And yes, Eleanor is ready for foodie bloggers to start attacking her restaurant choice. She chose Wee Nam Kee specifically because the United Square location is only five minutes from the Bao condo, and parking there is $2.00 after 6:00 p.m. If she took him to Chatterbox, which she personally prefers, parking at Mandarin Hotel would have been a nightmare and she would have had to valet her Jaguar for $15. Which she would RATHER DIE than do.)

She then said to Roxanne in a blood-chilling tone, “I never want to see that Bentley again.

I hope you told her that the most romantic thing that happened was watching Alistair projectile vomit out the car window after stuffing down too many In-N-Out burgers.

the Iron Throne,”*1 Carlton said, cutting her off.

From Indonesian and Malay mythology, pontianaks are said to be spirits of women who died while giving birth. A pontianak kills her victims by digging into their stomachs with her sharp dirty fingernails and devouring their organs. Yum.

thirty-seven feet, almost filling the floor space of two workrooms. At last, the senior specialist could confirm that this was undoubtedly the mythical work described in all the classical Chinese texts he had spent much of his career studying.