Money obsessed, not Mao-obsessed

sweetspot · 发表于 2006-4-29 21:48

Sylvia Yu

Sylvia is an author and journalist based in Beijing. Her varied career includes working as a broadcast journalist, TV producer, magazine editor and freelance writer in Vancouver, Victoria and Toronto. She helped establish the Asian Heritage Society in Victoria, B.C. She's currently writing a book on "Comfort women" or military sex slaves used by the Japanese Imperial Army.

Ella Zhao is a married 26-year-old woman who's paid a price for the pursuit of materialism and the good life. She's had two abortions in the last year so she can continue to work and keep up with her high-earning, stylish friends. She also has no savings and a big debt.

"Was it a difficult decision?" I asked, referring to the abortions.

"I did it for me," she responded matter-of-factly. "I'd rather work and make money. If my husband made more money than he does now, then I'd be able to have a baby first. But now, he isn't and I have to work and earn more."

In fact, Ella's depressed because her husband's salary isn't up to par. Their meagre incomes combined can't cover the expenses of buying and maintaining their own house so they've been living with Ella's parents for the past year.

However, every week, she still gets some retail "therapy" and buys clothing, boots, black market foreign cosmetics like Lancome and whatever she can't really afford, in an attempt to keep up her image.

But what's even sadder to me, is that she seems anchorless and rootless, and ready to be blown about by every wind of a fashion trend or by her unrealistic job plans. Let's face it, she's more anxious about her future than her parents ever were, and with good reason.

Gone are the days of the "iron rice bowl," when the government took care of each person from the cradle to the grave, and provided everyone with a job at a State-owned business. Even in this white-hot economy, which has lifted millions of people out of desperate poverty, Ella has had little luck in finding a job with her university English degree.

In China, obviously, the days of being Mao-obsessed are long over. For those like Ella, arguably, money is the new obsession. I first noticed this obsession when my local friends asked, "How much money do you make?" Sometimes virtual strangers will ask me, too.

At first, I was taken aback and found it rude. Now I've come to accept it as part cultural and part envy - most Chinese believe all foreigners have money to burn. It must be like self-torture, if you really care about these things, to hear what another person is making, knowing that their salary triples your own.

The Chinese have had more disposable income in the last two decades than at any other time in recent history. Last year, people in cities had about $1,300 Cdn in disposable income. From 1997 to 2003, consumer spending increased by 64 per cent according to China's National Bureau of Statistics.

As a result, the retail business is mushrooming so fast that big-box foreign retailers like Wal-Mart plan to have about 60 stores in the Middle Kingdom by the end of this year. And supersized malls as big if not larger than the humungous West Edmonton Mall have popped up in Beijing and elsewhere.

IKEA and the French supermarket chain Carrefour are also cashing in on the growing purchasing power of the burgeoning consumer-savvy class. Other luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, which just opened a massive flagship store this past week in Beijing, Rolls Royce and Tiffany's are steamrolling into the country, in attempts to lure elite shoppers, too.

Retail sales grew 13 per cent in the first three quarters of 2005 to 4.5 trillion yuan, or $660 billion Cdn. And in 2003, the Chinese people spent approximately $137 billion Cdn on clothing and footwear alone, in spite of their average personal savings rate of about 38 per cent (compare that to the Canadian savings rate of -0.5 per cent, according to Statistics Canada).

The love of money isn't confined to the older set. What took me by surprise one day was hearing my friend's seven-year-old daughter Carrie say, "I love mun-ee." "You love money? Why?" I asked. She giggled and said, "My mom and dad love money."

"Why do you want money?" I asked.

"So I can buy breakfast, lunch, dinner and whatever I want. Dad says when he was little he didn't have any," she said in her near-perfect English. Her 40-something-year-old parents understand hardship and having very little to eat, having grown up in China in the turbulent years.

Her parents also realize that in order for their daughter to have a fighting chance at a stable career, she'll have to beat out millions of other students her age graduating from China's high schools. To this end, Carrie's mom and dad are throwing all their resources into providing the best education for her: music lessons, math and science tutoring, six days a week.

To me, what they're providing for their child is definitely in her best interests, but it's also like translating one's deep anxieties about money onto your child. After all, little Carrie is expected to care for her aged parents down the road; that's their way of securing a pension.

For a well-educated 24-year-old, Christina is strangely like a schoolgirl in her love for Justin Timberlake; she carries a laminated picture of him in her wallet and pulls it out to kiss it every now and then. Yet she's ambivalent towards politics, communism and flagrantly open in her love of money.

"I don't care about communism, but I care about making money. Young people feel this way because communism is not relevant. It's rubbish," she said. "For common people we have to enjoy our life and make it better by making more money so we can enjoy better stuff."

When it comes to marriage, the 24-year-old Beijing University graduate is purely pragmatic. "I'm still single. If I'm looking for a boyfriend, I have my big three: manners, looks, money. Manners are most important, then money, then looks is last. But I would never marry someone with no money. Never."

Other young women say that's common in the new money-culture. Even if they're in love with a guy, if he doesn't have any personal wealth, then he's not marriage material.

Ella's good friend has a rich husband who owns a business. Her friend's only child gets to go to an exclusive bilingual foreign-run school and they live in a western-styled home. That's the kind of life Ella and so many Chinese can only dream of.

Some of her other 20-something friends have made it "big" and they're earning about $600 to $900 Cdn a month at foreign companies or embassies. It's clear the root of Ella's unhappiness is the constant comparison with her upwardly mobile friends: desperate for more disposable income, Ella has quit her job recently so that she'd have more time to look for a higher-paying one.

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