May 14 (Bloomberg) -- Welcome to ZZ’s world: a whirl of good weed, wild parties and wilder girls. In Beijing.

This is no joke. The seat of China’s age-old civilization is as seamy on the inside as it looks imposing from the outside, judging from “China High,” a memoir scribbled under the nom de plume ZZ by a Shanghai-born, U.S.-trained lawyer in his 20s.

Written before the global credit meltdown, “China High” lifts a curtain on a side of Beijing seldom seen by tourists. ZZ captures the nocturnal buzz of a city where rave parties in derelict factories are a staple and orgies have become a rite of passage. Then there’s the pot, which locals call the Big Numb.

Beneath the froth lies a serious message: The world’s largest developing economy is seething in social tension, displaced people and hypocrisy. It’s a land of official sexual equality run by men who often keep under-30 mistresses, a.k.a. their “little honeys,” on two-year contracts. A country given to bouts of xenophobia among people who fawn on foreigners.

A Chinese national, ZZ graduated from Brandeis University and Boston College Law School, says his publisher, St. Martin’s Press. Then he went to Hong Kong in late 2000 to work for Sidley Austin Brown & Wood LLP (now Sidley Austin LLP) and transferred to its Beijing office in late 2001.

An administrator at Sidley Austin in Hong Kong declined to comment. The managing partner of the regional office, William Fifield, didn’t answer an e-mail seeking comment.

Thrills and Chills

By 24, ZZ was earning $250,000 a year. He took the Beijing posting for thrills and got some chills to go with them.

A few pages in, our protagonist learns that a woman he has bedded is 18, not 22. She’s pregnant and he takes her for an abortion (“encouraged” under China’s one-child policy, he claims). He later discovers that she was two-timing him with a filmmaker, he says.

Thus begins ZZ’s initiation into Beijing’s world of commerce, conflict and concupiscence. China meets “Sex and the City” as our young lawyer describes his flings with models, Mrs. Robinsons, kept women and what he delicately terms “local girls with jungle fever” in the Sanlitun bar district.

The city is so freewheeling that ZZ doesn’t hesitate to smoke the Big Numb in public, betting that the police don’t know any better and that his accent-less English gives him immunity. He’s wrong, and spends two weeks in jail for his mistake.

High Jinks

With a chatty and assured voice, ZZ details the high jinks of his stay in the capital during China’s fastest economic growth since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. His prose swaggers, though it can turn purple in places. (“I saw the twinkle in her eyes, those coquettish lashes demanding my attention with every blink,” he writes.)

Like a good fable, “China High” uses jest and anecdotes to satirize the forces that govern China. No subject is taboo.

The Communist Party, he says, stays in power by reminding citizens of how it saved the nation from foreign encroachments stretching back to the British opium trade in the 18th and 19th centuries. As for those second wives, they earn up to 50,000 yuan ($7,325) a month, along with a Land Rover to drive, a platinum American Express to take shopping, and 2 million yuan in severance pay when their contracts expire, ZZ writes.

ZZ offers tips on how to navigate Beijing, right down to what the worst swear words mean and how to use them to best effect. He exposes the hidden high costs of doing business in labor-rich China by describing his struggle to start a food- delivery company staffed by locals with little English and no inkling of quality service.

‘Ego Trip’

He also challenges the assertion that the key to getting anything done in China is “guanxi,” or connections. In prison, guanxi got him little more than a few extra dumplings, he says.

What does work wonders is being a foreigner, he says, rightly observing how the Chinese, long cut off from the world, now revere all things from abroad. An expatriate, he says, draws praise, envy and opportunity just for being different.

It’s “the perfect recipe for an ego trip,” he writes.

“China High: My Fast Times in the 010: A Beijing Memoir” is from St. Martin’s Press in the U.S. (368 pages, $24.95.)

(Le-Min Lim writes for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer on the story: Le-Min Lim in Hong Kong at lmlim@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: May 13, 2009 19:00 EDT