BEIJING-BASED teacher Hedy Lee Wen takes a bottle of ice cubes wherever she goes. 'I like eating ice. It's a habit I adopted since childhood. I guess I have a lot of huo qi [a pun on internal heat and hot temper],' she says jokingly, crunching on a fresh cube.
Ice seems necessary for this feisty Chinese-American. In the past year, she has lodged more than 100 complaints with city authorities on grievances ranging from noisy neighbours to spitting taxi drivers. She has also written a book Like Father, Like Daughter, listing what she sees as the faults of some mainlanders, such as the habit of stepping out in pyjamas.
To some, Lee's actions are obsessive. 'Does the lady complain too much?' asked the headline in a local newspaper. Others applauded her fight to get the uncouth masses to change their ways.
Order and cleanliness seem to be an obsession with Lee, an attractive, well-groomed fortysomething. At her swish apartment, she places a piece of paper on a white leather chair before inviting a visitor to sit down for a chat. The 200 pairs of shoes in her walk-in wardrobe are lined up neatly on a shelf, the soles wiped clean before being put away.
But Lee's penchant for provocation is probably in the genes. The eldest daughter of outspoken Taiwanese writer-legislator Li Ao, she has clearly inherited her father's combative traits. The difference is while her father fires salvos on big political issues, Lee hits out at everyday irritants.
'My father once joked, 'Little Wen, you've gone further than me'. I replied, 'It's your fault, Dad. You taught me not to follow Confucius, repaying ingratitude with kindness, but to learn from Lao Tze and adopt a principled stand',' she says, stumbling a little over the Chinese idioms.