Reality television shows are escapist fun for most people, even more so during our forced isolation, but nothing could have prepared me for the mind-boggling inanity that is Bling Empire , a programme that follows several moneyed and privileged Los Angelenos of Asian descent, as they flounce from one contrived drama to the next. As I watched their vulgar displays of wealth and excruciating materialism play out in just one episode, I kept asking myself: could anyone be so devoid of self-awareness and irony? Theirs is a world where things have little or no value unless they are emblazoned with designer labels, whose denizens are so poor that all they have is money. The desire to flaunt one’s material abundance is almost universal across time and cultures. While most of us have been conditioned – through our parents, in the schoolyard, by books, movies, even religion – to regard bragging as unattractive, it is obvious that some did not receive the memo. Shi Chong (AD249-300) was infamous in Chinese history as a man of enormous wealth who was not afraid of showing it off. Shi’s father was a military commander who later became a senior official at court, so his family was already quite well-off when he was born. His own wealth, however, was acquired after he was appointed as regional inspector of Jingzhou, in central China. There were conflicting reports of how he amassed his fortune. Depending on the source, Shi was either a shrewd businessman who turned everything he touched into gold or a bandit who robbed merchant caravans that passed through the sizeable domain under his supervision and then killed his victims. However he made his money, he became so rich that stories of his legendary wealth and extravagance were told all over the country. Shi’s several hundred concubines wore the finest silks and were bedecked with jewellery, and his kitchen served the rarest and most expensive victuals. Guests at Shi’s colossal home who needed to use the privy would be greeted within by a dozen or so well-dressed attendants proffering expensive unguents and perfumes, or else leading them to an enormous bed covered with scarlet linen, on which they could rest. Shi was perhaps most notorious for his competition in profligacy with Wang Kai, also a wealthy man and the maternal uncle of the reigning emperor. When Shi heard that Wang’s household used maltose and rice to scrub their cooking pots, he burned candles as fuel for cooking. When Wang screened his entourage from commoners’ prying eyes with silk along a public thoroughfare, Shi one-upped him by using brocade, which was more precious and expensive, and covered a longer stretch of road. Such petty contests between Shi and Wang were as silly and pointless as their modern equivalents, which involve anything from designer labels, jewellery and sports cars, to home addresses, art collections and wedding parties. Shi became collateral damage in a political coup in AD300. For backing the wrong horse and having enemies on the winning side, Shi and 14 of his family members, including his mother, brothers, wife and children were executed. “Form is emptiness; emptiness is form.” So says the Heart Sutra , an important scripture in Buddhism, a faith that a few in Bling Empire say they profess to, without any trace of irony. All the money one has, and the baubles bought with it, are transient. Make your life count and don’t waste your time on this earth by watching shows like Bling Empire . One episode was more than enough for me.