An intriguing encounter at Mar-a-Lago

A gate-crasher to the heavily commercialized Mar-a-Lago presidential residence in Florida tells the guards she's going for a swim but she turns out to be carrying four phones, two passports and a twitchy memory stick, but no bathing suit. This alone is enough to make the caper at Mar-a-Lago sound like the intriguing introduction to a Hollywood film noir, and in a way, it is.

Hollywood tropes fire up the imagination and are ready for the taking - for strivers, media mythmakers and voyeurs alike. Celluloid dreams not only entertain but also inform; they paint the world in a way that appeals to ready-made narratives, easy to grasp and easy to remember.

Zhang Yujing is just one in a long line of individuals, not all of whom were well in the mind, who attempted to breach the security perimeter of a presidential residence, yet rarely has the trespasser's race and nation of origin been as much a part of the story as with her.