When Middleton Meets the Middle Kingdom

Hours after the Royal Wedding, a Chinese factory started rushing out copies of the wedding gown worn by Catherine Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, for sale on their website for a mere HK$2,000. A photo of a chubby young bridegroom in Nanjing, dressed in a red regimental uniform, sitting together with his bride in a dramatized megalomania of the “royal princess” on a “royal wedding carriage” led by a few feathered Mongolian short-legged gray horses and escorted by a troop of midget-like “royal guards” hit the British news page as perhaps an undesirable Chinese dessert such as a lotus bun would hit the banquet table at the Royal Wedding.

If such cloning efficiency could have been extended to the British constitutional monarchy a hundred years ago, we Chinese could have enjoyed some freedom like the Thais—let alone the Japanese—today, and escaped the self-made blood-and-tears farce of a communist dictatorship with a tyrannical emperor like Chairman Mao.

But even this Royal Wedding created some difficulties for the cloning-obsessed Chinese. The Duchess of Cambridge was dressed in mingy simplicity without any jewelry below the neck. It must have baffled so many Chinese women shoppers on Canton Road and Times Square in Causeway Bay while watching the live broadcast on the outdoor screen—how could a new British Princess, watched by an audience of more than 2 billion around the globe, walk with such confidence on her wedding day without a diamond necklace worth a few million Hong Kong dollars purchased from a Chow Tai Fook shop, a pair of jade bracelets from King Fook, and a dazzling diamond brooch from Chow Sang Sang in Causeway Bay? (Although not carrying an LV handbag is slightly more understandable.)

The Chinese may copy the Royal Bridegroom’s red regimental jacket, a color most politically and psychologically familiar. A replica of the 1902 State Landau carriage the royal newlyweds rode on after the ceremony can also be remade in a Shenzhen workshop by a few busy pairs of swift hands from a cluster of Hunanese laborers within a few days, each paid a daily wage of some US$2.

A Westminster Abbey can even be built in every Hollywood studio-like verisimillitude on the outskirts of Shanghai. But the bride is supposed to be a walking window-pane showcasing your national pride defined by your nouveau-riche wealth, as the wife of a Chinese billionaire coal-mine owner or a Cantonese massage girl just returned from Dubai will tell you. A Chow Tai Fook-free or say-no-to-King Fook royal wedding makes it impossible for any Chinese woman to truly copy it, as they would rather die a death-by-a-thousand-cuts than hide their newly-purchased Chanels and Pradas.

Catherine Middleton made life difficult for the Chinese in the same way as Chris Patten, the last governor, had when he impressed Hong Kongers with a unique governing charisma which a few local Chinese elites, under the orders of Beijing, have wasted more than 13 years trying to copy in vain.