When American trash meets Chinese chili

Author: Liao Wanrong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-01-01
Features: When Su Xindi, a young Chinese woman who calls herself a "victim of literature," finally decides to leave school and completely break away from literature, she accidentally gets lured by the flattery of a balloon shop owner in a small American town and impulsively buys her struggling, near-bankrupt balloon shop, thus embarking on a completely "alternative" life as an international student. To obtain a legal status, Su Xindi has to borrow the legal identity of her hometown compatriot, Sima Hanke, and enters into a fake marriage, thereby legitimately becoming the shop owner. In daily life, Su Xindi navigates between Sima Hanke and his foreign girlfriend, Anne; she struggles to manage her American employees in the small shop in a chaotic manner. Her curious, competitive, and argumentative personality inevitably leads her into various hilarious and awkward situations; her naive understanding of foreign culture and laws inevitably exposes her to the embarrassment of being swindled. Su Xindi blends all the sour, bitter, sweet, and spicy elements into a unique experience, coming up with clever "counterattack with poison and resist evil with evil" schemes, and begins her joyful adventure of outsmarting and maneuvering against the "garbage" among Americans—those vulgar Americans.