She's Got It
Ooh Baby, She's All Lady

Words: Shai Oster

Officially, the following is a profile about Namu, the author/singer/personality who emerged out of obscurity and onto the world stage a few years back.

But really, this is a love ode.

Namu is a knockout, a bombshell, a woman with a capital W. Spend more than twenty minutes with her and if you have an ounce of testosterone, you're tongue will be on the floor.

But what, gentle reader, is so special about an attractive woman? One thing this city's got a lot of is belle Beijingers, you might say. Why, you could wonder, read about this particular high-heeled dream?

Because underneath Namu's sensual and playful exterior is an iron will. It's a will so strong it was able to propel her from an isolated, tiny village in a forsaken corner of China all the way to the cover of fashion magazines in Italy and the music charts of Hong Kong. And she did it alone.

I met Namu for coffee at Starbucks in September, just hours before she was to leave China for a sojourn in Switzerland where her model lookalike boyfriend was to study French. She showed up a few minutes late, a bundle of energy and excuses. After cheek-kissing the friends she kept bumping into, she sat down for a one-hour interview. Ok, two hours. Can you blame me? She tells a good story. (And that black dress, yowza!)

After picking my jaw of the floor (and silently thanking my editor for this assignment), the interview started. Between sips of latte, she unfolded the sort of story that would make for an unbelievable movie script.

The beginning was not auspicious for Namu. She was one of six children of a headstrong chain-smoking mother in one of the most isolated parts of China. The Muoso are a matriarchal society tucked in a far corner of Yunnan, on the shores of Lugu Lake. Namu, nee Yanger Che Namu, spent most of her young life as a yak herder in the mountains. Few outsiders make it there and modern conveniences are few. Namu's mother is still a pig farmer, marching around the village with the cigarettes she smokes or hands out to friends tucked behind both ears.

Namu was thought of as an ugly and troublesome child. Three times, her mother tried to swap her with friends for a boy. Each time, the bawling Namu was returned.

Her failure at least in the eyes of locals continued when it came time for her to choose a suitor. In accordance with Muoso culture, woman do not marry, but may take men in the "flower chamber." Namu didn't like any of her suitors, realizing that having a child would mean she could never leave her village. But not having children cast her apart from others.

When about 13, Namu's not exactly sure when she was born, she started to dream of leaving home. It was a goal her headstrong mother had once had, too. But she only made it as far as the next village. Namu didn't want the same fate to befall her. But Namu knew that telling her mother that would only result in a sharp slap across the face.

"Her love is simple," Namu explained. "It's black or white."

Namu's hopes would have remained unfulfilled dreams without the intervention of the hand of fate, or rather, a countywide folk-singing contest. Singing was no problem; Namu whiled away herding time serenading the yaks. The trouble was the car ride, her first ever, which left her violently ill. (She still won). It was also her first introduction to brushing teeth, and to that modern take on foot binding known as high heeled shoes.

That first taste of the outside left Namu thirsting for more. On the basis of her regional fame, she was offered a job as a cook at a lamasery for the then princely sum of RMB 15 a month - about $2 at today's exchange rate. Later she worked as a singer. It was there that she heard about the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. But her salary was barely enough to cover living expenses, let alone afford train fare to the city.

With no other option, Namu sold several family heirlooms, including a precious jade bracelet and golden jewelry. "My mother still asks if I can buy them back," Namu said.

Namu arrived in Shanghai in 1983 looking like what she was: a dirty peasant. Once at the conservatory, the audacity of her act caught up with her: "I stood outside the school, nervous and afraid to enter." She spent the first night sleeping on the floor.

The next day, hundreds of students lined up, auditioning for a spot in the prestigious school. Children stood flanked by their anxious parents who had come to offer support. At the end of the line, Namu stood, alone and growing hungry. Unable to ignore her growling stomach any longer, she bolted ahead, barged into the audition room and started belting out a folk tune.

"The teacher's face lit up," Namu said. "Right away, I knew I would get in."

The next five years were spent studying music, Chinese and ways to satisfy the cravings of her stomach. After graduation, she moved to Beijing and began singing at hotels to earn her keep. A chance meeting brought her together with the American photographer she was to marry, and later divorce.

In 1989, she moved with him to San Francisco, where she gave up singing and opened a successful clothing boutique. Then she moved on to Italy for a modeling stint before returning to California, where she tried out Hollywood. In 1998, she was back in Beijing where she met her current boyfriend. Along the way, she authored four books, including an autobiography, appeared in two films and cut several albums.

"My life, I built everything with my 10 fingers," she said * although her well-manicured hands don't look too careworn.

In everything she's done, Namu has left her particular stamp on it. For her tell-all biography, she discussed her sex life in astonishingly frank terms for a book published in China. "I had eight boyfriends. So what? I have all the beautiful memories," Namu said, raising feeble hopes in the author that he might be number nine. "I learned a lot from them, and I had good taste anyway."

Even when talking about her latest fashion project, she raises blood pressures. She has found 100 Qing era bras (they had bras?) which she finds erotic because they have high necks, but open backs. "That's so much sexier," she says as she mimics the wayward hands of a man trying to, uh, you know.

Her blunt attitude is perhaps a reflection of the forthright manner of her mother, whom she admires from a safe distance. "If I want to eat, then I want to open my stomach and eat," Namu said. "If I like you, I like you completely."

About 30 now, "my mind is 60, my body 18 or 19", Namu shows little sign of slowing down. This summer she signed a contract with music giant BMG to make an album and she's started research on book number five about minority marriages. There's also talk about a movie based on her life.

Despite her success, little has changed back in her hometown. Her mother still tends the pigs, her brothers and sisters still live as their parents did. And they're not interested in change. Offers to help her siblings have all been turned down. They know adjusting to the new world could be too hard. One thing has changed, though. Namu brought the first television to the village.

"Sometimes, I'm like: what am I doing here? My mother is still at Lugu Lake with her pigs," she says. "It's like a dream."