I am gone this weekend (Thursday night to Monday night), and therefore needed to be prepared for tomorrow's classes PLUS next Tuesday. As a result, today turned out to be a day hanging around washing clothes, mopping the floor and going through textbooks, lessons etc.
As I sit here typing and drinking my coffee, I have come to the conclusion that the best item that I have brought with me is my 100 plastic beer cups. I also bought some plastic spoons and paper plates, which, in combo with my trusty beer cups, means I do not have to wash another dish the rest of the trip. At first, instant coffee was a bit of a challenge because the plastic beer cups would melt....but I find that if you drink cold water out of one, then double cup it with another one, it doesn't melt.....and with that taken care of no more dirty dishes to wash!!!!! (NB: the bottled water cooler's in our apartments give out cold and (scalding) hot water - which is totally handy - and I am surprised the ones in Canada don't have this feature?)
Anyway, back to the China. Yesterday's post included a picture of a beach club for the wealthy, and after being here for a while, it is pretty clear that communism does NOT equal socialism!
From what I am told, about 25 years ago, the leader of the Chinese government indicated that it was OK to be rich...and ever since then, capitalism has kicked into high gear. China still has a communist government, a centrally planned economy, and all the BIG decisions are made by very few (kind of a like a Stephen Harper led gov't!) :) but I have to say, overall the economy looks to be reasonably strong, and they have clearly come along way in a very short period of time.
One thing that I would be worried about is a real estate bubble. The pictures below show a brand new development right across the street from my apartment, and it is simply hard to describe how huge this project actually is! I counted 45 towers (NB: not 4 or 5!) plus an unending supply of new condo's, town homes and even many, many single family dwellings ALL in this ONE development (and these types of developments are all over).
Student's tell me that the apartment in these towers are approx 1000 sq ft (I think my conversion is right - close enough anyway) and sell for approx. $400,000CDN.....I do not know what the single family homes sell for, but obviously much more.
This would clearly be an upper end development in any Canadian city, but the Chinese say it is cheap (again this info is also from student's, and while I don't doubt it is true, also not necessarily 100% factual), because 1000 sq ft apartment's in Beijing are selling for $1 Million Canadian. These amounts may not seem so bad until you understand that the average wage earner in this city makes about 7000 to 10,000 cdn dollars per year (again take these figures with a grain of salt?) and my rule of thumb (from my old banker days) says that your house should be a maximum 3.5 or 4 times your family income?
Having said all that, another interesting difference between the two cultures is that the Chinese seem to think in terms of "centuries", and not "years" or "decades" as we do. Therefore prices might be totally different than in the West? Plus, if this new development is at one end of the scale, at the other end of the scale is the pictures below where the poorer Chinese seem to live (and there are just as many areas like this as of there are of "fancy" places). The really strange part is that these to pictures are taken about 2 blocks apart. This also appears to be "accepted and completely normal"
Finally, and not sure how to phrase this, but the poor here seem to "accept" where they are at. They do not appear to be bitter or unhappy....and not that I can read minds, but it just seems like they think "it is what it is". Maybe this is partly because no ones seems to be going hungry. I have yet to see anyone begging and contrary to what your mom might have told you when you were little......China is not short of food (i.e. remember the old "clean your plate....don't you know there are people starving in China?...this is decidedly NOT true - there is TONS of tasty, really cheap food everywhere here!)
Here are some pictures of the "two ends" of the scale.......
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