Review: Kevin Kwan’s ‘China Rich Girlfriend’ Skewers Vulgar Wealth in Asia

Kevin Kwan’s brand of giddy wealth porn arrived in 2013 with “Crazy Rich Asians,” not a moment too soon to rescue a worn-out and useless genre. The vulgar rich had taken over reality TV, fictionalized TV (which seemed tepid by comparison), the occasional freakish documentary (like “The Queen of Versailles”) and the kind of fiction that heard its sell-by knell when “Bergdorf Blondes” and all its copycats came along. There was nothing new to be said about crass New Yorkers, Texans, Hollywood types or even tech billionaires, whose excesses weren’t usually that showy. A whole money-wasting continent had been milked dry.