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Yeah but ... aren't those people different?
In the news business we’re all about discovering what’s different, odd, counterintuitive. 10 points for an exception to the rule. So imagine my Eureka moment when I hung out with a middle-class family in Shanghai: Their problems are the same as ours. You know: work versus family, financial insecurity, elderly parents, raising kids without spoiling them. A few snapshots of the Gao family: The Dad: Yes there is an “I” in China. This self-made man started his own company, picked his own English name (Tango, like the dance). He’s rich, but insecure about the future. He worries about his folks and the country’s patchwork retirement system. So he saves big-time, to support them. The Mom: This typical weekday may sound familiar: take the 7 year-old to school, work a high-stress job in the hyper-competitive export/shipping industry, come home just in time for dinner, homework, bill paying, arranging the kid’s 65 activities. Oh, and the husband? Entertaining clients. He doesn't do chores. Apparently a holdover from old-school China. The Kid: 7 year-old girl, spunky, cute, high-maintenance. China’s one-child policy means she’s an only child. China’s economic boom means she’s a spoiled only child: there’s the high-end grade school, tutors, piano lessons, ballet. And she throws a good tantrum ... which her folks reinforce by giving her cake. Her overworked Dad says he feels guilty, so he buys her stuff (and as a Chinese man I’ll suggest there are few forces in nature as powerful as Asian guilt). The rest of my trip took me to the “other” China. A Chinese nonprofit founder says there really are two Chinas: one is western Europe, the other sub-Saharan Africa. I visited a rural village in western China, Deng Xiaoping's hometown. Farmers there earn $40 US a month, growing vegetables and raising chickens and pigs. What's missing there? The middle-aged folks, it's just old people and kids. Just about everyone else has left for city jobs. The migrant workers do low-end jobs that still pay WAY more than farming does. Then they send the money back home, usually to build a new house. EVERYONE in the village shows off their new digs.
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December 2005
