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https://scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3093385/crazy-rich-asians-kevin-kwan-says-life-has
Post Magazine/ Long Reads

Crazy Rich Asians’ Kevin Kwan says life has reached ‘a whole other level of crazy’

The Singaporean author is back with a new novel, Sex and Vanity, which, believe it or not, is an homage to E.M. Forster

Kevin Kwan at the Crazy Rich Asians premiere in Hollywood, California, in August 2018. Photo: AFP

Kevin Kwan first realised how radically his life had changed during a visit home to Houston, Texas, in the United States. Walking with his mother through the car park of a suburban supermarket, and navigating swarms of traffic, Kwan got into his car and tried to back out.

“There was this SUV full of guys honking, and frantically waving their arms,” recalls Kwan. “I thought, ‘Oh, no, did I hit something?’ I rolled down my window, and said, ‘What’s the matter?’ They all smiled and said, ‘Kevin, Kevin! Can we have a selfie?’”

Indeed, while many other Los Angeles residents now think of their lives as two distinct parts – pre- and post-coronavirus – Kwan has a different sense of “before and after”. The recent California transplant, who landed here by way of Manhattan, Houston and Singapore, divides his life instead into pre-CRA and post-CRA.

Crazy Rich Asians, Kwan’s 2013 novel, spawned two equally hilarious sequels, China Rich Girlfriend (2015)and Rich People Problems (2017), and an eponymous international blockbuster film in 2018.

The author had just about got used to speaking in front of polite bookstore audiences all over the US – several dozen people was considered a good night – but now his star status means appearing in front of bookstore crowds in Manila, in the Philippines, with expansive hoardings announcing his arrival, and hundreds of screaming fans jammed into one venue.

Another new marker of Kwan’s stardom is the paparazzi presence. Recently, the author drove into his LA garage to find waiting for him a crew from TMZ, the notorious tabloid news website.

That Kwan, with his trademark goatee, bohemian shag, tortoiseshell spectacles and charming, preppy élan, is now recognised on all six continents isn’t the only big shift in this former creative consultant’s life. Pre-CRA, Kwan once said, “I might be ‘crazy’ and ‘Asian’, but I’m certainly not ‘rich’.” Post-CRA, however, all that has changed. His trilogy of books has sold more than 1.5 million copies and the film, which he executive produced, brought in more than US$238 million at the global box office.

“After the movie came out, things reached a whole other level of crazy,” says Kwan. “I now have empathy for Cher.”

Beyond being a beloved author, Kwan, 46, has become a cultural icon. The Los Angeles Times has called him a “singular influence on Asian-American storytelling and Hollywood’s pop cultural landscape”. Showcasing Asian actors, an Asian director, Asian musicians and, generally, Asia’s flashiest and most stunning locations, Crazy Rich Asians the movie sent a message to a world unaware of the region’s rise, depth of culture and achieve­ments.

His work has proved that Asian-American stories matter – and what’s more, that they can make crate loads of cash. (Made on a paltry budget of US$30 million, CRA was the highest grossing romantic comedy of the decade.)

“Kevin’s genius is understanding that audiences are hungry for diverse stories and for putting Asian characters at the forefront of this,” says Janice Lee, fellow bestselling author (The Piano Teacher, 2009; The Expatriates; 2016).

Beyond that, Kwan’s CRA narratives have been a point of pride, announcing to Western audiences that Asians not only know how to consume, they know how to do it at the most refined (and imaginative) level. What CRA communicated to the world is that it is, indeed, the Asian century.

Since shifting coasts two years ago, Kwan has been spending his days doing the Hollywood thing – develop­ing Asia-centric television shows and prepping the Crazy Rich Asians film sequel.

“We aren’t in a rush,” he says. “We want to take our time and do it right.” So, can he let us in on the new storyline, locations, Asian superstars and surprises? “Sorry, I can’t tell you any of that. I’m sworn to secrecy.”

What Kwan can talk about is his latest project. Speaking from his gracious “Old Hollywood” LA lair, he says that, starting last October, he took four months off from his filming duties, sat down at his desk and wrote a book that has been bouncing around his head for a decade. “It is an homage to E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View,” he explains, “because I loved the book and the movie so much.”

Sex and Vanity is Kwan’s first novel out­side the Crazy Rich Asians franchise, but it is every bit as wacky and delicious, set against a decadent backdrop of inter­national high society in Capri and East Hampton. The story follows Lucie Tang Churchill, an American heiress and Brown University student, who is ethnically half-Chinese and half-English.

Lucie travels with her older cousin Charlotte from New York to Capri to attend a Taiwanese friend’s fabulous wedding to an Italian count. During the trip, Lucie tries not to fall in love with George Zao, a wealthy, mysterious Taiwanese-Australian, who leaves her cryptic love notes featuring lines of Pablo Neruda’s poetry.

Beyond that, this addictive and satirical literary romp is a comedy of manners about snobs, social­ites and their hangers-on – in essence, everything people loved about Crazy Rich Asians, with a fresh set of characters. Many of these are non-Asian but fans may be buoyed to hear that the lovely Astrid Leong makes a cameo. Plus, there’s a new sparkling landscape – haute Europe and the elite East Coast.

Lucie is different from Kwan’s other protagonists. At 19, she’s almost a decade younger than CRA’s Rachel Chu. Also, “she is reckless, complex and not as likeable as Rachel or Astrid”, says the author. “Early readers told me she is annoying. Well, she is supposed to be vexing. You are meant to be frustrated with her as you would be your teenage daughter. She is a girl who is making stupid choices all day long.”

But perhaps the most interesting choice in constructing Lucie’s character is Kwan’s decision to make her biracial. “There aren’t that many biracial characters in literature,” he says. “I felt like it would be an interesting way to really explore some issues […] Identity, racism, coming of age – what better way than a narrator who was biracial?”

Michelle Yeoh (centre) in Crazy Rich Asians. Photo: Handout
Michelle Yeoh (centre) in Crazy Rich Asians. Photo: Handout

Having grown up in Singapore, Kwan recalls friends who were half-Chinese and half-Caucasian as being wildly popular. “If you were Eurasian, as we used to call biracial people, you were basically a rock star. Instantly cool.” To create an authentic character, Kwan, noted for his powers of observation, spoke to “hapa” – Hawaiian for half-Asian, half-something else – women. He then interviewed his biracial friends to create Lucie’s complex identity.

As for Kwan’s shift in geography, Capri has long been an inspiration. His first trip was as a 16-year-old, with his parents. “I kind of convinced my parents into doing this month-long trip to Italy, because I loved A Room With a View so much,” he says. “Capri was just one stop and we actually did what every tourist does – which is a huge mistake – we only went there for the day.”

Kwan recalls the ferry ride over, and then seeing the island for the first time: “It was astonishing. It was so beautiful in a way that the other islands are not. There’s something about the geography – the cliffs, the colour of the ocean, and the streets that looked like they were painted gold. And then you walk down these terracotta streets and the bougainvillea is in full bloom, and the hibiscus.” Capri called to the young Kwan with its “architecture, archaeology, history and shopping”.

“It had shopping. It was like the best of all possible worlds. I bought a shirt there that I still have to this day. And I still wear to this day. We’re talking like 30 years ago.”

But the Kwans had to leave the island at 5pm, reluctantly boarding the last ferry. “I was like, ‘Why didn’t we stay here longer?’ It was love at first sight.”

Sitting on the island’s piazzetta – “It’s like Capri’s living room” – Kwan watched as ill-fated romances formed before his eyes. “I just thought, ‘This is just the perfect setting for a novel,’” he says.

Kwan in Capri, Italy, last year. Photo: courtesy of Kevin Kwan
Kwan in Capri, Italy, last year. Photo: courtesy of Kevin Kwan

With Sex and Vanity, Kwan says he is challenging himself. “I wanted to do something different for myself. I didn’t want to write about the same people or places. But I still had no idea if anyone was going to want to read this – and I absolutely still have those fears.”

But with the fresh back­drop and characters who remain elite – the .0001 per cent, if you will – but no longer solely Asian, Kwan has also widened his reach, and his brand. “I want to tell stories with diversity, and I have a lot of stories. Asians are all over the world now, so I wanted to explore these characters and cities beyond Asia, not just do the same thing. To spread my wings a little, to keep evolving.”

Kwan grew up in a multigener­ational household in a sprawling old mansion in Singapore. His great-grandfather was a founding director of the country’s oldest surviving bank, Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation.

Staff served tea at 5pm every day and, after dinner, Kwan’s grandfather would sit on the veranda and smoke his pipe. “As a child I didn’t even realise I was Chinese,” the author told Town & Country magazine in 2018.

“I was Singaporean, but my identity was wrapped up in the culture I was experiencing every day. For example, I didn’t know a word of Mandarin, and my parents didn’t either. I grew up with a posh English accent, and all my aunts sounded as if they came out of a Merchant Ivory movie. It’s a world that has all but disappeared.”

Kwan’s novels. Photo:Shutterstock
Kwan’s novels. Photo:Shutterstock

A family friend had an enormous estate with a sunken pond in the living room that had baby sharks swimming in it. This mem­orable residence became the inspiration of Goh Peik Lin’s house in Crazy Rich Asians.

Kwan says that as a child he had no idea his family was one of Singapore’s uber elite. Quite the opposite: he remembers that, as a boy, he was worried his family were poor. “We lived in an old house with my grand­parents while many of my school friends got to live in these cool high-rise apartments with such amenities as wall-to-wall carpet­ing and bunk beds. I had to sleep in an old antique bed. All I wanted was a bunk bed.”

At the age of 11, Kwan and his two brothers moved with their engineer father and piano-teacher mother to a suburb of Houston, where they lived in a “perfectly nice” ranch house. However, the high-born Singaporean’s British accent did not cut it in Houston’s public schools. “I had to lose that accent on my first day, between third and fourth period,” he says, with a laugh.

Kwan studied creative writing at the University of Houston, where he wrote a poem titled Singapore Bible Study, which lampoons a study group as “an excuse to gossip and show off new jewellery”. That same poem became the basis for a chapter in Crazy Rich Asians, a narrative Kwan first wrote only for his own amusement. “I did not even expect to publish a book, I was just writing it for myself and a few friends who might enjoy my strange humour,” he says.

What I did, completely by accident, was I wrote my truth. I wrote a crazy, crazy story with characters and plot lines that maybe made no sense [...] It strangely connected Kevin Kwan

Fast forward some 25 years, and Kwan is a movie mogul, whose Hollywood home has a view that looks out onto a “beautiful garden”. He spends his days Uber-ing between appointments with film executives and other writers, and his nights visiting vintage Los Angeles restaurants and watering holes with long-time friends. “I feel like I’m wandering through an Old Hollywood movie,” he says.

Now that he’s living the dream, what would Kwan recommend to young writers aspiring to be the next Kevin Kwan? “Why would you want to be that? It’s a miserable life,” he says, exploding into laughter. “Working non-stop, working through the weekends … What I did, completely by accident, was I wrote my truth.

“I wrote a crazy, crazy story with characters and plot lines that maybe made no sense. But I unleashed the craziness in my mind. It strangely connected. I never thought anyone would find any of this funny. So I say, go into that authentic place and write in an authentic voice, and showcase your originality. That is what people respond to. We all have stories, and the more you can express it in your true voice, the more it will resonate.”

As to what his banking magnate great-grandfather might have thought of his success, Kwan says, “Well, I’ve been told he was larger than life. He was very tall and imposing and he had to merge four warring banks in Singapore, and he accomplished this amazing merger. He was hugely ambitious.” Kwan pauses to ponder his extraordinary ancestor, and then offers this: “I think my great-grandfather would have been amused – amused to have a descendant who lived up to his legacy.”