
Rich People Problems

Rich People Problems is a satirical 2017 romantic comedy novel by Kevin Kwan. It is the third and final novel in Kwan's "Crazy Rich..." trilogy that looks at the rich and powerful families of Singapore. It was preceded by the bestsellers of "Crazy Rich Asians" in 2013 and "China Rich Girlfriend" in 2015.
Plot.
In 2015, two years after the events that take place in "China Rich Girlfriend", Nick and Rachel Young (née Chu), an economics professor at New York University (NYU), are happily married and living their life in Manhattan. Nick is informed by his mother Eleanor that his grandmother, Su Yi, has had a heart attack, and that he must come home to reconcile with her before she dies. While Nick wants to make up with his grandmother out of guilt for having shut her out of his life for marrying Rachel (as Su Yi was opposed to the marriage), his mother wants him to make amends so that he will be re-introduced into the will and inherit Tyersall Park, Su Yi's home. The extended Shang-Young clan has descended upon Tyersall Park to say their last goodbyes with the hopes of getting into Su Yi's good graces and inheriting part of her fortune.
Nick is initially prevented from seeing Su Yi due to scheming from his cousin Eddie Cheng, who believes he has a shot at inheriting his grandmother's estate. Eddie lies and convinces the entire family and house staff that Su Yi does not wish to see Nick while she is on her deathbed. With the help of the head of security, the head maid (who overheard Eddie's plotting) and Astrid, Nick is able to sneak into Tyersall Park and speak with his grandmother while she is in a cardiac intensive care unit in her bedroom. She is happy to see him and they make amends. Meanwhile, Astrid, Nick's cousin, becomes engaged again to Charlie Wu. Her relationship with Charlie faces obstacles from Charlie's scorned ex-wife Isabel Wu and Astrid's soon-to-be ex-husband Michael Teo. Astrid receives a grainy video depicting her and Charlie having sex in his bedroom from Michael, with a threat of releasing the video unless he is given 5 billion dollars in their divorce settlement. The video is released by Isabel just before she attempts suicide.
Astrid is shunned by her family and retreats into seclusion, not even telling Charlie where she went. He goes to great lengths to track her down, eventually finding her on an island in the Philippines. He reveals to her that he has gotten Michael to sign off on their divorce without any challenge by threatening to have him prosecuted for illegal surveillance of Astrid and blackmail. He tells her that though Isabel survived her suicide attempt and is now in stable condition, her family had found out that she was involved in blackmailing Astrid with Michael and that she will face humiliation of her own. Astrid says that she wants to stay and to bring her son Cassian to live with the people on the island. Charlie is willing to let her have the life she wants but wants to know if there is any room for him.
Su Yi dies and everyone prepares for her funeral. In her will, she leaves a share of Tyersall Park to each of her four daughters (Alexandra, Felicity, Victoria, and Catherine) and her son (Phillip, Nick's father) along with a share to Nick and his cousin (and Eddie's brother) Alistair Cheng. Upon the reading of the will, Eddie is humiliated to be left with nothing except his grandfather's antique sapphire cuff links. Astrid inherits Su Yi's fashionable dresses and jewelry. Jacqueline, Su Yi's goddaughter, inherits her shares at Ling Holdings, making her a wealthy woman and angering the family, who expected to inherit some of those shares, and now only have Tyersall Park.
Returning to Tyersall Park, Eddie furiously confronts Fiona for humiliating him by not telling him about the contents of the will, and ruining their family's opportunity to live in luxury. Fiona claims that she respected Su Yi's privacy and that she only picked up the pen to sign the paper as a witness. Eddie ends up curled up in a ball, crying, with Fiona comforting him. The family initially agrees to sell Tyersall Park to Jack Bing, to be used by his new wife Kitty, the former Hong Kong soap actress (and Alistair's former fiancée), for 10 billion dollars, because there are no funds to maintain it. Nick cannot bring himself to let Tyersall Park go, and so he attempts to buy out the shares owned by his four aunts, with his father signing over his portion directly to Nick. However, he is not able to raise the money to do this.
Nick takes a trip to visit an elderly Thai prince, based on a note left to him by his grandmother, thinking that this is the key to the funding to buy Tyersall Park. However he learns that this Prince was his grandmother's first love, and Aunt Catherine's biological father. Nick also learns that during World War II, Su Yi aided in the resistance effort against the Japanese occupation of Singapore by providing Tyersall Park as a safe haven for many Chinese and British agents working against the Japanese. Nick then tries to block the sale of Tyersall Park by claiming that it is a historic site. Rachel and Nick bring together Nick's friends Colin and Araminta Khoo, Rachel's friend Goh Peik Lin, and Alistair to buy Tyersall Park and turn it into the Tyersall Museum and Hotel. Kitty completes the deal by becoming a secret investor in their group in order to spite Jack, who had decided to buy Tyersall Park for Colette (his daughter) instead of Kitty.
One year later, Peik Lin is marrying Alistair, with Nick and Rachel serving as best man and maid of honor. After years of trying to conceive, Araminta and Colin now have a two-month-old son. Eddie finally changes his ways after Fiona convinces him to seek help and he goes to a therapist. Astrid continues to live on the island with Charlie and has started designing her own clothes. She does not wish to get married yet, instead preferring to live "a life of sin" with Charlie, enjoys the fact that this very much bothers her parents. Rachel reveals to Nick that she is six weeks pregnant. They both jokingly agree to not tell Nick's mother about the news, agreeing to wait at least until their child is 21.
Writing.
Kwan has said that this book was actually the first he had mapped out when he was first planning his trilogy.
Reception.
The novel received positive reviews and was noted by "USA Today" to be "a memorable, laugh-out-loud Asian glitz fest that’s a pure pleasure to read".
Film adaptation.
"Time" reported on August 15, 2018 that Kwan has been tasked with developing the sequel to "Crazy Rich Asians" from his two follow-up novels including "China Rich Girlfriend" and "Rich People Problems". The planning was still in pre-production concerning the back-to-back filming of both sequels following "Crazy Rich Asians" as of August 2018, though several of the key actors are committed to other projects until 2020. Awkwafina was interviewed in January 2019 and indicated that there were still no scripts for the sequel and that production filming had not started. According to "Town and Country" magazine, the filming and premiere of the film is not scheduled to take place until 2020. According to a Slash film journal article, the two sequels, including "Rich People Problems", will be shot back-to-back in 2020 once the filming commences.