Summer in the City of To-morrow

The three most popular athletes in China are Liu Xiang (刘翔), Guo Jingjing (郭晶晶), and Yao Ming (姚明). Yao, of course, is familiar to anyone who's even remotely interested in the goings-on of American professional basketball, but his relatively middling marketing presence on TV ads and billboards around Beijing betrays his second- or third-rate status in the eyes of the Chinese public. For all of his laurels—first non-American ever taken first overall in the NBA draft, repeat All-Star, dark horse MVP candidate, exemplary ambassador of sport and international good-will—Yao lacks definitively the qualities that have enabled Liu and Guo to capture the imagination of 21st-century Chinese idolatry: speed, grace, good looks, and the claim that each is the best in the world at what he or she does.

Liu Xiang, a record-breaking hurdler who won a gold medal at Athens in 2004, may be the single most popular person in China. His actual achievements, amazing as they may be, actually seem pretty meager next to the adoration he receives. A year ago, a Hong Kong newspaper poll invited young women to consider which male notable they would like most to be the father of their child. Liu Xiang came in near the top, alongside the likes of Bill Gates and David Beckham. Needless to say, surveys of this kind are extremely dumb and vapid, but dumbness and vapidity do offer up their own kind of cultural barometer; after all, one has to wonder why Liu might be held in this sort of regard in the first place. What does Liu Xiang, handsome Olympic hurdler, represent to his countrymen?

To be sure, a great deal of this is explained by branding in the raw. Liu's the closest thing to a Jordan, Tiger, or Kobe that China has, a Nike-sponsored demigod of sex and war who's less a man than a feel-good multimedia commodity. In a some sense his fame is little more than the made-to-order product of corporate marketing interests. But pitching Liu Xiang as culture-hero relies upon, and feeds back into, certain elements of modern Chinese mythology that are far bigger than just this or that iconic persona. Some of these are notions I've mentioned in the past: national resurgence, equivalence or surpassing of the West and white people (and make no mistake about the clear racial overtones), wealth, perfection of one's self, competition, and fortuitous genetic inheritance. Here you'll probably notice the confluence of a) pseudo-public or pseudo-collective themes that are more or less about matching or besting some national/racial Opponent in a cosmic war of values, economic productivity, and the 110-meter hurdles, and b) aspirations of distinctly individual or personal achievement, of the sort that's measurable in velocities or quantities of currency.

One potential problem with Liu Xiang the Icon is that there's a very tangible reality check on his larger-than-life persona, which is to say the Olympic competition itself. And but so Liu has, in fact, turned out to be something of a dream deferred. During Monday morning's qualifying heat, Liu pulled up lame after a couple of false starts and then walked off the track, making quite a performance of hitherto-unannounced and apparently rather painful injuries. Fans wept in the stadium and raged in the streets. Holders of tickets to upcoming hurdles events demanded refunds. Conspiracy theories abound across the airwaves—perhaps Liu Xiang was faking it because he was afraid to race against Dayron Robles, a Cuban sprinter who broke Liu's world record several months ago, or perhaps he could not cope with the mounting pressures of national attention.

I hereby digress slightly to explore the rather bizarre circumstance of Liu's appearance in the qualifier. Consider the relative desirability of the various non-victory scenarios that could have befallen Liu, e.g.:

• Liu shows up with an injury, somehow manages to qualify, makes a strong effort in the finals, perhaps even threatening to medal, but ultimately fails to take gold
• Liu shows up with an injury, somehow manages to qualify, but then turns in a sub-mediocre performance in the early rounds, disqualifying him from competing for a medal
• Liu shows up with an injury, actually races in the first heat, and fails to qualify
• Liu shows up with an injury, suffers through two false starts, and leaves the stadium without racing (this, as we know, is what actually happened)
• Liu acknowledges a serious medium-term injury prior to his heat and declines entirely to dress for the qualifying heat

I list these in order of most honorable to most shameful, with the actual events ranking as very sordid indeed. Thus it's easiest to believe that Liu Xiang wasn't really faking it. If he were actually capable of turning in a semi-respectable time during the qualifier, he could spin objective failure into a hero story and come out seeming courageous and at least somewhat cool; that he didn't seems to imply that he just couldn't run. Why Liu's injuries weren't announced any earlier than the moment he showed up at the Bird's Nest in uniform isn't quite so clear, but it might be said that absolutely nobody involved had anything to gain from the premature advertising of Liu's infirmities. If his celebrity stock was destined to crash sooner or later, then everyone—Olympic promoters, Liu's sponsors, his fans, and surely Liu himself— would probably have preferred that it crash at the last possible moment. And so it went.

Hours after Liu Xiang's qualifier debacle, I had lunch with an old friend whose professional clients just so happen to include one of Liu's biggest corporate sponsors. My friend's insight into Liu the Man was unflattering but perhaps not particularly surprising. Liu, like many top Chinese athletes competing in the Beijing Games, inhabits a sequestered daily routine that approximates the lifestyle of a prize thoroughbred horse. He shares an apartment with his hurdles coach and has made no new friends since high school. His worldview is puportedly "naive", his personality "kinda bratty". But he is nevertheless the most famous man in China, and accordingly with him rise and fall the hopes and loyalties of millions of paying customers.

Actually, my friend had to fly back to Shanghai the very same afternoon to deal with the fallout of Liu's out-of-the-blue withdrawal. She and her colleagues had been given a 72-hour deadline to figure out what Liu's Big Corporate Sponsor ought to do about its sponsorship of China's most famous Olympic non-qualifier. They'd made plans for such contingencies as Liu winning gold while breaking Robles's record, Liu winning gold without the record, Liu winning the silver instead, etc. etc., but they had nothing prepared for Liu screaming in pain and throwing his number to the ground. I suppose that even they too had fallen under Liu Xiang's spell: the prospect of such a mortal outcome, in spite of numerous warning signs, was simply beyond imagination.

Later on that same day, we found Liu Xiang staring at us from a photograph on a table in a sports bar. We figured he could use some cheering up, so we decided to draw a mustache on him with a Japanese sharpie I kept on hand for exactly such purposes. Sadly we were intercepted by a vigilant waitress, and while she wiped our graffitus off the picture stand using a paper napkin, she scolded us about how Liu Xiang was too cool for this kind of abuse. This is notable for at least two reasons, the first being that the waitstaff of the Goose and Duck sports bar is far better at containing the delinquency of its patrons than attending to certain basic aspects of food service, like for example bringing utensils without having to be asked first, and the second being that I think the waitress wasn't really all that upset with us for drawing a mustache on Liu Xiang's face, and in fact I actually think she was kind of flirting with us.