Slipping
into a pair of blue Marc Jacobs pants in the back of a rented van in
Yongzhou, China, the model Liu Wen was feeling an unusual degree of
jitters. Changing clothes on the go is standard practice for models
shooting on location, and she liked the look: “It’s tomboy style,” she
said. “I feel it’s my style.” And under most circumstances — long
travel, bad weather, unexpected wardrobe glitches — China’s first bona
fide supermodel has a reputation in the industry for being gracious and
professional. But as the van pulled up to her old middle school, she
peered worriedly out the curtained windows at a waiting crowd: hundreds
of frantic teenagers in white uniform jackets, spitting images of her
recent former self. “It’s getting crazy here,” she said. The students
were chanting, “Liu Wen, Liu Wen” and were armed with cellphone cameras
and notepads for autographs, eager for the return of their school’s most
famous alum. “I’m not that big a celebrity,” she said. “I’m just an
ordinary person.”
At
24, Liu is not so far removed, in years, from her time at Yongzhou No.3
Middle School. She grew up in the southern province of Hunan, most
famous as the birthplace of Mao Zedong and as a powerhouse of domestic
pork production. Back then in Yongzhou, population 5.7 million, there
were “no fashion stores, not even fashion magazines,” she said. “Our
sense of the outside world came mainly from South Korean soap operas.”
About the only widely recognized Western brands in town were Kentucky
Fried Chicken and McDonald’s. Her modest five-story school has long
open-air corridors leading to cramped classrooms lined with
old-fashioned blackboards. On the walls hang portraits of Chairman Mao,
Vladimir Lenin, William Shakespeare, Hu Jintao and other inspirational
figures. In winter, to conserve electricity, students and teachers wear
coats inside to keep warm.
It
was, in other words, hardly fated that a girl from China’s pig country
would go on to become, as Liu has, the first Asian model to be the
global face of Estée Lauder, the first Chinese model to walk the
Victoria’s Secret runway and one of the most booked Asian runway models
in the world. She has learned to wear stilettos (“I never wore high
heels in my hometown”) and taught herself English. She moved to Beijing
and then to New York City. Perhaps the only thing that remains the same
is that she is single. “I have never had a boyfriend,” she told me. “In
my school days, everyone thought I’m too tall for a Chinese girl. And
now, I travel so much. Maybe in 2012.” It was her first time home in
more than a year, and she was reflective about how her perspective had
changed. “Twenty-four is still young in New York, but in Hunan most of
my friends are married.”
For
the most part, Liu takes mind-boggling change in stride. Perhaps this
quality, more than anything else, defines young Chinese people today.
But somehow contemplating it all, compressed into a single instant, felt
overwhelming. Yet when she stepped into the shrieking crowd, shaking
hands and answering questions, the anxiety wore off. “I feel like here
is home,” she said. “It’s been a long time, but it still feels very
warm.”
In
a little room upstairs, Liu had lunch with several of her old teachers,
surrounded by laminated posters of beach scenes and palm trees — exotic
places few of her peers have seen. With the heating off, everyone
huddled around a circular table in sweaters and dark jackets, save for
the principal, Mr.
Liu, who wore a gray suit with a purple tie for the
occasion. On the table was a plastic dish full of sunflower seeds. The
teachers uncorked two bottles of red wine, a treat, and offered rounds
of toasts, standing up and clinking glasses in the style of a Chinese
banquet. Liu, who does not drink alcohol, raised her cup of green tea
and offered a personal motto: “Be a good student and enjoy your life.
You never know the future.”
Certainly Liu’s success rides largely on her looks —
“I
often use the word ‘sharp’ to describe her,” a casting director for
Victoria’s Secret, John Pfeiffer, told me. “She’s not a soft, delicate
beauty. But she has that very indefinable ‘It’ factor, full of
presence.” That she defies the stereotype of the spoiled, immature
mannequin has also helped her. (“After our first meeting, she sent a
handwritten thank you card; it was charming,” Aerin Lauder remembers.)
Yet
her rise is due in equal measure to the extraordinary moment in China’s
history from which she emerged. When Liu was born, in 1988, the
daughter of a construction worker, many of the brands she has modeled
for — Dior, Chanel, Jean Paul Gaultier — were unknown in the country.
Beijing was then a sea of bicycles, and thick coal dust in the air
darkened both shirt collars and the sky. China’s per capita annual
income was just $704
(last year it was $5,184), and only a sliver of the population could afford such luxuries as skin creams and handbags.
With
roaring economic growth every year of her childhood, Beijing was
transformed by the time Liu moved there in 2006, as an 18-year-old
aspiring model. No longer a wasteland of sleepy state-owned department
stores, the capital was throwing up stadiums, shopping malls and car
dealerships. At the same time, the city had become a magnet for China’s
young dreamers — artists, writers, designers, punk bands, models.
It
was into this energetic new world that Liu stepped one November morning
after a 20-hour train ride from Yongzhou. She had come alone, clutching
two suitcases full of warm clothes and snack foods her mother had
packed. That fall, she had won a modeling contest in Hunan; her victory
gave her the idea that modeling might be a career, but in no way assured
success. She insisted that she’s “not pretty, pretty, pretty by Chinese
standards — big eyes and small nose and mouth.” She had come on a leap
of faith.
In
her first apartment, which she split with two other aspiring models,
she began to pile up fashion magazines, at least 2,000 by her own
estimate. Many, like Vogue China, had only recently printed their first
issue, catering to a new class of urban Chinese consumers whose spending
on cosmetics alone has leapt from $24 million in 1982 to $168 billion
in 2009.
In
2007, Liu was discovered at a Beijing fitting by Joseph Carle, then a
creative director at Marie Claire International looking for models to
whom both Western and Chinese women could relate.
Soon
she was appearing in those magazines she’d been hoarding, and by 2008
she’d walked for Burberry in Milan. The next year she moved to New York,
knowing almost no English. “I could only smile and say, ‘yes’ and ‘no,’
” she recalled. But she learned quickly with the help of Broadway
shows, “Gossip Girl” and by comparing Chinese and English versions of
the Harry Potter books. And she found a new look in vintage stores, a
concept little known in China. Over Skype her mother asked her: “Why
would you buy that old stuff, when you can afford new?”
Back
in Hunan province, Liu posed at the ancient Yuelu Academy in Changsha,
under a misty gray sky. Taking an optimistic view of the drizzle, she
repeated an old Chinese saying: “Rain brings riches.” At that moment, a
group of Chinese tourists wandered through the impromptu set, trailing a
woman with a microphone clipped to her collar: “Ladies and gentlemen,
this way.” Had she not become a model, she had planned to enter a local
vocational school to become just such a tour guide. Now the crowd paid
little attention to the tall slender woman wrapped for warmth in a blue
parka. Only one young girl stopped and stared. Turning to a friend, she
whispered, “She is so beautiful.” Liu warmed to the familiar lilt of
Hunan dialect.
In
the van later, barreling between the Changsha and Yongzhou, she curled
up across two seats and caught up on sleep. Outside, the light had
faded; the view through the window soon changed from city — new hotels
and high-rises — to rolling fields where farmers toil with spades in
small plots still untouched by modern farm equipment. It felt a little
like traveling back in time, although both worlds, the ancient and the
hyper-modern, exist in China today. And Liu has learned the art of
slipping between them.
At
about midnight, the van pulled up to a rest stop near a Sinopec gas
station. There were several large trucks laden with construction
materials or oinking pigs, their drivers sleeping in the cabs. Liu and
members of the crew wandered into the 24-hour convenience store and
strolled down its brightly lit aisles. She picked up a bag of chocolates
and a red sugary concoction labeled “Wang Zai Milk Drink.” A bit
nostalgic, she said with a sigh, “It’s my favorite from my teenage
years.” And then, though half asleep, she had the good grace to offer to
translate between Mandarin and English, between the drowsy Sinopec
store clerk and the black-clad New York makeup artist. “Yes, we have
chips,” Liu said. “Shrimp flavor or cheese flavor?”
ESSENTIALS • Hunan Province
SIGHTS
Yuelu Academy
Founded in 976, the Yuelu Academy of Classical Learning, in Changsha,
is one of the oldest schools in China. In 1903, it was formally
converted to a public university. (In 1926, it was renamed Hunan
University.) The grounds include a temple dedicated to Confucius —
revered as a patron of higher learning in ancient China (and lately
being reinterpreted by the Chinese Communist Party as a patron of
hierarchy and authoritarian government). Stroll through its peaceful,
contemplative gardens or hike up the adjacent Mount Yuelu.
Statue of Mao Zedong
It’s not only ironic Chinese teenagers but also provincial governments
who are reclaiming the image of the Chairman (after several decades out
of fashion) on everything from T-shirts to key chains to 105-foot stone
statues. And Hunan province, the birthplace of Mao, has what might be
the best piece of Maomorabilia in the country: a chiseled giant Mao head
in Changsha’s Juzhou Park, erected in 2009 and depicting the young
leader looking decidedly more svelte than the iconic Mao on the 100 RMB
note. A shuttle bus runs from the park’s gate to the statue.
Temple of Liu
A memorial to the eighth-century poet, travel writer and official Liu
Zongyuan, the temple was erected in Yongzhou in 814. Liu’s celebrated
works include Eight Records of Excursions in Yongzhou, depicting his
jaunts to the mountains and bamboo forests near the ancient city. The
Temple of Liu is on Liuzi Street, on which several quaint old homes have
been preserved. It’s a nice stroll from the temple to nearby Xiaoshui
River.
