China Girl

In CHINA GIRL the story of Charity Bing a Transsexual Chinese woman living in San Francisco’s Chinatown in the 1940’s- through 2005, Master Author Red Jordan Arobateau introduces us to one of the most fascinating characters in modern American literature. The book is unique among the files of TG life stories. Humorous, interesting, plenty of Gender Variant sex; & it contains a mystery which will hold the reader spellbound. The book is the writers first ‘mystery novel’ though only partially so.-- The book primarily is a fascinating study of a girl/boy back in these times: "And I, Charity, had brought disgrace on the family name twice! Once for acting out the role set for me in life by our Divine Creator--that of Transvesti--but second, rebelling even from that role! By my bizarre presentation of a Liberated Woman! A True Gender Variant! One who shaved their heads bald as a US Marine in boot camp, with combat Boots, yet wore a pink femmy skirt and frilly blouse--and this only signifying the turmoil inside my breast, I who lusted for a burly truckdriving man to ram me up the highway of Nirvana, yet in my very essence of heart and soul knew I would only find peace with my beloved Lotus, or some woman, yes, a bio woman, just like her! Like Suzuki. Like Emerald herself! What a divine deviant!" It portrays the conflict between Charity and her younger brother. And the relationship between Charity and her mom--Emerald. CHINA GIRL ultimately tells the tale of the love of her life, Lotus.

The book is entirely set in St. Francis City by the Bay and it’s epicenter is in Chinatown. Charity Bing is a good girl --she spends much of her life in the Chinatown public library.--With these few exceptions... There are shocking references to the atrocities committed in Nanking in the Japanese war against the Chinese in the 1930’s from a client Charity meets when she briefly works as a girl of pleasure in a she-male brothel in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. Just as she briefly worked in Alice Hung’s brothel, so she has a quick fling in ‘The Red Mouse’ collective, a Communist/Socialist work cell which she falls in with at the UC Berkeley campus where the industrious ‘transvesti’ (as she mistakenly calls herself back in that day) audits classes for free.

Most of the action of this novel is set in 1970’s Chinatown. By the year 2005 Charity has survived loneliness, poverty & a broken heart & the reader gets to examine her life once again at age 60. We see Charity in 2005, ensconced in a safe small studio apartment where she is sequentially taken to tea by one or the other of her 7 friends.

The novel’s highly spiritual. With a sexual edge & good humor. They live in the shadow of that ever-present threat, the ‘Big One’ as SF locals calls it;-- an earthquake shaking them;--a potential disaster:

"Where’s your Earthquake Preparedness Kit? I want to inspect it!"

"I’ve just begun it dear, I don’t have everything yet..."

"Do you have a flashlight? There’s a rolling power outages throughout the state!"

Charity finds the box, and Delilah opens it, begins to rummage through. "Bottles of pills, good. Ointment, Band-Aids--and a dildo?"

Delilah gazes up, holds the purple cucumber shaped sex toy delicately between two flashy manicured fingers. "An Emergency dildo?"

Throws it aside and digs further into the box.

"What’s this?" She points to a brown plastic box nestled beneath Emergency green socks, bras, and nylon pantyhose. Ruefully unwraps it.--Inside are two bottles of female hormone pills. A bottle of liquid Estrogen Compounded Solution, and 5 syringes with inter-muscular size needles.

"Oh... Emergency Estrogen."

"Well Girl! You might want to put on some EMERGENCY LIPSTICK TOO! When the Big One starts rumbling!"

"It’s in the peach colored pouch." Charity says, chagrined.

Typewritten in the original authors original font and not spell checked-this is an original first edition. This is Charity Bing’s story in her