It was billed as a chance for British Minister of Finance Gordon Brown to quiz China’s young elite about what they want from the future. And he got his answer — more Harry Potter memorabilia.
In a lengthy question-and-answer session at the Beijing Number Four Middle School, Brown, currently on a three-day visit to China, chatted to about a dozen teenage pupils, all star English students.
Asked for their future ambitions, the answers were impressive — one hoped to be a doctor, another a biologist, others plumping for business leader and journalist.
However, when Brown asked what they wanted currently, the answer was more prosaic.
“We don’t have a Nimbus 2000 broomstick,” complained 15-year-old Yin Yuxi, referring to the transport of choice for fictional boy wizard Harry Potter, the creation of British author JK Rowling.
Others chipped in, saying that little of the vast range of tie-in Harry Potter merchandise available to children in Britain is sold in China.
One girl even had to get her mother to knit her a scarf in the colours of Hogwarts School, the establishment Potter attends in the series of hugely popular novels chronicling his adventures, she said.
“Well, we will have to get British companies to sell them,” said Brown, whose main business on the trip was slightly weightier matters such as China’s exchange rate and the European Union arms embargo on Beijing.
“It is a good way to make money,” he said.
The Harry Potter books and accompanying films have proved vastly popular in China, selling millions of copies and even spawning a bootleg sequel when Rowling took too long to produce the next official episode. — AFP