These crazy-rich Asians, and the rest of the world, will send their fish to him, for minor nips and tucks, to make sure they have the perfect jawline, that their eyes turn up the perfect way. There’s this specialist-I believe there’s only one-in Singapore, and he is the master plastic surgeon for arowanas. Now, they’re a quarter of a million dollars or $300,000 for a fish, depending on the color, and the collectors who collect them are so obsessed with them looking perfect.
Back then, it was a fun thing for a kid to do-the fish cost, like, $1,000 each. But I didn’t know the extremes to which collectors now go. When I was a kid, I was very much into exotic tropical fish and I bred arowanas, so I was very much familiar with this world. Does plastic surgery for fish really exist? Like when Irene Wu brings her arowana pet fish to the plastic surgeon. Speaking of that kind of absurd extravagance-I’m constantly asking myself whether this could really all be real. So, there are barbed moments, but it’s all done in good fun. The degree to which some people are pampered is jaw-dropping. It’s ridiculous, and I’m almost embarrassed. But when I’m in this other world of Asia, there are four maids waiting for me at the airport. I live in New York, my life is very much that of a normal working New Yorker-I’m not flying on private jets every single day, and I don’t have a chauffeur waiting to take me uptown. I also feel like I’m an outsider to this world. On the other hand, I am a satirist, and I am very much skewering a certain set of people. On the one hand, I want to portray this world with a certain degree of authenticity, and let the viewer decide where they want to sit on the moral line of the consumerism, materialism, greed, and waste taking place. What do you hope people will take away from your books?
It’s very matter-of-fact, and it’s part of that world.
People discuss it like they’re discussing sports, or politics, or anything like that. In the U.S., flashiness is seen as name-dropping, and it’s considered impolite to ask what brand someone is wearing, unless you know the person fairly well. These are people who very much define themselves by their things, for better or for worse. The universe that my characters find themselves in-that’s very important to me.
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