Crazy Rich Asians

Crazy Rich Asians is a tale of the haves and the have-nots. In this book, differences in wealth contribute to or are directly part of the conflicts that occur. The main obstacle for Rachel Chu and Nick Young as a romantic pairing is the difference in wealth and class between them, particularly how his family feels about that disparity. While Rachel isn’t exactly poor, her lack of family wealth—or old money—becomes a problem for Nick’s family, particularly his mother. For the wealthy, old-money families in Singapore, not having a verifiable family line of royalty, nobility, or wealth is enough to keep you out of their inner circle. Kwan gives an example of this social phenomenon through Eleanor:

[W]ithin thirty seconds of learning their name and where they lived [Eleanor] would implement her social algorithm and calculate precisely where they stood in her constellation based on who their family was, who else they were related to, what their approximate net worth might be, how the fortune was derived, and what family scandals might have occurred within the past fifty years (62).

An example of this attitude is how the Gohs, Peik Lin’s family, seem to be outside of the social circle that Nick’s family is in, despite being a wealthy, real estate family themselves.