79 pages • 2 hours read
Kevin KwanRich People Problems
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Greed and Materialism
The central question that hangs over the first half of Rich People Problems is about who will inherit Tyersall Park. The house is not only the grand residence in which Shang Su Yi’s immediate and extended families gather, it is a symbol of the opulent wealth in which a select few Singaporeans exist. For those who want to sell the property, particularly Victoria Young, it is their access to financial freedom and independence.
The house is also the focal point of a rivalry between Nicholas Young and his cousin, Eddie Cheng. Nick and Eddie are positioned as foils in the novel, with the former being more concerned about what the loss of the house will do to the family, while the latter wants to inherit the property only to advance his social position and is willing to betray members of his family to achieve his aims. The ancestral home—what ought to be and later becomes a focal point of family bonding—initially becomes the source of internal strife, fomented by Eddie’s greed and social ambition.
Similarly, later in the novel, Tyersall Park becomes yet another object in a tug-of-war between Kitty Pong and her estranged stepdaughter, Colette Bing. This is a battle that Kitty wins by becoming an investor in the property’s transformation into a resort hotel and focal point of an eco-village. Thus, Kitty’s initial ambition to seize the property simply to keep it away from Colette is superseded by her true desire to do good, as symbolized by her installation of Buddha heads in the garden. She uses her wealth to advocate for altruism and a breakdown of the class barriers that make the lives of people like her so markedly different from those of others. This is a sharp contrast from what Kitty’s life looks like when we first meet her. She transforms from a bored, spoiled trophy wife in Giambattista Valli’s atelier to a Madonna figure, nursing her son, Harvard, in the Tyersall Park garden. On the other hand, Colette is recuperating from an incident in which her one-of-a-kind Valli couture goes up in flames. In this horrifying episode, materialism is literally destructive.
By the novel’s end, Eddie has also given up his obsessions with markers of social status to repair his relationships with his family. His transformation from a seemingly unrepentant materialist to a warmer man, unafraid to tap into the sensitivity that was always present, is, arguably, the novel’s most significant character shift. Kwan uses Cheng, particularly, to illustrate that anyone is capable of redemption, and that no material object is worth the love of one’s family.
Social Climbing
Few of the characters in Rich People Problems express any immediate goals beyond acquiring next season’s haute couture or rare gems. Those who obsess over such items also obsess over their respective social positions, always looking to advance, whether it’s through greater popularity, the attainment of status markers, or even by acquiring royal titles.
The urge to increase one’s social status is exemplified by the rivalry between Kitty Pong and Colette Bing. The rivalry starts in Giambattista Valli’s atelier, when Kitty—his premier guest—learns that the designer is making a one-of-a-kind dress for Kitty’s stepdaughter, Colette. Kwan never gives the reader much detail about the impetus of the rivalry between the two women beyond Colette simply thinking that Kitty is unworthy of her father. This is ironic, considering that Jack Bing is a nouveau riche upstart, like Kitty. Colette’s shunning of her stepmother is an indication that she seeks to distance herself from her father’s past poverty to claim her place with the upper echelons of society. She secures her role in the latter world by becoming the Duchess of Palliser through her marriage to Lucien Montagu-Scott.
The reader never knows if Colette actually loves Lucien, despite his endearing qualities. Kwan’s avoidance of portraying an expression of affection from Colette to her husband would suggest that there isn’t much on her part. Interestingly, the only instance in which any passion arises in her is when she encounters her ex-boyfriend, Carlton, who is also Rachel’s brother. The arousal of venom in her toward Carlton suggests a feeling that doesn’t exist for Lucien, who only arouses a placidity in Colette and an attention to protocol.
In the end, Kitty wins the rivalry between them by becoming an investor in Tyersall Park. Instead of using Jack Bing’s money, she uses her own from her divorce settlement to first husband Bernard Tai. She taps into her sense of independence to win an argument based on whom Jack Bing supposedly loves more. Kitty’s investment in Tyersall Park, and her serene presence at the end of the novel, suggest that she isn’t as dependent on social status markers and her husband’s favor as she once thought. It is, instead, the work that she’s willing to do that can distinguish her from both Colette and her husband.
Social Stratification and the Urge to Westernize
Aside from money, the families in Rich People Problems also employ colorism and an aversion to Eastern religions to position themselves as superior to other Singaporeans—and, particularly, to other Chinese people.
Skin color in Asia is a marker of class status. The lighter one’s skin, the likelier it is that one can afford not to engage in any outdoor manual labor, supposedly. Felicity and Henry Leong ostracize their son, Alex, for marrying a Malay woman whose skin they deemed too dark, whom they worried would sully their bloodlines. By giving Alex her home in Malaysia in her will, Su Yi is sanctioning the marriage. However, the reader can’t help but wonder if she, too, at some point harbored such prejudices and unduly influenced her daughter to excommunicate her son over the matter.
Similarly, Victoria is a fanatical Christian, who frequently invites Bishop See to Tyersall Park, much to Su Yi’s chagrin. Su Yi speaks in platitudes about Christianity—that is, worrying that her mother won’t get into heaven if she isn’t baptized—but she expresses little interest in the true tenets of the faith. She is as materialistic and avaricious as her siblings, even to the ironic point of being willing to turn Tyersall Park into a Christian resort community for the ultra-wealthy. She eschews Chinese customs, including Eddie’s ritualistic burning of an effigy of Tyersall Park at Su Yi’s funeral and the installation of Buddha heads in the garden.
This disavowal of Buddhism coincides with Victoria’s desire to align herself more closely with Western values. When Kitty gossips with her friends about Colette’s marriage to a White Englishman, her friend, Wandi, gushes about how fortunate an Asian woman is to marry a White man, due to her idea that the child will likely end up attractive. The notion that being Eurasian makes one more attractive than another who is Asian is a form of internalized prejudice. Arguably, an understated part of Kitty’s resentment toward Colette is not only that she has secured a royal title but also a White Western man. After all, Kitty, too, desires markers of Westernization—hence, her choices to name her children Gisele and, most obvious of all, Harvard.
The transformation of Tyersall Park, at the novel’s end, into an eco-village symbolizes the coming together of a community. Kitty’s inclusion of the Buddha heads (ironically, she first spotted them in a Belgian architect’s atelier) is an indirect confirmation of the validity of Eastern values. Though Victoria is displeased to see the heads in the garden, they remain. The transference of the heads from Belgium to Singapore also suggest that the values they represent are more universal than Victoria would like to think.
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