Annie Wang - The People’s Republic of Desire

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.

Who is your favorite male actor?

This is the question my girlfriends love to ask one another.

Among our group, 30 percent are Ricky Martin fans, including me – by far the largest group. Richard Gere and the Irish-born Pierce Brosnan have the second and third biggest following. Tom Cruise and Leonardo Di Caprio arguably rank fourth and fifth. The fans often meet in online chat rooms, gossiping about their idols: whether Ricky Martin had seven children with different women, how Tom Cruise likes women that are taller than he, how the color of Pierce Brosnan's eyes changes in different James Bond movies.

Fans of different actors form their own factions to fight against other factions. Ricky Martin haters circulate e-mail rumors regarding Ricky's sexual orientation. Tom Cruise haters call him a big-butted dwarf. Richard Gere haters post his anti-China comments and mock his narrow eyes. It's ironic to imagine a group of Chinese sitting around mocking Richard Gere for having narrow eyes. They expect their idols to look European, not like them. It's part of the inferiority complex the Chinese nation suffers from.

However, one fan club does not bother to attack others. Instead, they totally indulge in themselves. It's the fan club of Jeremy Irons, the English actor with the fatal elegance of an aristocrat and a voice that comes from heaven and hell. The group, which was formed over the Internet by me, is small but exclusive. It does not take a detective to realize that the women in my club share many of the same characteristics: city girls (40 percent from Shanghai, 40 percent from Beijing, and 20 percent from Guangzhou); educated (all have B.A. or M.A. degrees); like to wear straight black long hair or short gelled hair; prefer to wear black or white outfits in cotton or linen fabric. They look mild, favor dark lipstick, but are sometimes neurotic, arrogant, and narcissistic. They are also romantic. They read Marguerite Duras, listen to Irish music, buy prints of Van Gogh's paintings, drink cappuccino, shave their legs (most Chinese girls don't), have several cyber names, own a bottle of imported perfume (the size of the bottle depends on how much money they make), and are open about sex, though they may fake orgasms during intercourse.