Bright Lights, Bigger City

CHINA HIGH

My Fast Times in the 010: A Beijing Memoir

By ZZ

St Martin's. 359 pp. $24.95

Fast times reign in Beijing. The club scene is intense, fueled by an overabundance of babes in tight jeans. Hallucinogens flow freely. Dancing, rumbling, raving -- every kind of youthful excess is on tap, 24/7.

"China High" is a snappy narrative that captures the hipster buzz of nighttime Beijing. The author is identified only as "ZZ," a Shanghai-born, American-schooled lawyer/entrepreneur who is addled by the charms of life in the fast lane. His self-portrait features killer abs, a carefully cultivated sense of superiority and frequent puffs on a joint. He wrote this book before the global economic meltdown, but the anything-goes mentality in Beijing is not likely to quiet as fast as Wall Street has. China's changing society -- inherently unstable and liberating for the younger set -- has its own momentum. And it is fertile ground for a budding storyteller like ZZ.

His publisher calls the book a memoir, but it feels more like a novel. The characterizations, dialogue and fine sense of comic timing can't possibly come from memory alone. Besides, ZZ seems to have been high most of the time. The gauzy, opinionated impressions of this bi-cultural connoisseur are far more interesting than what actually happened. The story bounces around. When it opens, ZZ has already quit a high-salaried gig as a corporate lawyer to launch his own start-up business, Foodiez, a food delivery service that relies on motorcycles and underpaid delivery boys. He spends his time mapping out nightspots in Sanlitun, formerly a gray and dusty quarter, now dripping with flashy neon.

One of ZZ's favorite stops is Café 44, a name that plays off a competing bar, 88, and on the Chinese penchant for double names. "Had it not been for 44," he writes, "I would never have met Baby Baby, Cutie Cutie or many other girls with looks straight out of Final Fantasy and double-double names that I once thought were special."

ZZ's rendition of local slang, with his refrain of "cao-ta-ma-de" (unprintable in English), is pitch-perfect. And with comely chicks cycling through his bedroom and a thriving social network that allows him to avoid intimacy, ZZ embodies the inchoate confusion of youth. He is addicted to and weary of the constant stimulation available in Beijing, yet does not quite know how to look for something more.

Events intercede. Out of nowhere, ZZ gets thrown in jail. Apparently those joints he's been smoking were laced with opium, and he can't figure out who tipped off the cops. He seems to have spent real time in a Chinese jail. It is crowded. It is filthy. It is cold. There is a taut pecking order. Connections and obsequiousness rule the day, just like anywhere in Chinese officialdom. Yet his fellow cellmates are rich material in themselves, and he draws them out with touching sensitivity.

A funny thing happens, too. Being forced to sit still for days on end actually does ZZ some good. So does his openness to spiritual instruction from the "boss" of his cell. ZZ takes a look at himself and the causes of his restlessness. Meditation helps him grow up. Whether that really happened in jail or later, as he wrote this book, it turns "China High" from a trashy diversion into a worthwhile story, well told.

Seth Faison is the author of "South of the Clouds: Exploring the Hidden Realms of China."