Kevin Kwan
Kevin Kwan
Kevin Kwan is a Singaporean novelist best known for his satirical novels Crazy Rich Asians and China Rich Girlfriend. In 2014, Kwan was named as one of the "Five Writers to Watch" on The Hollywood Reporter's list of Hollywood's Most Powerful Authors...
NationalitySingaporean
ProfessionNovelist
CountrySingapore
asia bus discrete low money southeast taking wearing
Old money in Southeast Asia is much more discrete and low key. It's about not wearing brand names. It's about being invisible, almost. The billionaire can be taking the bus with you.
bottle clad grab hill house indian men metal run soda
As a child, I could bike down the hill from my house and grab an ice-cold bottle of soda from the neighborhood grocer, which was nothing more than a corrugated metal shack run by two Indian men clad in sarongs.
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I think snobbery is one of the oldest customs in the world, and the rich will always find ways to rank each other and make themselves feel more special than others.
hundred screen taken vast
I go to Shenzhen, China, and am taken to a vast luxury spa with a hundred leather recliners and a hundred accompanying plasma screen televisions bolted to the ceiling.
ads portrayed
Certainly, living in the U.S., as I have for over two decades, you see how Asians are portrayed in the media... I didn't see myself represented, you know, when I used to look at ads on TV.
lives longer people simply though
A lot of the people who live the lives of 'Crazy Rich Asians' don't see the humour of their lives simply because this is just who they are. Even though I'm from that part of the world, I'm no longer part of that world.
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I sort of wanted to reveal this other side of Asia: Southeast Asia, where the Chinese have been wealthy for generations and have different ways of relating to money. I wanted to sort of reveal this world to readers.
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I wanted to explore what all this new-found wealth means for the different generations of Chinese who have to live together in this place that is transforming at warp speed into the richest country on the planet.
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Living in the West, you see how there's only two versions of how Asian men are supposed to be. Either they're very nice, yuppie husbands with children in ads, or they're IT geeks.
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There's so much emphasis on the economic might of China, of Southeast Asia, Asian 'Super Tigers' and things like that. But nobody was really looking from the perspective of a family story, of these individuals.
believe characters writers
Writers often say that characters begin to write themselves, and I never used to believe that. I always thought that was complete hogwash.
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It would have been amazing to have been a student at Oxford during that golden moment in the 1910s, rubbing elbows with the likes of Aldous Huxley and T.E. Lawrence, before World War I shattered everything forever.
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I grew up at a time in Singapore - the '70s and '80s - where it was still possible to go riding around the island barefoot. And I was one of these kids that was just climbing trees and running around the neighbourhood.