Wealth Blog | Get ahead, get a husband - join Mensa China

Joining the smart people’s club Mensa isn’t a badge of wealth or status in most countries – either you have a sky high IQ, or you don’t – but in China it’s an elite sport.

With a 1.3 billion population you’d think they’d have a plentiful supply of genius-level inhabitants but it seems super-bright people are not singled out. Yang Bingyang, chairman of Mensa China, the self-described “High IQ Society” is the poster girl for mainland Mensa.

To join the elite global band of 110,000 members, you must score in the 98th percentile or above in the Mensa IQ test to become a member. Mensa China is languishing behind other countries however, with only 267 members. And unlike elsewhere, where Mensa brain boxes represent a cross section of society, in China’s members are almost exclusively culled from the wealthy, with jobs in banking, finance and IT. Most of the membership is concentrated in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou.

Yang told That’s Shanghai there are two reasons so few people join in the mainland. “Firstly, Mensa is a new thing here and receives very little coverage,” she says. Those who have a chance to read about it are normally well-educated and well-off white collar or even “golden collar” individuals, whatever that means. Secondly, she says, few Chinese want to join a society with a membership fee but no practical benefits.

It seems many people only get to know about Mensa China because of the high profile antics of Yang herself. She owns a Taobao shop, and is an author, model and sometimes TV presenter. She’s also ranked as one of China’s top 10 beauties on tianya.cn. She’s famous for lines such as: ‘Those who are smarter than me are not as pretty, and those who are prettier than me are not as smart.” Good to see no false modesty there.