Twenty-four eligible and beautiful women stand in front of buzzers, evaluating one lonely bachelor. In roughly 15 minutes and with only three major pieces of information, the women decide to accept, or reject the male contestant – the latter choice sending the poor sucker packing with a heartbreaking alarm clock sound. But, if a few women remain in, the bachelor selects one and invites her to find out if he is the one.

 

That's the set up for the nation-wide hit Jiangsu TV dating show Fei Cheng Wu Rao (非诚勿扰) – If You Are The One in English. Despite a rather vapid setup, the show is proving to be a platform for culturally revealing anecdotes, as it did when my coworker played the role of the bachelor.

It all started because members of Jiangsu’s media circle don’t look very far for their sources. This was, in fact, the second time the Jiangsu TV station that produces Fei Cheng Wu Rao asked my coworker, who we’ll just call Thomas, to appear on one of their shows. He was to be the third foreigner on the show. The first two, handsome fellas by any culture’s standards, with spectacular Mandarin skills, struck out. Thomas is a lanky Jewish kid with equally spectacular Chinese skills, but with a keen sense for satire. It was anyone’s guess if he’d get picked.

The show first profiled Thomas’s apartment, an all-important factor for Chinese women looking to meet “the one.” The camera crew expected an upscale loft apropos of Thomas’s assumed salary. When they saw Thomas’s one-bedroom, 800 RMB/month, kid-one-year-out-of-college bachelor pad, they decided to scrap that footage. Instead, they visited Thomas at work, to show off his job as a magazine’s English editor. Questions ventured into college and qualifications and Thomas found himself being asked the awkward question, “So, Jews are all very smart and rich. Did you go to Harvard?”

Thomas was scheduled to appear on the show in mid-June, when the game show was white-hot prime time TV. He received one ticket to the filming. Office water-cooler talk turned to, “Who will Thomas take to the show?” When the gossip got around to the boss, she tried to persuade Thomas to turn the ticket into currency. Thomas should give the ticket to her and in turn she would invite a local Party official, gaining the company both face and guanxi through Thomas’s 15-minutes of now communal fame.

When Thomas’s big day came, he asked if the he should expect stereotyping questions about his religion, just to be prepared. The director told him flatly that religion could not be discussed on TV – it was against the rules. If surprised at any point, he could not even mutter, “Oh my god.”

Regardless, Thomas won fans and, in the end, a sweetheart. He had eight women to choose from, a much greater success than the previous two foreigners who’d been sent home to the sound of 24 buzzers rejecting them. The woman he selected to get to know more fully agreed, and they dated happily ever after. For a few dates.

However, the show featuring Thomas never aired, and Thomas never inquired as to why. A foreigner on the show is obviously enticing, if only for its novelty, but did the show’s producers believe that a successful foreigner gaining the favor of many beautiful Chinese women pushed the envelope too far for popular opinion?

This is no more than speculation, but Fei Cheng Wu Rao has already had its fair share of scandals. Three women who appeared on the show are now notorious for using the spotlight to unabashedly declare their intentions as gold-diggers.

The first woman, Zhu Zhenfang (朱真芳), raised eyebrows when she told an interested bachelor she would only date him if he made more than 200,000 RMB a month. The second woman is named Ma Nuo (马诺), but she’s now known as "BMW girl" because she told some poor sap that she’d rather “cry in the back of a BMW” than take a romantic ride around Nanjing’s Xuanwu Lake on the back of his bicycle. The third young lady, Yan Fengjiao (闫凤娇),rocked the moral hinges off Nanjing’s heavenly gate when several sets of pornographic photos featuring Yan were leaked to the Internet.

The public called for officials to censor or cancel the show and for the hosts and contestants to grow some tact and take themselves out of the picture. It's rumored public opinion has even shamed host Meng Fei into resigning, though he hasn't issued an official statement.

The women and men on this show probably don't symbolize a generation and Thomas’s experience may not translate into any deeper meaning, but the contestants and this show do exude an attitude that is fascinating and if nothing else, it is an insight into young China's right now.

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