Annie Wang - The People’s Republic of Desire

"I don't want special privileges; I don't want people to think of me as a fake foreign devil," I complain.

Mother points out, "You are a fake foreign devil. You're an American citizen, your mother is an American citizen, your father is, your stepfather is, and your half-sisters are, and your stepmother Jean Fang is dreaming of becoming a fake foreign devil right now. But what's wrong with being an American devil? The whole world is working for America!" Mother, accustomed to living at the million-dollar Riviera Villa, cannot comprehend why I want to live in a hutong.

I know that special privileges are exactly what Mother likes – her life has been a roller coaster. In her early days, when China was poor and closed to the outside world, she had nothing and worked as a kitchen hand in a jail, and now she lives an affluent life and is the regular guest of foreign ambassadors. Since she suffered enough during the Cultural Revolution, Mother sees being an ordinary Chinese person as shameful. An ordinary Chinese person, to her, is the synonym of poverty, backwardness, and squat toilet. To those lucky enough not to know what a squat toilet is, it is just that: a simple hole that you squat over to relieve yourself.

Growing up in China in the 1980s and 1990s, I have the idyllic memory of China. For my generation who grew up in the city, poverty can be a prank and backwardness can be a postmodern experiment. The diplomatic apartments may be considered high-end by older generations. For me, they are a bunch of ugly concrete matchboxes, neither cool nor postmodern. They simply have no character. I don't tell this to Mother, who has no clue what hou xiandai is. With Beibei and Lulu's help, I find a traditional courtyard house in a hutong near the well-preserved section of town: Drum Tower. It is convenient and close to the subway. My yard is two hundred square meters, with two large japonica trees, a grapevine pergola, and a flower garden. I can stand on the earth. As I look up, I can see trees and the sky. It's quaint.

I paint doors and roofs in blue, and the outer walls ivory. My house looks Mediterranean from the outside. I decorate the bedroom with bright pink-and-green gauze drapery and hang brocade from minority tribes in the living room. I have gone to an antique market called Panjiayuan and brought back a round sandalwood eight-seater dining table, old-fashioned wooden armchairs, and some Ming- and Qing-style vases. My grandparents give me a birdcage, snuff bottles, and incense burners as homewarming gifts. My house is a fusion of old and new.

With my encouragement, CC also moves out of her foreigner's community and shares the courtyard house with me. Not to be outdone by my efforts, CC installs a heavy opium bed in her own bedroom. Both of our jobs require us to stay connected to this new China: to follow and document and immerse ourselves in its culture. The new China can be a bland, frivolous, and even scary place, with its endless cinderblock-shaped skyscrapers and immense shopping malls. Our new home allows us to create an escape from the busy, modern world. It takes us back to an ancient place, when my Chinese ancestors still possessed the confidence and nobility that seems to have been lost in the Chinese people of today. I love my new house tremendously.

After we settle in, CC and I hear the story of the house's previous occupant, Frank, who was not only a postmodernist but also a womanizer.

Frank graduated from a small college in Indiana and was a foreign teacher at a Beijing technology university. When he was in the States, Frank was a pure and honest midwestern lad. He was modest and down-to-earth. At university he was shy, a bit of a nerd, and couldn't find a girlfriend. After graduation, Frank came to Asia, wandering around Thailand and Vietnam, teaching English to get by. Finally Frank came to Beijing to work as a foreign teacher.

Asia completely changed him. Back in the States, no one said Frank was good-looking, but Asian girls loved his Western nose and blond hair. Frank was treated like some kind of baima wangzi, a veritable Prince Charming. Women would take him out for meals, open doors for him, and give him candy. Sometimes, when he was walking along the street, people asked to take their photos with him. Chinese TV stations fought one another to get Frank as their special guest. Frank's confidence blossomed.

Within a year of his stay in Beijing, Frank nailed down nine girls. Living in the school's foreign expert dorm was no longer convenient for him since the guards looked suspiciously at every girl he brought back to his dorm. So he moved to a hutong.

He met his tenth girlfriend that year near the City Hotel area. Her name was Grace. She was a tour guide. Frank and Grace were together for two months, Frank's record. But unlike Frank's previous Chinese girlfriends, Grace was no sucker. After Frank dumped her, she mustered a bunch of punks to beat him up. Grace even threatened to kill "this heartless bastard" for "messing with Chinese girls." Although it was Frank who had been beaten up, he felt he had brought it upon himself. He had nowhere to report it, so he just had to suffer in silence. After that, there was no way he could stay in Beijing, so he slunk back to Indiana.

Whenever anybody mentions Frank's story, everyone laughs. Wives of foreign expatriates hear about the Grace incident, and they pay much more attention to their husbands' whereabouts.

HUTONG: Old-style Chinese homes that create narrow alleyways and little courtyards.

HOU XIANDAI: Postmodern.

BAIMA WANGZI: A Prince Charming on a white horse.

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.