The People’s Republic of Desire

7 Harvard Inc.

Guess what the hottest foreign brand in China is at the moment. McDonald's? No, too cheap. Nike? Wrong again, you can't tell the real ones from the fakes. Marlboro? No, no, no. Yuppies are quitting smoking and becoming trendy environmentalists. Yves Saint Laurent? Much too hard to pronounce! Sony? Unthinkable! Many Chinese still hold a grudge against the Japanese. Motorola? Uh, uh, Nokia is more popular. Microsoft? Not everybody likes Bill Gates. Microsoft has just lost a big deal with the Chinese government and China has vowed to develop its own software to compete with Windows. What is it? I say that it is Harvard.

Status, prestige, and education are what people care about most in a Confucian society. Perhaps that explains why Harvard is the most desired brand name in China.

My girlfriend wrote a novel called My Lover from Harvard, about a love affair between a Chinese girl and a Harvard-educated man. It's popular in China. Following its example, a recent Chinese graduate from Harvard wrote his own memoir, Being a Lover from Harvard. Every book that has Harvard in its title becomes a bestseller.

A girl from Sichuan Province was accepted into Harvard University and her parents wrote a book called The Harvard Girl. It has sold two million copies so far. Her parents have made enough money for her four-year tuition. Walk into any bookstore in China and you will see titles such as How to Get into Harvard, The Harvard Genius, The Harvard Boy. Parents buy these books to educate their kids. Kids buy these books to learn about the road to Harvard.

Travel agencies, English workshops, and bookstores are named after Harvard. Harvard professors have been invited to give talks all over China. A girl who took a couple of summer open-university courses in Harvard gave lectures to college students about "My Days at Harvard." The fact that she didn't actually go to Harvard didn't matter at all.

When Chinese people ask me which school I went to, I tell them it's Berkeley. Not many people have heard of it. Even Yale can't compete with Harvard when it comes to fame in China. Harvard is the only school that matters. Mother suggested I apply for Harvard graduate school after I received my degree in Missouri, but I didn't listen. The Mamas and the Papas' "California Dreamin" and the Eagles' "Hotel California" brought me to Berkeley.

"You think what you did is called romanticism? No, it's called stupidity," Mother said. "How can you make such a big decision of your lifetime based on some pop songs?" Like many Chinese parents, Mother is obsessed with her kids being number one, not number two. There is only one number one.

My friend Lily came back to China after getting her M.B.A. from HBS (Harvard Business School). In this era of Harvard worship, she expects to find herself a good job and a good husband in China. Apparently, a husband is more important to Lily than a job. Instead of posting job ads, she posts a personal ad on the Internet. At Matchmakers.com, she says: "Lily, female, in her late twenties, master's degree, five feet three, average body type, long black hair, and a thin waist, not model type but kind of cute, introverted but easygoing, kindhearted, enjoys hiking, walking in the moonlight, quiet dinners, and reading on the beach. My favorite book is Jane Eyre, my favorite food is fish, my favorite actor is Tom Cruise, my favorite color is lilac. I'm proud to say I can make a good wife, a good mother, and a good career woman.

"You: love children, family-oriented, well-mannered, speak fluent English, well-educated, kind, honest. You don't have to have a car or a house, but you should have a nice job. You don't have to be Tom Cruise, but you should look sexy. Ple ase no: party animals, playboys, one-night standers, male chauvinists, perverts, mama's boys, liars, or bald, overweight, divorces."

Lily purposely makes her ad a bit dull because she doesn't fully trust cyberdating, but she still gets sixty replies in one day. Despite all her stipulations, many replies are unexpected.

Four married men are seeking trysts and sexual adventures during the day, one respondent wants to exchange nude pictures, another guy offers to clean her house naked, two claim that they like to please women in bed in creative ways, three invite her to have threesomes with them and their wives. Lily is surprised at the level of sexual liberation in her own country thanks to development and modernization. She deletes all the unsavory ones, which leaves thirty-eight replies. Among those, she finds that each starts with a similar sentence: "I'm a graduate from Tsinghua." "I have a master's degree too, but not from China, from Australia."

Lily picks an IT guy named Jason who started his own online auction site in the high-tech zone in Zhongguan Cun. He doesn't mention his education in his reply. Instead, he talks about his hobbies and the books he loves. From the pictures he has sent Lily, he is also good-looking.

They meet in a bar called 1952. Lily carries a newspaper under her arm as a sign. Jason wears a baseball cap. He is not as handsome as his pictures, but he's still cute. They nod, sit down, and order gin and rum. Then, the famous drag show at 1952 begins. As they watch the transvestites in miniskirts miming to Teresa Teng's songs, Jason complains about how he was harassed in Thailand by a girl whom he later found out was a boy. "I wanted to throw up after finding out they were men. It's like the movie," Jason says, scratching his head, trying to think of its title.

"The Crying Game?" Lily suggests.

"Yes, exactly. That's the movie I am talking about."

Instead of asking personal questions, such as Where do you live? and What do you do? they start to talk about their trips around the world. Lily gathers that Jason is also a returnee who got a degree from overseas; local Chinese would not have the freedom or the financial ability to travel so often.

One hour passes.

"Where did you go to school?" Jason asks Lily. His first personal question.

"A school in Boston." She tries to avoid going into details.

Jason continues his travel talk, on the cuisine and customs of other cultures. Lily listens attentively and enjoys Jason's humor. She likes men who have a sense of humor.

Another hour passes.

"So what's the name of the school you went to?" Jason asks Lily again.

"Harvard," Lili finally says reluctantly.

Jason nods. Quickly, he pays the bill and says to Lily, "I have to run, but keep in touch. It was great to meet you."

Lily never hears from Jason again. She has the same experience with Frank, Brian, and Tony. Each time, men leave when they hear the name of her school.

Why? Lily asks me for help.

To solve Lily's puzzle, I invite my girlfriends to a teahouse named Purple Wind as her consultants and focus group. We ordered fifteen-year-old Puer tea and some sunflower seeds and dry prunes. One of the women, Dr. Bi, a psychology professor, says, "Chinese men like their women to admire them, not the other way around. They can't stand their women to be better than they are, especially in the education field. The more educated women are, the more difficult it is for us to find husbands nowadays." Lulu comments, "Harvard is almost divine in the minds of many Chinese. But who wants to marry someone who's divine?"

Harvard may make some people rich and famous in China, but it keeps Lily single. Maybe it wasn't so bad that I chose Berkeley instead of Harvard after all.