Ruby Yao
ASK THE distractingly beautiful Ruby Yao her occupation and she makes a face. As if she's eaten something really sour. Then she sticks her tongue out. 'I'm a socialite,' she says. 'At least that's what people call me.' Later she reassess herself. 'Well', she says with head coyly cupped in hands, 'maybe a semi-reluctant tai-tai.' As she sits in a Central coffee shop - one of their plush, post-lunch wonderlands, where herds of grazing tai-tais sip and strain to hear the whispers of each other's scandals, there is nothing reluctant about Ruby Yao. Sweet, smiling Ruby is talking more serious matters. Today, the fabulously wealthy, 27-year-old darling of the Chinese popular press is no mere member of the 'ladies who lunch' club. Today Ruby Yao is promoting her book.
Follow Your Heart, Follow Your Mind, to be published on Tuesday, is her first literary offering: a bitter-sweet collection of 'love and life' essays placed alongside a host of soft-focus, seductive and romantic shots of - who else? - a soft-focus, seductive and romantic Ruby. It's different, but so is she.
'It doesn't have a story,' she says, sitting with a pile of colour proofs. 'It's bits and pieces, thoughts, feelings, how I look at romance.' She picks an essay. 'This is about genetic psychology. I read that gorillas have something called an alpha male.' She leans forward for emphasis. 'Men are like animals. They still have that instinct that means they mate with a lot of women to pass the best genes on. Women tend to choose one powerful male so they ensure their offspring get the best.' She pauses and looks at the page. 'People in Hong Kong behave the same. Women go out to find a rich husband and guys have ...' she pauses again, thinks, then throws back her head and laughs, '... millions of girlfriends. They have yet to lose that animal instinct.' There are essays about hurtful gossip in Chinese magazines, why babies are born cute (so parents will care for them), about hands, eyes, ('you can tell a lot about a person from their eyes') and the seasons. 'A friend said if an affair can go through all four seasons it will survive,' she says softly. More than anything the book is about love, and the difference between men and women. 'This story is about how men cannot stand women who are too possessive.' Suddenly Ruby looks up. 'Sorry, am I boring you?' The book's success matters, although not financially for a girl who drives a Ferrari and spends her time 'reading, swimming, travelling'. The $300,000 production costs are described as 'no problem', but she later admits, 'If it meant trading a Cartier watch [for the book] I would have done so.' To increase sales it was written in Chinese, even though English-language educated Ruby (St Paul's Convent in Hong Kong, high school in Connecticut, then Stamford University, both in the United States) is far from fluent in written Chinese. Her aim was a novel 'about love', but she found she didn't have 'the kind of logic to piece a long story together ... I just could not get past 200 words', she says, shaking her head. But she wrote on anyway.
Glossy self-promotion for the little rich girl? Not exactly. 'I know some might say I have a nice life and yes, I am lucky, but I'm not very happy.' She pauses. 'It's written all over my book'. The volume could be a vanity-publishing cry for help.
The gossip pages trumpet that Ruby and her fund-manager husband, Alex Tong King-hong, are soon to divorce. She doesn't want to talk about it, she says - then adds that they have 'nothing in common ... we have entirely different interests'. She talks about looking for the ideal partner. 'My husband doesn't like [the book] at all,' she says unsurprisingly. 'He's a traditional male chauvinist ... I don't listen to anybody. I do my own thing. I always have.' Ruby's octogenarian father, Yao Ling-sun, made millions from the booming post-war property market and, she says, gave his daughter a strict upbringing. 'He thinks every woman that goes out after sunset is bound to be a bad girl.' This might have made her rebellious, she muses. After graduating from Stamford (strangely, in business and industrial engineering - an anomaly she glosses over) Ruby returned to Hong Kong, and to investment banking. 'I spent several years in Peregrine Capital which was really tough ... very stressful,' she laughs. 'I still have nightmares about it.' She quit in 1995 to 'try new things ... I wanted to take a year off to travel, then met my husband, got married in '96, and that's it.' Only Ruby knows if she became the 'semi-reluctant tai-tai' because she thought she should, or because she thought it would be fun. When she talks derisively about the insular, gossipy world of the socialite she may be talking hypocritically; but after a few years in those circles she is suffering the aches and pains that have made many a tai-tai weep. Ruby says she has only one good friend here. 'I just don't seem to relate to anyone else,' she adds.
She loves the US, visiting for at least two months a year. 'I think I left my heart there,' she confesses sadly, but avoids saying why she came back. Once married, she claims the socialite role just happened. 'Everybody thinks I planned the whole thing, but people first knew me through a catwalk show at an AIDS concern event in '95.' The show 'just attracted people's attention. For some reason [the popular press] love me,' admits Ruby. 'And I'd be lying if I said I didn't love [the attention]. I'm a woman and I like to be loved.' Public love isn't enough. Ruby 'has to' go on a trip at least once a month ('anywhere I haven't been before'). And she plans to travel more. Will this bring happiness? Ruby laughs, 'That's the million-dollar question!' After the book will come another project, but she doesn't know what. 'Maybe fashion designing,' she says with an optimistic shrug. But it seems this is Ruby on auto-speak. She knows it is not just 'another project' that will see Ruby smiling inside and out. 'Spiritually I feel sad,' she confides. 'People say to me, 'You can go anywhere you want, any time'. That's true. It's just that there is a void in my life. And I need to fill it.'
