Foreign Babe in Beijing

A China scholar, fluent in Mandarian, Rachel DeWoskin graduated with honors from Columbia, then took off for China getting a job at a U.S. PR firm

She became one of the most widely watched TV stars on the planet, playing a sexy American on a hit Chinese soap opera. 

Terrific interview found via the bookofjoe

Now a book, Foreign Babes in Beijing: Behind the Scenes of a New China.  From the Booklist review.

An executive for an American PR firm by day, by night DeWoskin is the unlikely star of one of China's first television soap operas, an equally unlikely melodrama involving a sexy American college student who wins the love of a rebellious young Chinese man. The merging of two disparate worlds onscreen is nothing compared to the cultural assimilation DeWoskin observes transpiring within China itself in the years immediately following Tiananmen Square. Hers is the ultimate insider's view, living witness to the philosophical and practical aspects of a traditional and repressed society's tumultuous confrontation with liberated, energetic, and economically dynamic Western influences. Exhibiting sensitivity and uncommon wisdom, DeWoskin delivers a candid and valuable portrait of a China few Westerners get to see.

Fearless, smart and lucky, Rachel understands the Business of Life.™