A student on SJTU campus is wearing a Yale sweatshirt, and I’m surprised to see a reference to my alma mater. Then I look again and I realize it doesn’t say “Yale” at all but rather “Yali,” although the font is the famous Yale one. “Another pathetic Chinese attempt to rip off a Western brand,” I think to myself but then I remember that “yali” in Chinese means “pressure.” The shirt is surely a comment on the exam hell all Chinese students go through in order to make it into the Ivy League. How brilliant!

It reminds me of the time in the 1990s when Spike Lee’s film about Malcolm X was drawing big crowds. Black people, and some liberal whites, were wearing baseball caps with an “X” on the front as a way to associate themselves with the legacy. Except the black students at Yale who wore a cap with a “Y.”  The reference to black culture was obvious, yet so was their claim to exclusivity.

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