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BEIJING — Money really can buy you love
in China — or at least that seems to be a common belief in this
increasingly materialistic country.
Many
personal stories seem to confirm that the ideal mate is the one who can
deliver a home and a car, among other things; sentiment is secondary.
However
widespread this mercantilist spirit, not everyone thinks it is a good
thing. A spate of Chinese films, plays and television shows have raised
the question: What is love in an age of breakneck economic growth?
Many
Chinese were shocked this year when a female contestant on a popular TV
dating show, “If You Are the One,” announced: “I’d rather cry in
a BMW than smile on a bicycle.” But others insisted that the contestant,
Ma Nuo, now popularly known as “the BMW woman,” was merely expressing a
social reality.
Rocketing property prices in
recent years have contributed to such feelings, with many people in
Beijing and other cities accepting the idea that a woman will pursue a
relationship with a man only if he already owns an apartment.
Feng Yuan, a 26-year-old who works in a government education company, tried to set up a friend with a man she thought suitable.
“When
she heard he didn’t own an apartment, she refused even to meet him,”
recalled Ms. Feng. “She said, ‘What’s the point? Without an apartment,
love isn’t possible.”’
Fueling these
attitudes is a drumbeat of fear. After three decades of fast-paced,
uneven economic growth, there is enormous anxiety among those who feel
they are being left behind, lacking the opportunities and contacts to
make big money while all around them others prosper and prices soar.
The new creed can be hard, as a 26-year-old cultural events organizer learned.
The
man, who asked for anonymity to protect his privacy, earns about 4,000
renminbi, or $600, a month, making even a modest apartment in an
unfashionable district of Beijing unaffordable. These homes can cost
about $3,000 per square meter, or about $280 per square foot. Housing
inflation is severe. Ten years ago, a similar apartment cost about $345
per square meter.
Instead, he tried to impress his girlfriend of three years by saving for a year to buy aniPhone 3. The newer iPhone 4 — a hot status symbol — had just gone on sale. But at about $900, that was beyond his means.
The phone was not enough. Last week, she left him, citing pressure from her parents to find a richer mate.
He
is heartbroken, believing, despite all, that his girlfriend truly loved
him. “Why else did she live with me for three years?” — albeit in a
rented apartment. Yet, he is philosophical, too.
“I
understand her situation and the pressure from her family,” he said. “I
also understand that her parents want their daughter to find someone
who can give her a better life.”
The only way
to find love, he said, is to become rich. “The most important thing for
me now, is to work and earn a living.” he said. “I need to grow
stronger, support myself and my parents, and then my future girlfriend
can have a good life.”
Such calculations have
their critics. The hard-nosed attitude of Ms. Ma, the BMW woman, earned
her a gentle reprimand recently from the film director Zhang Yimou. In
an interview in The South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong newspaper, he
urged young people to re-examine their values.
“I don’t think economic advancement and our yearning for love are mutually exclusive,” he said.
Mr.
Zhang, who turns 59 on Sunday, represents an older generation that
remembers the more egalitarian, if also poorer and more politically
repressive, Maoist era, before the economic changes that unleashed the
scramble for material advancement.
His latest
film, “Under the Hawthorn Tree,” depicts the innocent love between a
teacher, Jing Qiu, and a geologist, Lao San. Set in 1975 toward the end
of the Cultural Revolution, and without a BMW in sight, the film shows
the teacher spending quite a lot of time smiling on her sweetheart’s
bicycle. Love is the thing, it concludes.
Other productions have joined the debate.
“Fight
the Landlord,” a play by Sun Yue that premiered in Shanghai last month,
is another ringing defense of love in an age of materialism.
A
character known as B, grilled by a potential mother-in-law about her
very ordinary income, yells: “Don’t think that because I have nothing to
be proud of you can insult and destroy me!”
“I have my dignity and pride,” B says, “and I don’t want to turn love, which I value so much, into something vulgar and pale!”
A
new film, “Color Me Love,” celebrates the cult of materialism but also
comes down, somewhat, on the side of love. Modeled on “The Devil Wears
Prada,” and with product placement for Hermès, Versace and Diesel, it
follows poor but gorgeous Fei as she arrives in Beijing to intern at a
fashion magazine.
“Fei, one day you’ll
understand,” Zoe, her glamorous editor, cautions her. “Nothing is as
important as the person you’ll spend the rest of your life with.”
A
tumultuous courtship with a wacky artist named Yihong ends up with the
couple united in New York. A closing shot shows her in his arms, a
diamond on her finger. The real fantasy, perhaps, is love plus money.
Ms.
Feng, who had failed to find a match for her apartmentless friend, said
the demands that many Chinese women make on prospective mates reflected
weakness, not power. Lower in status, they fear not getting what they
want in life, and look to men to provide it.
“Women
are very dependent,” she said. “I blame them. Why can’t they work hard
and buy a house together with their man? But very few women today think
like that.”
Few Chinese men do either,
reinforcing the rules of the game. For the 26-year-old events organizer,
losing his love to money was justifiable.
“We didn’t need to waste time on a relationship that was doomed to vanish,” he said.
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