Thursday, July 19, 2007

Xing Ba Ke

Last night Janet and I went to a nearby Starbucks to study. The Chinese know Starbucks as Xing Ba Ke. Xing means "star" and Ba Ke, I guess, sounds close enough to "buck." Unfortunately the drinks are just as expensive as they are in the United States.

Sometimes in the U.S., you may hear people complain about "income disparity" or the "increasing income gap," but in China the gap between rich and poor seems comparatively much greater. My 30 kuai hot chocolate could have easily bought two meals at local eateries. Things here tend to be either very cheap or quite expensive (sometimes arbitrarily so), in which case they become status symbols. The class division here seems more open than in the U.S., despite the country's roots in socialist philosophy, calling for an egalatarian society.

Our school, for example, has very clear-cut divisions. You can easily tell which students are popular by the way they look, how they dress and who they hang out with. Often, people from one level are against hanging out with those they may think to be "beneath" them. It is a bit like high school in he U.S., only we usually have grown out of that by the time we are in college. As foreigners, we are generally exempt from these class divisions, but possession of us is closely guarded. The other day when Janet and her roommate went to meet with some Chinese girls, both seemed offended that the other Chinese girl was there and they barely acknowledged each other.

Here you can find streets of shops where people may spend $100-200 U.S. Dollars on clothes, while outside poorer people are collecting empty water bottles from trash cans for the few cents they can make on recycling them.

As the Chinese economy continues to grow, the standard of living for everyone should rise. In the meantime, it remains a place of great income division that seems a bit like the "Robber Barron" age of the late 19th century, during which America experienced a period of rapid growth. Although growing pains will inevitably accompany industrialization and modernization in China, in the end everyone stands to gain from the liberalization of markets and a free economy.

No comments: